Welcome to today’s edition of Watercooler: Last Week, RedState.   This WC is all about Posts, Reader’s Diaries, and comments at RedState

Hot Topics Last Week:

Maybe you had your fill of N. Korea’s games and China’s duplicity, if so you should like this piece by Streiff where Nikki Haley Puts China On Notice In the UN.

Good news on the illegal immigration front with another piece by Streiff, Immigration to Start Arresting Illegals Who Pay to Bring Kids to the US. and this one Stiffer Immigration Enforcement Revealed As Illegal Immigration Drops By 53% In June. It’s refreshing to see that when our dedicated public servants are a allowed to do their jobs that they enthusiastically rise to the occasion and do the job that they thought they had been hired to do.

Tail Wags Dog:

One of the things I love most about RedState is that each post is really just the kicking off point for the discussion.  I believe that there are any number of our community that lurk in the comments section that can and do present as reasoned of an analyses and suggestions as the original authors of the posts.  The Tail Wags Dog section is an attempt to focus some attention on the comments section of RedState and highlight some of the more spirited and enlightening discussions found there.

Kimberly Ross noted in her piece that “… Loyalty Should Be to Principles, Not People“, and, although her admonishment was to the GOP, a number of members of the RedState community weighed in on both sides of the spirited debate that ensued.  At the time this WC was written there were 148 comments on her post.

The Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Corner (a.k.a. The RedState Firing Line):

From the Kick-Off Edition/Users Guide of Last Week, RedState I noted my intention to use the forum this Saturday’s WC gives me to do something with comment threads and to bring about more in-depth debates between different members of the RedState community; noting that:

This is related to the Tail Wags Dog section in that, some of these long ‘tails’ could more effectively be taken out of the comments section and discussed at some length in a Reader’s Diary or Diaries.  An invitation to organize a new comment thread or create one or more Reader’s Diaries around the topic of interest could then be issued.  The Saturday WC would then be used to tie the arguments from two different Reader’s Diaries together both for and against each Diary.

I think it is time to discover the utility of an approach of this type so this is what I’m thinking.

Many of the ‘Tails‘ I’ve seen in the comments section make very cogent arguments both for and against something in the original post or, occasionally, some side-discussion tangentially related to the post that has been triggered by a comment about the original post.  Some of the comment threads have back and forth responses with some of those responses with plenty of thought put into them and plenty of words, i.e. 300+ words.   As a point of comparison, this WaterCooler usually contains less than 1,000 words.  Granted, there are any number of these threads that don’t quite rise to this standard of discourse but in fact many, many, of these long exchanges do contain valuable discussions.

Additionally, the threads themselves can contain 1,000’s of words with 4,5, 6, or more voices joining in.  The subjects are obviously of high interest to the RedState community as the other members of the RedState community give many up-votes to comments that they agree with or up-vote and comment or expand on the ones they’d like to have their voice be heard on.

To the credit of the members of the RedState community, the depth of the arguments and counter-arguments are usually far greater than the original posts and, if anyone has noticed, continue to come up both in the posts and in the comments section over the months and years. Polling, voter fraud, GOPe duplicity and spinelessness are just a few that show up time and again.

I think, these points are important to capture outside of throw-away comments sections and after they are pulled together and refined into a single or possibly even multiple diary entries the RedState community wins.  To do this, two or more sides would review their comments history and, using their own comments as a starting point, copying them into a separate Reader’s Diary that contains those comments they would refine their arguments and points of interest into a cogent whole.

With all due respect to one of the great conservative voices, think of it as a version of W.F. Buckley’s Firing Line if you’d like.

I’m looking for a few volunteers to try this out if there are any hearty souls.

RedState Gatekeeper:

I’ve noticed a few new members in the comments section including: Ron Hallmark, vanburen81, Roger, Kent Ramsay… welcome to the RedState community.

POSTING RULES (cont.)

As noted in my July 1st post, a few members of the RedState community have pointed out that the Posting Rules link does not work and I was going to “post one or more of the rules each week until the Posting Rules are restored” I posted two rules last week.  A complete list of these rules can be found in the comments section here but we are now up to #3:

3. Following a user on the site to abuse, harass, or disrupt is not allowed.

Update: This issue has been elevated and is being investigated. 

Memorable RedState One-Liners:

If Obama had been moved to make such a charitable salary donation for his country (as he so often wasn’t), he probably would have offered the money to raze the Antietam National Battlefield, so it could be transformed into a sustainable organic arugula farm.  FightNRight

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Drink up, that’s it for the Watercooler today. Remember, it’s an open thread all about RedState contributors from the front page, Reader’s Diaries, or in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by, hanging out, and drink up.