The Political Weblog Project is a collaborative effort designed to encourage MPs, Councillors and other elected officials to communicate more effectively online via the intelligent use of weblogs. Elected officials who wish to take part in this scheme must follow these simple rules that exist primarily for your own benefit:Rule #1 - You must own (or be ready to purchase) your own domain name.
Rule #2 - You must use the technology to engage in two-way commmunication
Rule #3 - You must fund/source the weblog with your own money or resources.
Those who pledge to follow these rules will be provided with all the necessary assets and expertise at an extremely competitive rate.
What is a weblog? | Why two-way communication? | Why do I need my own domain?
More politicians need to be using weblogs properly. Maybe you can help.
PRIMARY NAVIGATION
Main Page
Starting and Running a Political Weblog
Information for Councillors
Information for Members of Parliament
Information for Cabinet Members
WEBLOG PACKAGES
(withdrawn)
CONTACT DETAILS
manic AT bloggerheads DOT com
If you click on any of the 'Blogs' categories below, you will find that these entries have been individually backdated to correspond with the launch date of the blog that entry references (in order to provide a categorised and sequential history of these blogs).
CATEGORIES
Blogs: All (31) Blogs: Campaign (2) Blogs: Councillors (Labour) (1) Blogs: House of Lords (1) Blogs: MPs (Conservative) (1) Blogs: MPs (Labour) (5) Blogs: MPs (Liberal Democrat) (2) Blogs: Proxies (20) Designers and Providers (4) Education and Seminars (2) Fighting Ignorance (6) General (1) News (2)« Political Weblog Project launches | Main | Mark Pritchard punks out » August 23, 2005 Moving forwardRight, here's the deal... I've given myself until the 1st of September to move this forward as much as possible and about a dozen very useful people have been in touch. (waves to very useful people) I've gone right off Blogger.com (FTPed) for one very good reason: poor comment control. Blogger.com makes it very difficult to fend off comment attacks and/or identify anonymous troublemakers (via IP address). This could lead to a situation that has a negative impact on the most important component of any given weblog - the willingness and/or ability of the author to maintain a viable two-way communication channel. So right now I'm looking at formats that appear to give an adequate level of control on this front: I'm also taking a close look at Quills and would be willing to look at any other blog format that can adhere to the overall specifications of this project and provide robust comment moderation features. Right now, I operate as part of a team that has experience in delivering a finished Movable Type weblog. Some people have been in touch that can deliver the same on this or other formats. Others who can provide individual aspects such as hosting, coding or design have also expressed an interest. (waves again to very useful people) So what needs to follow is a (hopefully very short) discussion about acceptable formats, then the identification of individuals (or formation of teams) that can build and host a finished weblog using any of the agreed platforms. Then we can all have a chat about price. Short version: If you or your team can build and a finished weblog using Movable Type or WordPress, please get in touch. If you know of an equally acceptable blog format, please get in touch. If you can only offer certain specific skills or resources, please get in touch and I'll try to put you in touch with others who can help you to form a viable team. Once the packages are ready to roll, we can get on with promotion and education. (My gut tells me that - for Councillors - the best solution is to simply provide a tutorial on the best use of Blogger.com - i.e. FTPed to a location under a domain they control - and also advise theses people of the limitations of this system. This can happen later. For now, I want to crack on with the formation of a series of 'ideal' solutions.) Posted by timireland on August 23, 2005 12:09 PM in the category Designers and Providers CommentsPost a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |