Note: I previously posted this on DKos. I am interested to see what the difference is between how it is received in both places

If I say “Little Green Footballs”, what do you think of? No, they aren’t a species of Arkansas tree frogs. Nor is it a drinking game to play at halftime during the playoffs.
As some of you may know, throughout most of the 2000’s, Little Green Footballs was one of the largest right-wing blogs, with millions of readers, and a major conduit of a hateful alternate world view that most of us here have worked hard to counter. You may remember that Little Green Footballs originally broke the story of “Rathergate”, the story of the unverified documents on GWB’s National Guard service reported on in 2004 by 60 Minutes. This incident was the subject of the recent movie Truth, based on the book by Mary Mapes.
Well, around 2008 or so, Charles, like former conservatives Ed Schultz and Andrew Sullivan, woke up from his psychosis and gradually realized that his website was peddling toxic swill. First of all, good for him for evolving and joining the good side. I’m glad that Charles Johnson has spent the last several years trying to be a positive force.
What I want to focus on, however, is what happened to littlegreenfootballs as Johnson realized he could no longer stomach most of what his contributors and commenters were saying. Needless to say, most of his initial followers did go along with his ideological transformation. During the period when Johnson waking up from his rightwing psychosis, he tried, with increasing desperation, to exert ideological control over what had been a relatively large and freewheeling community of commenters and contributors who knew to find their way to Little Green Footballs.
One thing he resorted to was banning ever larger numbers of his former ideological kin for increasingly minor infractions.
Here is an excerpted email from another activist to Johnson around that time:

I really don’t think he’s trying to smear you — he’s somebody who likes you and appreciates your website, but who feels like he got unfairly banned. To be honest, I’ve been hearing similar stories all over the place lately.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I think I need to give it a shot anyway: I have tremendous respect for you and what you’ve accomplished. I think you’re a blogging pioneer. What you did with (choose recent issue) was outstanding and you’ve been the premier anti- (radical Islam/RWNJ) blogger on the (Right/Left) for a long time. What you’ve done is very important.
That being said, I realize it may be a little tough for you, who I perceive as being very near the center, to come to terms with having a very (conservative/progressive) fan base.
However, the problem I think you are setting yourself up for — and I say this with great respect — is that you are making it very clear that most (conservatives/progressives) aren’t welcome on your website anymore.
...
Point being: I get the feeling that even someone like me isn’t welcome at LGF anymore. It’s not just me either. When your name comes up amongst other (conservative/Left) bloggers — people tend to think you’re going (Andrew Sullivan/DWS) on us and in a year, you will be just another (anti-conservative/Third Way) blog.
What I am trying to get across here, as someone who respects you and thinks you have done very good and very important work, is that you should think about where this is going to ultimately lead one day. You have a lot of friends on the (Right/Left) who have stood behind you over the last few years. It’s probably not too late to mend fences with them. If that’s not the direction you’re going in, are you trying to change over to a (left-wing anti Islam/DNC house organ) blog? Could that even work? ...
I throw that out there, not because I am trying to tell you what to do, but because whether you realize it or not, your blog has been going in a radical new direction and I hope you’re thinking about where it’s going to end up. I understand that you have to follow your conscience and do what you think is best, but at a certain point, you have to realize you’re shoving many of the (conservatives /progressives) who’ve been fans of your work away from you, not vice-versa.
Sorry if you think it was presumptuous for me to write something like this, but I think it needed to be said.

The strikethrough words are the original. With the other choices plugged in, this email reads word for word like what a lot of people have been trying to say to Markos over the past year or so, and much more so over the past several weeks. The complete original email is here.
What was Charles Johnson hoping to accomplish? Perhaps he believed he could smoothly transform a large successful rightwing blog and website into a large successful center-left blog. It didn’t work out that way. littlegreenfootballs.com is still there. I check in occasionally, to see if there is anything aggregated or crossposted there that I hadn’t already seen elsewhere in my internet ramblings. There’s not much original content on anymore, and what there is I don’t find to be inspiring or cutting edge. LGF’s Twitter following is only 16.5K users, compared to the 206K users who follow DKos. In other words Johnson succeeded neither in getting much of his original viewer base to move with him in their worldview, nor did he attract any significant new group of followers to his site after he moved to the center-left (on most issues). While I find the current version of LGF to be inoffensive, it’s also a backwater.
I write this seeing many parallels between what unfolded on Little Green Footballs in 2008-09 and what is happening currently on DKos. What we have here on this website is a valuable resource, one that none of us should take for granted. So many bright, creative, and passionate people devote their time and effort towards an fascinating array of posts, columns, and interest groups --all free of charge. DKos’ archives of past columns is an unparalleled database of wisdom, recent history, and some powerful insight that stands the test of time.
The Great Conversation which we come here seeking is bigger than Markos, bigger than me, and bigger than all of us. If this forum becomes too constrained, that Conversation will find other outlets surely as water flowing downhill finds a path.
I would not want Daily Kos to become the progressive version of Little Green Footballs. It’s not inevitable that this site become another inoffensive backwater. It’s up to Markos. He owns the website. He does not own the community that finds each other here.
Comment Anticipation Section:
#1. But the RW is Evil and we on the Left are Good! How dare you suggest some equivalency here!
I’m not. I’m observing the sociology of how individuals and groups behave on the internet, which tends to be the same regardless of worldview.
#2. You overstate the case. There is no such mass banning or ideological purge going on here.
That’s what the regulars at LGF kept saying in the early stages of its devolution, too. Such a purge or exodus would be largely invisible from inside the website. You should get out more. What definitely is happening is that people are self-censoring or choosing not to post. What prompted me to write this was puddytat’s comment that she had a post sitting in her drafts that she didn’t feel comfortable publishing. Puddytat! of all people! Who has never offended anyone.
#3. All this over the Ides of March edicts? It's just one subject, which will be moot after the primaries are over.
I don’t know about you, but either I feel I can freely speak exactly what I believe, or I feel a space is not safe. It’s binary, there is no gray area. I can only be at my most creative and inspired when I feel free to speak my mind. Either Daily Kos is a place where we can have the real conversations, however messy sometimes, or it’s not.