At any rate, I have nothing against EmJen’s Back Bench thing as I mentioned before. My point was that the use of the term Bloggernacle for it, I would think, was perhaps the moment that the term “Bloggernacle” was made to breach the banks set out in the MA, if such a moment can be pinpointed.

This is an interesting idea, but I’m curious what criteria you will use to determine which posts merit republishing.

While I very much agree with the definition of the Bloggernacle in the OP, I’m not too bothered by EmJen’s use of it. The individual posts she links to are almost always something that you wouldn’t be surprised to find on a ‘nacle blog, even if the overall style of the blog itself is family or mommy or whatever (and before any mommy screams about that, I’m not evaluating any other type of blog as bigger or smaller or better or worse, only *different* from the Bloggernacle-style blog).

I suppose I see EmJen’s column as an auxiliary to the Bloggernacle, although not in the arms of the Bloggernacle itself.

The ‘nacle consists of blogs and posts by Internet Mormons who give the brethren’s claims of divine authority various degrees of deference. Internet Mormons who give no deference to the brethren’s divine authority do not belong to the ‘nacle.

What really matters is the reality that is underlying the word. You are saying that the Bloggernacle is distinctive in terms of style, not of size. That’s a curious juxtaposition. Size and style are rarely opposites.

Of course, there are the exceptions of understatement and exaggerations, which can be powerful rhetorical tools, which also commit you to a style.

Really, the opposite of style is substance. It seems to me that the Bloggernacle is as much about substance as style. Of course, there is a lot of diversity and there are real differences between the members of the bloggernacle.

Still, like bodies in the solar system, all the blogs of the nacle rotate around the same center of gravity. If that metaphor is correct then the bloggernacle is not only defined by style but also by substance.

(Clearly, a Jehovah’s Witnesss who has no relationship with Mormonism does not belong to the Bloggernacle, no matter what her style may be).

I cannot quite put my finger on what the center of gravity is but I am sure that a quantitative content analysis of blog posts would identify a core that is somehow related to all things Mormon.

Or to keep it simple, some of you might be more perceptive than me could just show the center of gravity of the ‘nacle solar system.