Poliblog Perspective

There is a very curious effect going round: Guest Authors for the Guide appear to be publishing their chapters on the Net.

It must be an “under the radar” marketing strategy, designed to give you an extended sample of the book and make you read the rest.

So, dear reader, for an extended sample of the articles in the 2007 Guide to Political Blogging by Iain Dale (and 30 or so other people), take a look at the articles about:

• Blogging and women by Ellee Seymour
• Shotgun Blogging by Nadine Dorries MP (which title should be reserved for old times sake for Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and other terrorist godfathers’ when they get started blogging).

If you come across any other sample chapters that have been published, do drop a comment in the box below.

I can say that I will not be publishing my chapters about “Getting Started in Political Blogging” quite so quickly.

However, I will be publishing a longer version as part of my “Nuts and Bolts of Political Blogging” E-Book in a few weeks (i.e., when I have put several current projects to bed).

I’ll make one other point, now traditional on this blog:

Get a UK domain name for your political blog. If you don’t, it is MUCH more difficult to reach the British public through Google UK.

Of the 53 or so “leading bloggers” (quotes because it includes me) profiled in the Guide, roughly 40 are still on international domain names.

In my opinion, people who do that are rather foolish - blogging is a difficult enough race as it is, without applying a handicap to yourself as well.

With the current “Alisher Usmanov and Schillings lawyers seeking to close down blogs” problem, you must consider your resilience - but you still need a UK domain name for your blog.

You can now send in requests for the special blog buttons with the rank of your blog in one of Iain Dale’s “Top 100 Blogs” lists.

Full details are here.

Jon Worth’s Euroblog (with a nice, elegant design) has an interesting post some time ago:Getting to grips with the Euro-Blogosphere, where Jon had “attempted to group together all the different EU blogs I read into some sort of categories”. A useful summary.

There has been an slow rolling discussion in the comments, which I’ve mined for interesting nuggets:

How should a Parliamentary Group use a blog?

Kerry:

You mention rightly that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament is developing its blog presence. We are trying! What we would like to do is provide interesting insight and useful info whilst listening to what people are thinking about Europe and social democracy. Any constructive comments about how a political group could get more involved in the world of blogs would be really welcome. Thanks.

Jon:

I reckon there are a few things a political group should bear in mind…

(1) What is the point of the blog, above and beyond the press and comms work done already? The blog should not just be a summary of what has been written elsewhere.

(2) It needs to be updated often. That’s more important than who it is that writes the entries. However with a large number of MEPs getting some contributions should not be too hard.

(3) Don’t be afraid to be informal - the style you need to use is very different from most other forms of writing for politics.

How did you choose ‘em, guvnor?

Martin Keegan:

Are you really only familiar with three Eurosceptic weblogs? Or is there just some selection criterion I’ve not spotted which is excluding others?

Jon:

The selection criteria are no more advanced than these are EU-related blogs that I have come across and have felt have decent content. If you think others should be added the please just write them here in a comment and I’ll incorporate them.

The Economist

Just a shameless plug to say The Economist now has a European blog, Certain Ideas of Europe.

If you are really, really, really EU-focussed:

Florian:

Can you add to the list blogs which deal with European communications and European institutions and procedures in general? I’d like to read and discuss more on that, e.g. on the comitology reform or the clash between Kallas and public affairs organisations on lobbying. (ed: “!!)

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I’ve done a few more buttons for you to use on your webpages.

There are a couple that are a touch more humerous.

I’m also aiming to emphasize the substantive question behind this problem - that of the UK’s inadequate legal framework - as well as the specific issue of pre-emptive legal threats by Schillings’ Lawyers made against websites on behalf of Mr Alisher Usmanov.

I’ve reproduced all the previous English buttons at the bottom of this article, to avoid any need to go digging around.

You are welcome to link back here to allow people to get the badges.

I’m cross posting this to Poliblog Perspective, as it is not a party-political post.

Here are the Buttons

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Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads is back with a temporary blog while he rebuilds his main site:

Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair

Detailing, investigating and discussing the circumstances that led to the temporary closure of the Bloggerheads.com site (and others) via the actions of Fasthosts, Schillings and Alisher Usmanov

A couple of snippets about Tim’s views:

Schillings used a combination of misdirection, intimidation and character assassination to silence and undermine Craig Murray instead of properly addressing the substance of what he had to say about their client Alisher Usmanov or challenging it through the courts.

Seeing the extraordinary level of support, it’s hard not to collapse into a blubbering heap a’la Sally Field, but the reality of it is that this matters to bloggers because it could happen to any one of us. Nevertheless, Clive and I do have a responsibility to finally make clear exactly what has happened and attempt to see that some general good comes of this manifestation of absolute absurdity.

Clive and I need to deal with this matter by addressing the parties/issues involved in the following order:

- Fasthosts
- Schillings
- Alisher Usmanov
- UK libel law

Today, we begin with Fasthosts. A small part of their response will be vital to our subsequent response to Schillings, but if we have to proceed without their co-operation, then so be it…

And for the rest, you must go to here.

But first:

Can I suggest that everyone should add this web address to their blogroll now to give Tim the platform he needs to address these events, even if you take it out again in a month’s time. Let’s make this stick.

The lists from Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging are out, and Iain has built himself a pair of asbestos underpants by having the lists compiled by blogger panels from the relevant constituency. At the very least that should ensure a wider knowledge of the totality of blogs.

I also think he’s made a good call by calling them “Left”, “Right” and “LibDem”.

I wonder what happens if two groups say a blog is one of theirs?

I will update this post with “Right of Centre” and “Non-aligned” numbers later this evening.

How widely read are you in blogs?

It is an interesting exercise to see how widely read you are in UK Political Blogs.

Try this:

Visit the LibDem List, or the Left of Centre List, and see how many of the links show up as “visited” - this will be since you last cleaned out your cache.

For me, it looks as if I have visited 40-50% of the Lib Dem blogs and 60-65% of the Left blogs in the last month or so.

Counting the Newcomers

The number of “new entrant” bloggers is 60 for “Left of Centre” and 39 for “Lib Dem” blogs - which is an interesting statistics.

I put that down to:

• Iain doing the list compilation himself last year, and not being so highly aware of non-prominent Left of Centre Bloggers as for Lib Dems.
• Perhaps a greater longevity of Lib Dem blogs.
• Sheer quantity difference permitting greater turnover. The are 133 blogs listed in libdemblogs.co.uk, compared to 586 in blogger4labour.org

And those Blasted Blog Buttons?

Will be available in 24-48 hours.

This posting is about blog buttons for blogs listed in Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging 2007.

This article explains how to get an alternative button for designs for buttons for blogs in Iain Dale’s lists.

The designs are at the end of the article.

How to get a button

This is easy. If you are in one of the “Top 100″ lists, then send an email to mattwardman AT gmail DOT com, including:

• Your blog
• The list
• The rank number

And I’ll create your burron and send it to you. I will ask for a link back here in return.
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Ordovicius asked for some Welsh buttons. Here they are.

Since I’m in the button production business at the moment, I thought I would do a few for the “Free Debate not Libel Threats” campaign. This is quite quick and dirty, but here are a few buttons you can put in your sidebar.

You are welcome to link back here to allow people to get the badges.

It needs a few more - some blunt, some sibtle - but this is a start.

I’m cross posting this to Poliblog Perspective , as it is not a party-political post.

Here are the Badges

All of these badges now contain IPTC embedded text information explaining what they are.

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Since I’m in the button production business at the moment, I thought I would do a few for the “Free Debate not Libel Threats” campaign. This is quite quick and dirty, but here are a few buttons you can put in your sidebar.

You are welcome to link back here to allow people to get the badges.

It needs a few more - some blunt, some sibtle - but this is a start.

I’m cross posting this to Poliblog Perspective , as it is not a party-political post.

Here are the Badges

Code for Linkback

Also, I’m working on cut and paste code snippets, but there are still a few glitches; they should be up tomorrow.

If you need to you can pull or link the badges directly from:

http://www.mattwardman.com/host/open-debate-not-libel-threats.jpg

http://www.mattwardman.com/host/now-we-are-all-bloggerheads.jpg

http://www.mattwardman.com/host/my-name-is-craig-murray.jpg

http://www.mattwardman.com/host/my-name-is-bloggerheads.jpg

But it helps my costs if you can host your own.

Where to Link to

This is my original article on the subject. However this campaign needs to be a network, not based around a single point - so visit Chicken Yoghurt, and find an article that expresses the situation clearly in his list of 160 173 bloggers - and modify the code to link there.

I suggest that you choose one from near the end, as the early ones are well linked already.

OK - got to run. Have fun.

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the Welsh Blogosphere about David Collins, a Labour Party Researcher working for Ann Jones AM, whose made a unwise stupid comment on a blog - Keir Hardly - that has since been vanished been deleted.

I’m not commenting on all the sockpuppeting and shenanigans that seems to be behind a lot of this.

However, I would like to draw your attention to one aspect that has been completely ignored (as far as i can tell) is that - for the sake of one gaffe puppet show - the entire blog and the political discourse around it has been banished to the Memory Hole.

Tim Ireland calls this one right, by pointing out that the correct way to make a correction is to correct the original (!), not to delete it, or to delete the entire blog.

At least in many cases, the excellent Internet Archive preserves the information using the Way Back Machine - albeit after a delay.

The only blog archive I know that is a total waste is the unnecessary British Library me-too Vanity Project Webarchive, which gives about 0.1% as much coverage at a completely disproportionate cost the to the British Taxpayer. They should be running a UK mirror of the Internet Archive instead, if anything.

I’d say that it is almost a moral duty for those who engage in political debate online to preserve the records - especially when it is at zero cost.

It is perfectly possible to make continuing revenue from archived political blogs.

These tips are reproduced from an email I sent to Blamerbell when he closed his blog earlier in the year (imagine how much poorer the blogosphere would be without an archived Blamerbell).

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