What Makes (Made) Salon Bloggers a Community?

If we're going to keep the Salon Blog mojo/jive alive, here, somewhere, or virtually, we need to answer this question. What I love(d) about Sloggers was:

• manageable size, so we were familiar to each other, helped each other out, regularly read each others' posts etc. -- that's what made it a community, a group of friends
• no dominance -- it was a group without a hierarchy, jealousy, any of the other things that make some groups unpleasant to belong to
• shared political worldview, but with a lot of personal commentary as well, so we really got to know each other
• the cachet of being associated with Salon.com, despite the fact they treated us like shit
  
• the sense of fun -- from Raven's goofy posts to VO madness to Birdie's wacky virtual parties

This was unique, to my knowledge. If there were other similar communities, they must have had some other 'gel' that got them and kept them together, though I don't know what it was. Some of the more 'social' blog tools oriented towards younger people have tools to help you 'find' like minds and set up virtual communities with them. Now, there's Zaadz, which is really worth a look -- kinda what Salon Blogs was aiming to be, though a bit less political, and with an amazing 2500 active members. Can we learn from them? Should we join them? What else was keeping us together in Salon Blogs that we don't want to lose? What was it that really made us a community?

Renewal & Aristocrats

A bit of positive news for those who prefer to stay at Salon. I just heard from Birdie at Beauty Dish. Her subscription was up for renewal, and she completed it successfully yesterday. So apparently you can still extend.

And now that I have done my community service, I'd like to announce the new group blog started by hilarious former Salon Blogger Katy Hipke and myself. It's called The Aristocrats, and it's chock full of natural goodness.

Breakdown

I'm not sure where else to post this, so I'll do it here. I'm relocating, probably permanently, to toomuchbluesky.blogspot.com. Both our Mac (which housed all of the Radio crap) and my laptop broke down in a space of two weeks. I'm using a borrowed laptop from work to type this, and I don't feel like going through the trouble of reloading Radio on a computer that isn't even mine. And with the uncertain future of the Salon blogs, it doesn't seem worth it. So the old blog is done.

More details at the aforementioned location.

BTW - how hard is it really to reload Radio? I don't even know my password, so I'm not sure how I would be able to prove that I'm the legitimate owner.