Time to take out the blogs
The blog section of the website was quite innovative in its day, but has lost its zip. Now, many greens have their own blogs, facebook pages and other social networking presences. As a result, it has been pretty slow here for quite a while. There have been a few good discussions kicked off, and I think that Elizabeth's blog has great value to the general public and should be accessed here. But I wonder if it is time to change the approach to the members blog.
One option is to use a blog aggregator, such as liblogs.ca or newdemocratsonline.ca. By viewing these sites, you see the headlines of recent blog postings by member blogs. Then you can click on the headline and redirect to the blog for more information.
The key difference is velocity. There are a lot of green bloggers who post only on their own sites, and not here. There would be more articles, more interest and more traffic. And since the blogs here are not official Green Party statements, the external blogs would fit right in.
I also understand that we only have so much staff time to implement such a change, but let's discuss direction for when the time comes.
Jim Johnston,
Lambton - Kent - Middlesex
Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect Green Party positions
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Heres a Green blog aggregator
Was something like this what you had in mind?
http://canadiangreens.feedcluster.com/
Why the Green Blogs Feature Fell Apart
Jim:
I think what wrecked the Green Blogs feature was the decision to no longer use the blogs as the Lead on the website and to end controlling the public face through a voting process. Once these two changes happened, the feature ceased to be an exercise in participatory communication and slid back into being a "top down" process. That is probably why so many people migrated off to start their own independent blogs.
This was a pretty profound "reconfiguration" of the internal culture of the party and is pretty much indicative of the move away of the party from attempting to be something new and interesting, and towards trying to be like all the other parties. I think that fact that people now feel that they need to create their own independent blogs in order to have frank and open discussion of issues in the party shows how much we have moved from the original Green ideal of participatory democracy.
Too bad. Especially as we are giving up on something that has manifestly worked so well for Barack Obama in the USA.
I suppose the problem has come from the masses of people that joined when Elizabeth May became leader. I don't think many of these people really have an understanding of what the Green Party was supposed to be about.
Blogs should be converted to a forum.
This section should actually be a forum. That is less formal. I think the way it is currently set up discourages open discourse. You should have to be a member to sign in, but you should be able to pick an alias if you wish to maintain anonymity, just like any other forum on the planet.
It might also be helpful to have an aggregator that links to comments local to this site, like many other aggregators, so you can form a sense of community with people interested enough to frequent the GPC website.
Yes to aggregators
I agree with the aggregator thing. I was looking to do the same thing as I do on Facebook: "upload" my blog here, but I can't.
Lynne Champoux-Williams Candidate à la maîtrise en gestion de l'environnement à l'Université de Sherbrooke '11 Bachelière ès Arts de McGill, programme environnement et développement '08
Blogs/forum should stay and be open
Why would you need to be anonymous? The blogs or forum interaction should be open to all members to legitimately speak up and have real conversations. Fear of others knowing who you are should not be a factor in a party that boasts of changing and developing a better democracy. I don't pretend it happens but rather advocate that members speak up openly despite what the leadership might say or do. Where I disagree with Bill is on the voting system which had less to do with open democracy and more to do with a handful of people controlling which blog entries were readily available. If we were to move to a forum environment then threads or blog entries should be categorized so they can be found easily. It shouldn't matter whether you vote or not in order to have a blog available to you as a new member. All it takes is posting discipline. Keep a thread response going on one specific subject rather than responding in a separate blog entry.
By the way we already have forums for members and all you have to do is choose to participate. If you find one that no longer has a manager then you can request to become the manager of that forum.
This blog reflects my personal opinion. It is not official Green Party Policy. www.departmentofpeace.ca
http://stephenlafrenie.blogspot.com
Anonymous due to employment considerations.
I personally have an employer that institutionalizes apathy towards its employees' political leanings. Not everyone can be so fortunate. Some people may feel compelled not to discuss their thoughts openly.
There can still be a link between member and poster even if anonymous, and admins/moderators could be able to identify users by real name if there is abuse.
No to anomynity, yes to voting
I'm opposed to anomynity on the internet because it seems to give a lot of people the feeling that they can act like goofs and get away with it. I like grassroots communities because in such a situation people carry around their past history on their shoulders. If someone is known and respected people give their words the "benefit of the doubt" if they seem odd; and if someone is known and ridiculed, they tend to ignore just about every accusation they make.
The voting wasn't about a "small number of people", because if the number is so small there is no reason why they would be able to overwhelm the majority of readers who would presumably vote in another manner. What it was about was denying people who have very little support amongst the readership to get a public prominence that they didn't really deserve. One a few postings can be on the front page. Having readers vote on who gets there is a lot more fair than either having an anoynmous staff member make the decision (our present system) or by making it a "first come, first serve" system---which would give prominence to those members who spend the most time on the computer (and by definition almost never put any time into building their local EDA.)
Anonymity
Anonymity can certainly be optional. I am merely suggesting a method of enfranchising some people who feel they need to keep their mouth shut because they need to put food on the table.
I think that voting, perhaps subject to some moderator review is more in line with GPC principles and offers protection against technology abuse.
Grass Roots....no pun intended!
Hear ! Hear ! Bill !
I can say that the number one tool to get members for us in my groups was and has been the blogs....the 24 hour blog threads ( yes...even though one was given the impression some one at head office alone selected the new daily topics or tried to direct the topics)...the 30 days view numbers and yes the all time top viewed threads.
Today with them all completely gone and with the discussions showing today ....well we have stopped growing and show no real "grass Roots " anything any more...no ideas...no strategy...(except getting E May a senate seat or some other one....no development of new policy (a big one) and my work is yes...much much harder.
Granted yes....now I am suing E May and the ombudsmen committee/council ....as no one feels it important that my grandchildren do not think their grandfather is an antisemitic every time they google their names on a computer and because it is the correct thing to do ....for me ! As yes that's how I became an activist in the first place ....by standing up to bullies with dangerous ego's killing natives by neglect. Sorry I will never stop being me.
I add my name to the list of those smart individuals who say that yes bring back our blog formula and lets get on growing again instead of sitting here waiting to be deemed irrelevant in the next election.
Credibility is very lacking in our group these days and I hope we do not have to just sit and wait to show that Bill and I were tottally right ......as by then it may be too late.
What say you?
Cheers