In light of me having to turn away a few sites signing up for membership because they didn’t seem to be about books at all (except for one that was, but was little more than a collection of press releases), I thought I would throw out the question of membership.

Hopefully, if anyone has thoughts on this, we can keep trying to make the site better.

Should there be Specific Membership Criteria for MetaxuCafe?

Well, I often write about the non-literary, but I think this is a good idea. As to what the criteria should be--that I don’t have an opinion on.

--Myfanwy

I’m not sure what the criteria should/should not be. I think it’s problematic to try to establish a ratio of posts or some such. Personal posts, for example, might be literature-related, since they do reflect a part of the writing life.

Maybe it’s like pornography: you can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

Have people been complaining about this, or is it just a growing concern as the community grows?

edit: oops—I probably should have read the first post (I was responding to the blog post). I certainly don’t have a problem with declining admission to any blog that doesn’t appear to be

a) original
b) about books

Just to be clear - I don’t have any problem with blogs that don’t write entirely about books. I think the “cafe” metaphor is apt here: if I walked into a long-running conversation that never strayed from one topic, it would be boring. The flip side is that if I walked into a cafe where I knew people talked about books but a bunch of people kept talking about their cats or what have you, I wouldn’t continue to expect to walk in there and join a book conversation and I very well might not come back (I’m sure I could put this better, but I’ll leave it at that for now).

I was just curious as to any thoughts on the current make-up of sites and if anyone had thoughts on a different way of thinking about members.

I remember seeing a post on this way back in November when I first signed up. I know it’s a pain to define ‘litblog’ - I think Wordmunger’s pornography comparison is pretty apt - but I appreciate your being concerned about standards, since the Cafe has always been a reliable source for good litblogs. (Which, to me means, “Original blogs that are mostly about books, reading, writing and/or authors”.)

I don’t think it’s hard to adhere to a criteria, but some bloggers include a substantial portion of their blog to topics or items that would be better suited to a Journal page. Personally I get a bit turned off when I follow a lead in to discover it’s about cats, kids or plants etc. I think those posts would be better left to a second site or sub-page for the blog owner. My two-bits.

I’ve just been guiltily trawling through my last few posts - are they about books?  No, but they are about writing in some way that is quite obscure sometimes...I guess I agree with wordmunger, my blog is about the writing life because that is my life, that is all I do...but is that enough?

It is a hard one to decide.  I post anywhere from three to seven posts daily and I’m guessing that quite of them are personal, but I do tend to metaphorize reality enough to attempt to make it a writing exercise as well.  I post on any of the three or four books I’m regularly reading, as I read them, although they include learning texts for let’s say, philosophy or hyperfiction.  However, one thing I’ve always done from the beginning is to clearly include the category in the post title, be it Literature, Nonfiction (reality), Writing, Stories, Technology.  And one thing I’m trying to also do is break up the long posts to a second page so that if Lit is all a new reader is interested in, he may see several posts at once on the main page, or go direct to the Literature category. 

A large majority of Metaxu members are writers; therefore, I think that more than just book reviews and critiques are going to be on their weblogs.  But I do think it is as Wordmunger says, something that you’ll know it when you see it--a 90% personal journal of daily events.  Perhaps rather than just a signup, a checkup by you, Bud, prior to authorizing membership is necessary.  Sorry for adding the burden to you, or maybe there’s another way of at least making sure that the personal posts don’t make it to the Metaxu site.  On the other hand, the pressure and stress of worrying about a member checking in and finding me ranting about the moles in the garden that day keeps me on my toes about lit postings.

susan - 06 June 2006 01:49 PM

On the other hand, the pressure and stress of worrying about a member checking in and finding me ranting about the moles in the garden that day keeps me on my toes about lit postings.

That’s eactly what keeps me from writing about my kid’s Muppet obsession, Susan! Until I can find a parallel to his behavior in “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, that is… Actually, that’s not too much of a jump, now that I think about it.

I like that this is a community of writers and readers, and I like reading what these people have to say. Even, sometimes, about the mundane things that affect our lives because these are the things we bring to the table as both readers and writers. They color how we approach our writing AND our reading.

That said, though, I rarely read my friends’ blogs when they recite how their day was. When they ponder a situation, write what turns out to be a thoughtful entry about something personal—even if it’s a Muppet obsession (which I heartily endorse, by the way)—then it’s like reading any other essay in the op/ed page of the newspaper or a memoir.

I must confess to being a pretty sprawling blogger myself.  I post quite a bit about books and writing- like today, for instance- and do so at least weekly.  I sometimes include the scrivenocetric in posts about other things.  But I also post news of the weird, personal peccadillos, and rants about subjects as disjointed as DDT and men’s hats.  Cutting across Bud’s question in an unhelpful way, I’m sure, I’d definitely make use of a method by which I could highlight my specifically lit-heavy posts so people could find and aggregate them easily, thereby avoiding the rest of the muck they don’t want.

I do think if new sites seem entirely unrelated to the litblog concept, they’ll just create background noise, and for me, the concise combination of relevant sites is the strength and attraction of MetaxuCafe.

Thanks everyone, for your comments - it’s helpful. Just so you know, I do look at every site before approving memberships. I read the first page and dip into the archives to get a sense of the site and sometimes have gone back two or three times.

Bud, is there some way we can help you out by tagging our posts somehow so that Metaxu just picks up on the more literary posts?  I know I don’t often post to Metaxu directly, nor do I post an entry here from Spinning that is not something I’d consider topical, so I hope that at least helps.  But for the headline pickup, is it random or does it pick up all, or do you have to go through them and select?  Can we somehow make life easier for you that way?  Of course the headlines would give an idea of the subject matter and as some of us have noted, we just may be interested in the more personal side of our members and might like the option to click on and follow the link back to the blog, and the post title or the first couple sentences posted here gives us the general idea.

That’s a good idea Susan, but my experience is that it’s difficult to get everyone to consistently involved in tagging - everyone has different ways of doing things and varying priorities. I am going to soon provide some ways to section off the type of headlines people see based on their preferences and I may also segregate the “pure” literary from the personal/literary and what have you. For instance, the Literary Saloon is a pure literary site, among others, so those sites might have a special place - but of course, these are just ideas and that’s why I appreciate everyone commenting here.

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure I like the segregation idea—defining what is “purely” literary might get tough.  And, although I post on cycling occasionally—once a week or every other week—I would want to be considered purely literary, and wouldn’t like to be in a more personal category.  And one of the cool things about book blogs, I think, is the way they allow people to connect reading and life—to write about the ways one’s reading affects one’s life and vice versa.  What would happen with that kind of blog?  Just a thought ...

Good point, Dorothy - in fact, I used the literary saloon as an example, but there aren’t many others that can claim Orhtofer’s “purity” (that word is starting to look a bit out of context here). And I do agree that the personal element does make blogs enjoyable. My point is something like - realizing that we can’t be all things to all people here, but at the same time trying harness technology to filter and allow each of us to find what we want in the most efficient manner. Efficient might seem impersonal, but if we had 1,000 sites here, then one single list of headlines might start to be less of a conversation and end up being the same type of noise (as in the noise of a crowd) that I was hoping to overcome with this site, so breaking things down into smaller pieces, segregating, might be the only way - and I don’t mean to eliminate the personal talk - not at all, but to give readers a choice.