Thanks to our wonderful first responders who got this fundraiser off to a speedy start. Your prompt action helped meet our first target, for IT infrastructure, in a smidge over 24 hours. You turned this around so quickly that katiebird’s thermometer is behind where we are.
As of around 1 PM, we are now $2510 towards our second goal, of supporting the comments section. We are also 221 donations towards the fundraiser target of 1100 donors. This post was scheduled improperly due to this humble blogger multitasking badly and so fired hours after we hit this target.
Your contributions demonstate that you value this community and want to foster a better debate and a better society. You are willing to invest to improve Naked Capitalism so it can be an even more effective in helping make sense of an ever more propagandized world and develop paths forward.
If you haven’t had time to give yet, please visit our Tip Jar to support our efforts. Whatever you can give, whether $10 or $1000, enables us to provide your daily dose of of world-ranging news overviews, compelling commentary, prescient analysis, and heart-warming animal pictures, as well as a digital watering hole where you can hang out with the like-minded.
Many of you are too busy to read Naked Capitalism daily, so in 2024, we upgraded our newsletter from monthly to every other week to make to easier to stay current. So please take your hats off to moderator katiebird, who is also the major domo of the monthly newsletter and of our fundraiser support.
Readers have been sending gratifying messages, particularly about how much they value the comments. The insights and fresh information from our the many viewpoints of the readers gave a strong boost to our Iran War posts. From ChiGal:
Rhe depth and breadth of the discussion and analysis here is unparalleled – it is honestly almost thrilling with Yves tapping the commentariat to enrich her posts the way we are all now reaping the rewards of the community she has built up over decades.
surely there is nothing like it anywhere on the internet – many thanks to all of you.
And from eg:
This place has become an indispensable first stop every day for me circa Brexit. The analysis here just keeps going from strength to strength — from US elections, through Covid, Ukraine and now West Asia I’m grateful to be freed from the useless narratives endlessly parroted in the western corporate media organs. Much obliged, thanks.
And Oregon Lawhobbit
Also, yet again another huge THANK YOU!!! for all the work you do in these Iran War Threads, as well as your generosity in time and effort in the blog in general! I deeply and sincerely appreciate how you – and the NC Commentariat – make my life easier and waaaay more interesting and informed than it might ever be on my own!
And Bill Fergus:
I just donated $100. I wish I could tip a lot more, but I’m over 70 years old and I fear my 401(k) is about to become a 101(k). You may be aware that I’ve been a long-time reader and (very) occasional commenter. Naked Capitalism is unique in a very good way. Your coverage of the Iran war has been phenomenal, yet in line with your coverage of so much else since I started reading back in 2010. Keep up the good work, and I hope you are enjoying life on the other side of the world.
Thank to katiebird’s, and semper loquitur’s (who also does double duty now with the new Sunday movie feature) heavy lifting, comments are freed faster than in the past. But the moderators also play an essential role in adjudicating cases, which are typically discussed among all of the site admins. They also correct inaccurate links and sometimes intercede in comments. Katiebird maintains a spreadsheet of who is in various doghouses and why, which is extremely helpful when we reconsider cases. As we mentioned, she also prepares our twice-monthly newsletter and semper loquitur handles some key administrative tasks
Algo-and-Trump-stoked polarization have been made even worse as AI bots roam social media. The result is more cheap sloganeering and open anger s across the Web. It’s taken more work to keep Naked Capitalism an oasis of sanity and civility in a media wasteland.
So if you appreciate the value of comments at Naked Capitalism, feel free to skip the rest of this post, go straight to the Tip Jar which tell you how to give by check, credit or debit card. Promote stimulating, vigorous, informative, and often witty debates among members of the commentariat
Managing comments has always come at a cost. If anything, that cost has been rising because we’ve had to impose even more mod rules, which sadly means more comments go into moderation. So getting to them quickly is even more important than ever.
Managing comments does not mean just handling the moderation queue, setting up and tweaking the various rules (that sometimes, as you also know too well, operate in a Skynet-like manner, despite our best intent). That also means reading the comments, multiple times a day, and wading in as necessary, sometimes to de-escalate or act as referees, sometimes to clear up benign- or malign-looking mischaracterizations of what the posts or readers said.
We also spend more time than you think in dealing with borderline comments.
This oversight cumulatively takes a lot of time but is a critical investment, since it helps keep the comments at a generally high level. Our efforts also help assure readers that they can express their views and supply important information as long as they adhere to guidelines meant to encourage high standards of accuracy and rigor.
The proof of the success of this approach is the fact that we have a real community at Naked Capitalism where many voices can and do express themselves, despite the widely-recognized deterioration of quality of discourse across the Web. Naked Capitalism is even cited in journalism courses as an example of the sort of engaged audience that major media outlets think they want to have (and which they could have, if they’d stop toeing the line of important advertisers and elite interests). So to support these efforts, please give now. Whether it’s $5, $50, or $5000, all help meet our goals.
We have set a target of $30,000 which frankly only partly covers the total cost of comments moderation and the newsletter. So please do your part and chip in pronto! The Tip Jar tells you how to give by check, credit or debit card. And if you do send a check, please send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with “Check is in the mail” in the subject line so we can include it in our running tally.
Again, please invest in the commentariat! This goal is for all of us!
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