Betting Pool

Billmon's Whiskey Bar is pretty much the site that dragged me into this godawful mess known colloquially as the blogosphere, and despite the impressive implosion that the site suffered, I'm still addicted.

Well, Billmon has done the unthinkable. After a year of silence and a year of half-hearted pontification, he has opened up a comment thread for your bets and mine on the outcome of the Plame grand jury investigation. It was opened at twenty to four this afternoon; by 11:45, it had reached 311 comments.

Everyone (other than the A-listers) are placing their bets. The prize is, of course, laughable. It's all about prestige: being right about the indictments might edge out the prestige factor of being early on Billmon's only commentary post, but we'll see.

I suspect that many of the commentors are betting there simply to encourage Billmon to open up more threads, but the sheer quantity of commentors will probably have the opposite effect; in the long run, I suspect Billmon doesn't really have the temperament to manage a community, so perhaps the top-down approach will work better for him. Intervening here and then on the spin-off sites should protect his private time while maintaining his authority. I don't begrudge him any of that self-protection. I just want, selfishly, to keep reading his stuff.