Last year I joined a planning committee, to replace a friend who was leaving.
"Can we still count on Frank?" asked Bill. Frank had been responsible for some of our work for the past several years.
"Yes," said Brad. "I'd like to get started a little earlier this year, so that the schedule doesn't slip."
Some of what we were planning to do was written down, but much of it wasn't, held only in our heads. That's institutional memory. Every group or association or organization we join has some institutional memory. In the working world, it might be described as the culture of a company; in a social group it might be thought of as "That's the way we've always done things;" and in an online community part of it might be contained in a Frequently Asked Questions list about how to behave--or not.
Open Salon has an institutional memory, much of it maintained and extended by its longest-standing members. designanator's posts showing past OS covers are a good example. You can see who was posting four years ago and what they were interested in. You discover that OS had a beta period, when it was an invitation-only site. (designanator is not the only beta member still around today.) Things moved more slowly in those days (one of the sidebar categories lists most-read posts in the past week; ten or fifteen minutes[!] might pass between comments), but much is the same as today: the top banner is mostly unchanged; there are still open calls; the writing is a mixture of politics, personal stories, humor, and culture.
Here's my contribution to OS's institutional memory, in the form of a list of things I remember doing when I joined the site in August, 2008, soon after OS went public. You'll see that institutional memory is a collaborative thing--I've forgotten a lot of detail. (Chip in if you care to.) My goal isn't to say, "Those were the glory days of OS," but rather to find connections between the way OS was yesterday and the way it is today. This is what I remember:
When OS was young, many (most?) members blogged under online aliases. In late 2008 or early 2009, there was a coming-out period of mutual introductions.
This overlapped with the adoption of a Facebook "25 things about me" meme.
We liveblogged the 2008 Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates.
We posted reading lists.
We had running discussions (arguments, even battles) on a range of topics. Politics, of course. Sexuality. The Secret. The value/uselessness of meta-posts (like this one). In-group versus out-group dynamics on OS. Where OS was headed in the future. Who OS was for--people who care about quality writing? about writing, good or bad? about simply saying something in public? (OS hasn't changed very much in this regard.)
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
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Gerald Andersen
Ann Nichols
femme forte
Elizabeth Blessing
Keka
another steve s
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I believe Mishima666 was also a beta- member.
Hi, Julie! You were one of the early joiners, too, weren't you? I don't remember calves, actually.
...yet not, as you say.
Anyway, the evolution has been extremely interesting -- the flame wars, the pirate wimmin's insurrection, the invasion of Canada, the loss of many good people, the gain of many good people, the seemingly endless permutations of editorial judgement, etc.
My favourites list, which had you on it from very early on, is a reminder of all that's happened.
http://open.salon.com/blog/bbd/2008/07/14/jds_calf_roundup_challenge
I think I had the same feeling, Candace. But OS was "open" then as now, so it didn't take me too long to get over the feeling. One of the challenges that emerged over the years was getting noticed, which wasn't as big an issue in the early days.
There has definitely been lots of interest over the past four years regarding what purpose the site serves and where it is headed. I also remember that in the early days we had both Joan and Kerry leaving comments on posts not only during the weekdays, but at night and on the weekends, too. We even had a 'thumbs down' button for a while, but that was removed as a feature along the way.
Kerry's blog is a historical record that shows different features that were added to the site along the way since he announced the changes through his posts. I cataloged many of them on this post:
http://open.salon.com/blog/designanator/2011/05/19/three_years_on_open_salon_a_look_back_in_time_part_2_1
Features like search, or sending a PM weren't available at first, but added in over time, along with the Tippem payment system and Google ads.
It's really great to have continued discussions about where we've been and where we think the site is headed in the future, plus to have so many from the earlier days of OS still here publishing new posts and commenting on others!
@Julie, I remember the many calves posts and I can't remember laughing as hard as I did when I saw the various posts at that time! I'm happy that you mentioned that here!
John, I hope you continue to catalog the evolution of the site. Thanks for what you've done over the years.
It did feel more exclusive to me and I have learned not to get to attached that people come and go. I do miss a lot of folks that left in the 2010 exodus.
Fun times.
My fourth anniversary came and went unremarked in early April, an "early" beta member if there is such a thing. I still know my member number—198, which I love to mention now and then and seems all the more unusual given the current membership numbers (though those membership numbers include dispatched spammers which constitute their own vast horde).
And I regret that I now am so consumed with the mundane tasks of getting our current home for sale and the exhilaration of building a new home from scratch that I haven't taken the time to contribute. I think once I move to the new location to lend a physical hand in the construction that it would be interesting to document the process, so I hope to offer more in the future.
Thanks for all you've done and do, and to John as well who is an exemplary OS archivist.
Rita, sometimes I think things move too quickly online. But that's just me.
It helped that I knew you, Rob, from another forum. That gave me a sense of immediate tie-in and made it easier to settle in. Still took me a little floundering to find a voice I liked and figure out what I'd write about. Oddly, when I was finally going, I realized I'd been blogging before, just without a named fancy term for it.
And there was a precipitous drop-off of interest in politics after the 2008 election. This worried me because it seemed politics must not be an every-four-years thing. Indeed, the 2010 election snuck up on a lot of people because many don't pay attention to off-year elections. And this is how the Tea Party gained its hold, on voter interest and turnout.
Some interesting t-shirts were made in the early days. I have two, one home-made by my wife for me, one that someone made with a lot of thumbnails of avatars.
There was a lot less spam.
I'd forgotten about the T-shirts and cups, with the OS avatar collage! That was fun. We could play Romper Room: I see Kent, and Rob, and Elizabeth, and...
I suspect you're right about the nature of institutional memory changing. Back in the heyday of expert systems, there were good reasons to try to capture the expertise of people who might eventually retire, but nowadays it seems a bit more ominous.
It was the best of times, it was...
This could be the beginning of a beautiful book.
Like Barry, I came aboard in April, 2008. There were so few of us, you'd write a post, get an Editors Pick, be on the cover and still get only two or three comments, almost no ratings. And we didn't care. Hard to believe, I know.
In the early days, we were writing and reading, not heavily competing. No FB, DIGG, RSS feed or any outside sharing, just us in our OS bubble. Sometimes squabbling, but as on a Listserve, The Well, an extended family, like that.
I wrote a meme post in June 08 that went viral here. A first, I think, but we rarely linked to each other back then.
Elizabeth Priddy showed, as always, her perfect dry wit as Judge of Calf Wars. My entry Half Calf.
There are too many memories/stories to share, but it's only fitting to pay homage to the Freaky Troll Stages Open Salon Cover Coup. (Click on the link at the bottom for enlarged version and look at the posts then current in the right column).
I can still hear Kerry yelling, THOMAS!!!!
Thanks, Rob, this was fun!
October 2009 brought me by chance to this place, where I had no idea what I'd do, nor how long I'd stay. It's been an interesting journey.
R♥
And Freaky Troll! I'd forgot to mention her, as well as Deven's Movie Nights. (I still think that could be turned into a nice book.)
Fusun, I think you're now one of the more prominent writers on OS (whether that was your intention or not :-). I'm glad you've found it worthwhile to stay.
Yes, I came aboard in April 2008. I am number 329. By the way, if you want to know your member number -- go to your main blog page. Select the "View Source" option from your browser and search for "uid=". The number immediately after that is your member number.
The beta-members were selected from people who had commented on Salon.Com articles. As I recall, comments could receive some kind of special recognition by the editor or author of the article -- "favorite comment" or "best comment" or something like that. And people whose comments had been thus recognized formed the pool of individuals who were invited to be beta-members.
Kerry's blog contains notes on the early history. Around February 8, 2008, alpha testers were brought on board. On April 8, 2008, beta-members began to be invited. As of May 21 OS had over 600 members. And around August 11, 2008 OS became truly "open," and anyone could sign up.
In early September 2008, Kerry published a post about how to get on the cover. I believe this was in response to one of Rob's posts (which no longer exists). So the controversy over what posts should be on the cover and how they are selected has been going on for a long time now.
Kent writes: "There was a lot less spam."
As far as I know, the very first spam message was posted on June 8, 2008, from the "Miller Huang" account. This spam account features a Chinese company that manufactures acrylic nails, disposable shower caps, and hair rollers. The account is still out there. I don't know how it got there, since OS was still in the beta test phase.
And speaking of spam, I recently came across one spam account that generated over 1,200 spam posts in less than 12 hours. Spammers are irritating, but one must admire their energy and dedication.
As far as attracting members, Open Salon has been very successful. It has been less successful in keeping them. But the internet is a rather volatile place, and it is not unusual for web sites to have a lot of turnover of participants.
OS has done a lot right, but where OS has fallen down is in not having an effective account management function. This is why every month thousands of spammers can sign up and leave tens of thousands of spam posts and comments. Another problem is that the membership has grown by a couple orders of magnitude, but the cover format and search tools are largely the same as when there were only a few hundred members. What worked well for 300 members does not necessarily work well for 3,000 or 30,000 members.
Yes, Rob, your memory is accurate. The mid-sized paper where I spent most of my years had an institutionalised staff when it came to hard news/spot news reporting, which suited me just fine, since that was my forte.
No matter what generation of staffers, they consistently won awards for their work. It started, I'd think, with the returning veterans who'd been everywhere and seen everything and nothing was going to get to them.
It became a tradition that no one from any other paper or media outlet could work faster and better under adverse conditions. It's still that way, from what I see in retirement (although other things have been lost, it must be said).
I agree that the spam is horrendous, and I appreciate your behind-the-scenes efforts to reduce the problem. It's a losing proposition, I gather, without a lot of software support (i.e., paying software people to write the code). You once suggested a small fee for joining or staying here would also work, perhaps with "scholarships" for people who couldn't manage it, but that didn't catch on. But it will take money, I think, one way or another.
Kerry published a post about how to get on the cover. I believe this was in response to one of Rob's posts (which no longer exists).
I was excited when that happened! But in a fit of... pique? self-indulgence? humility? I deleted all my old posts before returning to OS in March, 2010. Here's the revived Ten rules for getting on the cover of Open Salon, with the original comments.
Hi, Roger! You were another person I was thinking of when I wrote about longstanding members. And RicTresa--I was fortunate enough to have banner from him, too, like you and Lee.
R
One thing I miss a lot from the early days is the direct involvement of the OS editors. Back then, it was common for Joan Walsh and Kerry Lauerman to read, rate, comment and occasionally get involved in some of the more interesting, amusing or contentious discussion threads.
It was something that made OS feel quite special, and it added to the "personality" of the site. The editors since have done a fine job (and I can't imagine how they manage to scan through so many posts each day to select EPs and the occasional posts to be featured on Big Salon), but I do sometimes wish they'd join the conversation here.
I liked the days when Joan and Kerry were a part of the OS scene, too. I'm reminded again of Freaky Troll, who wrote, "Again. The OS editor, I won't name names, let's just call him Zerry, stepped in my way to get on the front cover of OS." The editors were around enough to spark their own OS memes.
@Mishima, that's a great way to check your ID number and thank you for the tip! Previous to reading this I had told some OSers to send a PM to a friend and the ID number will show up on the email alert. I have really enjoyed your interesting posts, including iPhone photographs, plus your careful analysis when commenting on someone's post.
As for this, "That's the way we've always done things;" -- I dealt with that folly in my book The Disappearing Cemetery. My metaphor was a field planted over and over with the same crop until the ground becomes infertile.
(I have yet to pick up a copy of your book--what's my best option?)
Rated for memory lane.