sounds great! looking forward to it. thanks for all of your hard work. feministing has become a crucial part of my workday. all you have to offer makes staying informed about gender/women's issues so interesting and (gasp!) fun.

when I get my next paycheck, I will be sure to float some cash your way.

this is so incredibly cool. i'm way excited.

so, like MLEmac, come payday, i'll be sending you ladies some cash.

Hooray!

Sounds fantastic, I'm SUPER excited, TOTALLY stoked,... and, um, I left my thesaurus at home.

But I think you get the gist! :)

Hooray for Feministing!

Thanks, folks! And remember, if you have any questions...I'm here.

i think i just creamed myself --- i've never had such an amazing orgasm!!!

Will the discussion and personal page areas be searchable by outside folks or will registration be required to view those areas?

Also, can I create a new identity to ditch some of my less well-considered posts of the not-too-distant past?

Yes, you can create a new identity. :)

As for the forums, I believe we're going to require registration--but I have to double check.

Why not use a free solution like Drupal to save yourself some cash? I can't help thinking it must be much more extensible and flexible than MT, though I haven't evaluated MT in a while and have never looked at their community solution. I'd be happy to swap some email with you about pros and cons if you'd like to investigate this other option.

My humble contribution is on its way! Thanks for all the hard work and all the best in the future.

Excellent, I'm happy to read about the exciting new developments. Since I'm all job having now, I'll certainly make a donation.

Daryl, we discussed Drupal a bunch and all of our techie experts thought we should go with MT for various reasons. The Community Solution looks pretty amazing, I'm excited about it.

This is the best thing that's happened all day!
:-D

I'm really excited that my favorite site on all the internets is going to be even more time-consuming. :D My time spent on Feministing is happy time.
I admit, I have little bit of old-lady-technology-anxiety upon hearing about all of the new features, but I'm sure I'll be able to adjust.

this is awesome! I might look into creating a new handle as well.

I wish I could donate but we're still on strike out here and I'm going to have to start looking for a new job in the new year if it continues to go until March like people are saying it is. *sigh* but once i have that I'll donate:)

Looking forward to the new Feministing!

UltraMagnus--I'm so sorry to hear that! I hope it all works out for you...

I'll figure out a way to include y'all in my Christmas budget ;).

I will look forward to the new community features. As someone still very much trying to find her sealegs as an activist ('net and otherwise), it sounds lovely to have stronger networking with all of you. You've really given me a wonderful sense of intellectual and activist community over the past year.

I hope we will still be able to access the feministing archives? I keep all my favorite posts bookmarked, and do refer to them for teaching, research, etc. . . .?

Congrats to everyone! I admit that I'm sort of anxious about these new developments. I tend to fear change. Will the main feature still be posts from you all? I hope the site isn't going to be too complicated because I love it's simplicity right now (just scrolling down for different threads).

I have to ask that if people decide to change their handles, alert the group! I feel like I *know* some of you and don't want to get confused!

SarahMC, yes--the main content will still be posts from us. And believe me, we're concerned about things getting too complicated as well--all of this will be very very user friendly.

I think I speak for everyone when I say...uh, awesome.

Will there be forums?

/me loves forums

I am 98 percent sure there will be forums.

Yes. I have the same concerns as SarahMC.
I won't have to wade through the "peanut gallery" to find articles by Jessica et al, will I?
Also, one concern I DO have is that I feel like this group is small and cohesive enough to actually have relevant discussions. I'm not a fan of Daily Kos (for various reasons I've probably expressed before) for one, because I feel like it's a free-for-all. They're not very good at controlling abuse/hijackingover there, in my opinion. I suspect that that has more to do with volume than negligance.
I'm just scared that my favoritist website is going to change!

I hear you, nerdalert-but believe me, we're going for more monitoring--not less! The hope is that with comment ratings, etc, that the crappy troll comments will get pushed out and our community comments will get pushed to the front. And trust me, there will be no wading to find our posts--we're wa-ay too egotistical for that. ;)

What we're thinking is that the main page will stay very much the same--all of our posts. Diaries will be housed elsewhere, but with links to them on the main page. From time to time we'll also do "diary rescues" where we point out a post or a diary we think folks should pay particular attention to.

Also, if folks have suggestions for stuff they'd like to see on Fem in terms of the upgrade--let us know now (and here)!

Very cool!
I suggest if you are computery enough to implement an ad-free site for big donators (more than X$) you do so. Just as a little reward...

It might be more work than its worth for you though..

Geeky_girl, that's a great idea. I'll look into it...

I am so serious when I say that I am personally very excited about these changes and think any opportunity to form a stronger community is AWESOME. (And as soon as I get up to check the mail - which could be a couple hours - I'll get my debit card and donate.)

Even though I'm writing a hella-long paper, I'm doing it with more va-voom now.

I am all in - tho I guess I am just one of the peanut gallery. BRAVA! Look for a donation from me.

this is exciting! will it be sort of like myspace but for feminists? I like the idea of an ad-free site for people who donate.

This is effing fantastic. Feministing, despite how great it already is, has kicked it up a notch. Bravo. I'm so thrilled.

Maybe kind of off topic, but since this is about the site, what's up with TMZ being in the ads? TMZ is kind of objectifying in the way they treat people in general. Can you not control what advertisements pop up?

Teresa, I didn't notice any TMZ ads...I'll look into it and see if they're on our advertiser list. We can control ads to some extent. We don't take the ads directly, we do it through another party - but we are sent notifications when a new advertiser gets on board and we have the option of saying no (like, we said no to Walmart and Axe).

holla! i just gave some $$. love!

This is really exciting! It'll be cool to have a community page representing people I actually share values with.

I think that this is going to be really cool. Feministing seems to have not only become a sort of feminist hub, but also a place for young/new feminists to get their grounding and to start understand feminism, the media and also how blogs work. I can personally credit the site with some of that. To turn it into more of a community, with the proper kind of moderation in place, I think could only be a good thing for those coming to understand what feminism is all about. And there's absolutely nothing bad about newer feminists being introduced to a broader range of feminist views from the outset.

Thanks, everyone!

And Cara--exactly. With moderation stuff, we're also hoping that the community aspects will lead to more community moderation (i.e., a shitty antifeminist commenter will get low ratings, etc) which is also exciting. I'm really stoked, I've been thinking abut doing this for a while, so it's really cool to see stuff finally start to come together. Now let's see if we get everything up and running by the new year!

By the way, from all of your generous contributions--we've already raised $400!!! You guys are amazing, thank you so much.

Zoe Ann Nicholson: I wasn't trying to be insulting by using the phrase "peanut gallery!"
What I intended to convey was that if the site allows *anyone* to write a diary/blog, the number of posts will probably drastically increase in volume, meaning the the number of irrelevant/off-topic posts will go up. I just wanted to be assured that the posts by the site creators will be salient. I wasn't trying to be all, STFU n00b or anything. :) I was thinking along the lines of the MRA crowd when I said "peanut gallery."

Yay! I think this is a fantastic idea. I've recently been thinking about some of the limitations of just a blog and the way it sets up a bit of a thought hierarchy between bloggers and commenters, so only a few people have any control over what we get to talk about (though of course, you ladies are always very nice to post things commenters bring to your attention). I always think allowing for more prominent voices is a good thing, especially in a social movement.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying: I think making this more of a community is a brilliant idea! :)

I am a (very) poor college student, but I get paid next week and I'll give as much as I can (I can't promise it will be much unfortunately :( ) to help this plan move along.

And there will still be Monday Monty blogging?

That is awesome! I can't wait! :)

this sounds grrrrrrreeeeeaaaaaaaaaatttt! I'm so pumped, but to second many other, a little apprehensive--I love feministing the way it is now, but I'm pretty sure it can only get better.

Also, I just hope that over-moderation won't be a factor (although i don't think it will be) I don't like "dialogue" with people who purposefully stunt conversation, but I also don't like agreeing all the time with everyone. :)

and finally, a big thanks to the whole feministing crew for having a fantabulous blog that will only be getting even more fantabulous

IM SO EXICTEED!!! I always wanted something like this. Everyone on here is so awesome and I wanted to be able to communicate with some of them or know more about them. YAY!!! I love you guys.

Yay! I love having a salary (even if it's a very small one!) so I can donate to causes like this! With some sites, I'd be skeptical of their efforts to make it more community based, but I trust all of you Feministing ladies to pull this off successfully. Can't wait to see the new look!

Oh I am very excited!!

What you might consider doing is instituting "paid accounts" where members can pay a small monthly fee (those add up very fast!) which is allot easier to manage for those of us with fixed budgets.

I would be happy to add feministing to my internet subscriptions (like world of war craft, lol) and it would be much easier than a one time payment which won't be as large as I would like to donate!

I think this is a fantastic idea. One of my goals over the Winter Break (I work at a university) is work on creating my own blog. I can't think of a better way to entering into the cyberworld than through Feministing.com!