FDL Caucus

Our first event to actually make it to today. Most of the early part of the day has been getting to meet, see and know people.

First big annoucement is that FDL will be doing diaries! New page called Oxdown Gazette on the site will be the Diary page.

Pachacutec is doing a review of the last FDL year.
Thanking the community. Recapping the work on FISA. Come a long way from Scooter Libby. Now the focus is going to be what is good policy, what is going on about policy and how can we be more proactive rather than re-active.

One goal, Bringing the outside interest to effect the Insiders in DC. And one way to do that is going to be through the new diaries.

Now open to Q&A

First question is how to decide what to post, even when you are angry, frustrated etc.?

Pach said at FDL they had a editorial policy. Do Not Endorse, Do Not Destroy. It was hard to do this during the primary. The Diaries however, they feel will be open game. Constant interactive loop of feedback. Not going to tolerate racism or sexism. Follow some basic guidelines.

2nd Question; was really a follow up. A member saying that the standard that the front pages have set influences the commentors. And that this will help the diaries too.

Some points, this is always a challenge, but that conflict is not bad. All of this is going to influence how this comes together. But if you are doing diaries and comments you can be sure fdl will be listening. The top of the fdl page will show the top posters on the Oxdown site.

3rd question; Where did the name come from? (Oxdown Gazette) And how are you going to get DC insiders to pay attention? Ari will be leading that effort and he has worked a lot in DC so the thought is that this will help bring DC eyeballs to the site.

OXDOWN LAKE; project started in Jan. It was technically challenging. The name comes from a test in England-- local reporters would have to take this test. And the test was always the same. The question on the test would always be about a mythical town of Oxdown, and the new reporters would have to cover a hypothetical event that would happen to the town of Oxodown. It was inspired by that.

FDL folks belives that Oxdown is going to be a great place to have discussions about policy issues going forward. Diaries will be recommended and will get kind of a rating as well.

Another question; From a local austin blogger. Feels like the interface of FDL has become a little schizofrenic... with all the multiple blogs. etc. Her question is are we going to dilute the community power/ feeling by adding in diaries on top of all the other new stuff that has come on?

Show of hands shows that a few people are concerned about this...

Pach said that they are feeling like they want to create communities not just community. Long term goal to find more ways to reach out to more and more people. So this is a risk but by doing this in good quality will bring a lot of people there.

Wants to open up more opportunities to more people.

They are looking at ways to experiment and use spaces on the pages to show what is going on across the rest of the linked blogs.

Another question; been slow lately, why?
Server migrations, DNS attacks, New issues. Working on it.

Other basic user questions and ideas being traded around.