DAILY TOL: Tree of Liberty

It’s been a while since I penned a post and thought I should bring something up this evening.

First, though I am the Founder of this little corner of the digital world, I do not see myself as its owner.  I also do not see those who I have currently designated as Authors in that role.  No, I see this site owned and operated by any who believe in the basic principles on which our country was founded.

Personally, I tend to view those principles through what many today would call a Libertarian or Conservative lens, but more and more I have received e-mails from those who describe themselves as “Old School Democrats”  or “True Liberals,” or many such terms.  Early on I tried to make it clear that all were welcomed here, but I’d like to make that clear again tonight.

As Thomas said yesterday, we must eschew the Red and the Blue, the Right and the Left, the Elephant and the Donkey.  Set aside the party chains that fetter us and in favor of the values that bind us.

Why tonight do I feel the need to write this.  Well, over the last 48 hours, we have had more new registrants than in any month prior.  Clearly those folks are just lurking around, which is totally fine.  However, I want everyone to feel free to make comment, post on our wall, or even make a submission for publication.

Heck, if you are feeling particularly adventurous, submit a piece and ask to become an Author.

In short, ask not for whom this bel ToLs; it ToLs for thee.

As you, no doubt, have seen, there are two areas of Daily Tol that have rotating quotes:  the masthead and the left sidebar.  Please feel free to suggest thematically appropriate authors and associated quotations for inclusion into Daily Tol.  We currently have quotes represented by:

• Jefferson
• Adams
• Washington
• Lincoln
• Kennedy
• Reagan

I mentioned that our first Author would be joining us shortly once he figured out the nom de plume that best fit his personal and writing style.  Please welcome, Patrick Henry, he is about as fiery as Abigail, but has promised to exercise self-restraint.

As for Abigail, after this past week’s news, she is still trying to calm down enough to post without me having to moderate her writing…probably not good if I have to moderate one of our editors

It’s been one week since our soft launch and we now have coast-to-coast visitors, editors, and authors.  We have not done any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and I do not plan to until we have more content and a core group of authors/editors in place.  That may take a few weeks or a few months.  I’m fine with either.  My goal is to grow smart rather than fast with quality content rather than quantity.  Still, I’m pleased with have exposed both coasts and a good bit of the heartland to the site’s concept…on we go!

I’ll be one of the Editors here at Daily Tol and hopefully will be able to help this community grow in both breadth and vibrancy.  Tol has shared some of the initial site traffic and it’s interesting to see from what parts of the country our first visitors arrive.  One of the interesting things we are going to try and do is encourage micro-threaded comments.  On many sites you have discussion threads and you have post comments.  Here we will be trying out nested comments attached to each post.  Hopefully that will encourage more comments and make reading those comments easier.

I understand that most of our visitors are currently “lurkers” waiting to see if they want to participate.  Dip a toe in; we would love to hear from you.

With my next post, I am going to start what I hope will be a weekly question.  These questions will be open ended and likely provocative.  Over time, I hope folks will contribute ideas for future topics and participate heavily in the comments sections associated with each question.  Look for the first question shortly.

~TJ

Today, Abigail Adams joins the DailyTol.  I’m sure we will she will provide many interesting perspectives to our nascent community.  Welcome, Abigail!!

Obviously, we are testing things here at DailyTol, so consider it soft launched.  Please feel free to register and if you want to learn more, shoot me an e-mail at tol@dailytol.com

Over the next few months, I will be selecting key folks to become Authors and an even smaller number to be editors.  These folks will be the foundation of DailyTol and I will cede authority over this community to them.  To be clear, this will be a representative community, not a dictatorial vanity site.

I would be remiss and disingenuous if I did not mention the Daily Kos in this first post.  While, I disagree with nearly everything posted on DailyKos and believe that the tone is damaging to civil discourse, I wanted to honor its founder Markos Moulitsas for a couple of reasons.

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