The Wardman Wire

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

One aspect that has been completely ignored (as far as i can tell) is that - for the sake of one gaffe - 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).

So how do I preserve my blog?

Here we go:

• On blogger, they will not delete your blog.
• You need to make sure that the stuff is still accessible, but does not need maintenance.
• Suggested steps1 - Write your final post - leaving contact details if you wish,
  2 - Turn comments and trackbacks off on all posts (to avoid spam), except possibly the last post.
  3 - Turn comment moderation off on any posts where you leave comments on.
  4 - Do NOT lose your password - just in case.
• Make sure that it is in archive.org.

And that should do it for the site.

Also, download a copy of your posts so that you have them (and you *will* need them if you don’t keep them).

Or hand it on to a Successor

This can be a good move, as it can take a new blog some time to build up a significant profile and reasonable traffic levels.

Here is what I said:

From a different angle, but do you have to kill it - could you not pass it on (a la Lib Dem Voice)?

I really think that it would be a shame to lose the brand and community, and would result in a reduction in political discussion in Wales. It will take the next at least a year to get to a similar level of profile on e.g., Google.

Page Rank of 5 and thousands of backlinks are not to be sneezed at.

And all those links to discussion of Welsh politics on English blogrolls will be going begging - most unpatriotic!

A couple of suggestions:

• * You could hand it over to a new independent commentator if there is someone you are happy to have take it on.
• * You could even pass it on to something like a journalism course for the students to cut their teeth in the real world!
• * You could pass it on to a group to establish a Welsh group politics blog aiming to reflect a number of different views. Wales is crying out for it imho. And what a fantastic platform to start with.

If it wasn’t on a blogger domain it would have value as an online asset! But blogger ban sales of accounts.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it - archive it, correct it, or pass it on.

Do NOT delete it.

Tags: archive a blog, ordovicius, blamerbell, keir hardly, keirhardly, memory hole, censorship[tags]archive a blog, ordovicius, blamerbell, keir hardly, keirhardly, memory hole, censorship[/tags]