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If you've been following along lately, you'll have noticed that with the new site design came two big changes.

1. We put up a donate to Bilerico banner.
2. Alex had to leave the Ed Team because we couldn't afford to pay him the substandard wages he was getting.

Would you consider donating to Bilerico Project?

Running this site is a full-time job for more than one person. It's stressful, it's hard work, and if I didn't love what I do, I'd have quit long ago to get a real paying job. Since Bilerico is my responsibility, I need to earn a living from it. When I lived in Indiana, the cost of living was so much lower that I could stretch to make things work. In DC? Not so much.

I've been incredibly lucky to get a grant that paid me a salary for the past two years so I could concentrate on growing the site. It worked. We're one of the top LGBT sites on the web and our contributors put out some of the most thoughtful and intelligent blog posts on the queer web.

This year there is no grant to save us. We've let Alex go to save costs. Everyone else on the Ed Team is working for free currently. But I have to have the money to pay the rent or it all goes away and we'll lose Bilerico Project as a community resource. Quite frankly, money is extremely tight right now so >I'm counting on you to keep us afloat.

We're going to be starting a fundraising drive on Bilerico during the month of July, but for right now I need the money to pay the bills. I'm counting on the generosity of our readers to carry us through until we find a more stable source of income.

We need to raise $2500 by the end of the month. Can I count on your help?

This week's Comment of the Week comes later than its usual Sunday eve spot, due to the amazing NY weekend of marriage equality and the frenetic excitement of the NYC Pride Parade yesterday. Yay! Gosh, I'm tired! But it's good tired.

Here are our two comments of the week, each by a different commenter, and an announcement about stricter enforcement of the TOS policy. On my The New Republic Cover Story On Trans Rights:

Brandi Parker, a woman who believes that transgender women are deluding themselves, said:

Deena I don't have and attitude but I don't much care for people who would call themselves women but they want to keep and use their dicks for other then pissing. IMO they're just diluted and living in a fantasy world. This is the "REAL" world and theres men who have penis and women whop have vagina's thats it sweetie now look down your pants or skirt or whatever and as the bear say see what you can see.

Deena, a transgender woman who believes that transsexual separatists are funny, said:

Tina you are funny. Brandi is funny. Both pretend to be women. Sorry if that is somehow insulting but its simply the truth. Just to clarify, I do not have a penis. Now tell me when your last period ended. You see, I am tired of your charades. Are you XX or XY or something else? Stake your claim loud and clear to superiority over others.

Lovely, isn't it? Doesn't it make you want to come to Bilerico and engage in conversation about our community's issues? Not only did these comments get TOSed, but four or five IP addresses that had multiple TOS violations recently have been banned from commenting.

Continue reading "Comment of the Week: Stricter Enforcement of TOS Policy"...

Granted, after cracking one tooth and breaking another one in half, I'm a little grumpy. I wasn't able to fly off to Netroots Nation this morning like I'd planned and I might have to miss the trip altogether. But when I saw this post from Letters of Note, I have to admit, I feel the same way often.

In a move which thankfully won't affect the vast majority of you, I have today disabled comments on Letters of Note. Permanently.

All complaints should be directed towards a section of society to whom the concept of even vaguely civil discussion means nothing. This collective waste of flesh, bone, and dangerously limited brain function have caused me to dread opening each and every "New Comment" notification I've received over the past twelve months or so, to the point where I now cannot continue justifying the moderation of these imbecilic, repugnant grunts when it takes up such an inordinate amount of my willpower and, more importantly, time. I'd rather spend my hours happily expanding the archives of Letters of Note than clean up after a keyboard-wielding gaggle of cowardly, dim-witted, knuckle-dragging reprobates who have nothing better to do than gleefully splash their fetid saliva all over my efforts and then roll around in the puddle until I'm able to press "Delete Comment." I refuse to waste another minute.

When we launched the new design, we considered killing the comments section altogether. One of the most common jokes among the Ed Team is that the job wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the people who comment and complain about everything or try to start daily flame wars. It's not the majority of Projectors by any means, but that vocal minority has really turned people off to our comments section. It's the most common negative people mention about the site.

So how do we fix it? Your suggestions and thoughts are welcome because we're going to have to find a solution we can all live with. The Ed Team is much smaller now and, quite frankly, I don't have the time to constantly monitor and delete comments. I don't get paid enough for that. So what's the solution?

On Alex Blaze's post End of an Era: Thanks for the Good Times, in which Alex explains his decision to step down as Managing Editor of The Bilerico Project.

Bil commented on the history of Bilerico, noting that Bilerico has struggled to make the finances work:

"The small salary that Alex was making here at Bilerico, while more than most bloggers will ever make, isn't enough to live off. And, quite frankly, for as little as he makes, we can't pay that based off our advertising revenue."

And, of course, that's why there is now a KEEP BILERICO ONLINE: DONATE button on Bilerico. This blog is a treasure for the community, with its niche in LGBT politics, Midwestern style. And, as Hoosiers know so well, but the rest of the country sometimes forgets, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

We had a discussion a few months ago about the DONATE button idea, and now, with the blog redesign, it's here. What say you, Projectors - are you willing to donate to keep Bilerico online? If yes, what did you donate and why? If not, why not?

Continue reading "Comment of the Week: Bil Browning on Alex Blaze"...

We've had some gremlins with the new design lately including some blocks where the site has been down entirely or folks couldn't comment. We have a team of experts working on the issue currently and they expect to have everything fixed and back to normal within the next day or so. (I could bore you with the technical details, but let's just leave it at server issues.)

If you notice that the site is down, please shoot me a message on Twitter so we can reboot everything and get it back up quickly. It seems that every time we close our eyes to sleep, the site goes down and then stays down until we wake up again. If someone lets us know, we can wake up and hit the big red button. It's not marked "EASY" tho...

Thanks for staying with us while we work out these tech issues. Re-launching a site with a new design is never easy, but this has been extra challenging for the tech team. We'll have everything back to normal soon and if the site slows down today it's because they're working on it currently.

And, of course, if you'd like the help out by making a donation to help cover the costs of keeping the site up and running, it would be greatly appreciated.

While it's a holiday weekend, here at Rancho Bilerico we've been huddled over our computers working intently on the site while the blue white light shines harshly over our wan faces. No, really. Y'all go outside and cavort around in the warm sunshine. We'll be ready when you get back smelling like fresh air and fun.

Everything that worked perfectly on the development site seemed to break when we flipped the design to the actual blog. Chaos ensued. So did cursing, sighing, and quite a bit of head shaking.

At the end of the first week with this new format though, we think we've solved most of the issues and squashed the bugs. In the end, I got Murray to get all the Gremlins wet and then I let the Electric Gremlin loose and he zapped the Gremlins and killed them all.

So are you still seeing things we haven't noticed? We've tweaked this and that to try and make it better based off previous comments and suggestions from Projectors. Got more suggestions or something to add to the "I want" list?

This is the place. Tell us in the comments section what you like about the new design and what you don't. Give suggestions, critiques, and/or compliments.

Bilerico Project 2.0 has gone beta. What do you think of our new look? Would you buy this old girl a drink?

We're still doing tweaks and bug fixes this week, so be sure to let us know if you find something that doesn't work. Since we're showing Projectors the site before it's official launch, we're counting on y'all to help us get it shipshape in time for a pride month grand opening. To entice you to help us make Bilerico Project the best site possible, we'll be hosting several contests over the next couple weeks based around the redesign.

It's been almost four years since we started Bilerico Project and our look has stayed pretty much the same since. It was time to get a dramatic update worthy of a reality show contestant. After all, our emergence on the scene and ascendancy through the ranks of the big LGBT blogs is nothing short of amazing considering our roots.

I started looking back at some of more interesting aspects of the past four years and thought y'all would enjoy them too.

Continue reading "Welcome to the New Bilerico"...

All of our months of hard work have paid off and we're finally happy with the look and feel of the Bilerico facelift. The site might be offline for a short time later this evening as we rebuild Bilerico with all the new bells and whistles.

We'll be turning off readers' ability to comment on posts tonight at 10pm Eastern. When the new design comes up, we'll turn comments back on. Projectors will then have the ability to sign in with their Facebook login or with a Bilerico account. This will save us the time of moderating comments before they publish; readers can flag offending comments to have an editorial team member check them out.

Plus, when we come back online we'll also have a contest to win a few "birthday" gifts from Lady Gaga.

I can't wait for y'all to see the new site. I know you'll love it as much as we do. We've got a history together tho, this site and I.

Waking slowly, very late, this Friday morning as I write this.

I saw Bil and Jerame last night in NYC, and it was a late night. Usually up bright and early, I crawl to find desperate coffee at noon. I look for something soothing, and stumble on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, publication date 2003, read before, a few times, and perfect for this morning. Gibson's a prophet of the internet age, nominally a science fiction writer, father of the cyberpunk genre, says we're all going to live on the internet, for better and for worse. Strikes a particular chord with me this late cloudy morning, waiting for rain.

It occurs to me that Gibson's prophecy is my life, and the internet is my home. I can live without a TV, actually cherish its absence, have no problem with a long summer away from the College, can tolerate friends and family living hours away and long pauses between phone calls, but without the internet I would be lost, truly lost.

And of all the places in the world, it is this Bilerico that is my home.

I know it is home to many of you, too. I know that because you are my closest friends.

Have we lost something in this internet age? Yes, but we have gained something as well.

Continue reading "My Bilerico, Internet Home Sweet Home"...