The Wardman Wire

I just wrote my first article for Labour Home, which has gone straight to the top of the Front Page. It’s a good job I’m not hostile.

Here is a slightly more provocative version of the text (with examples). Please make comments over there.

There has been some conversation about where Labour Home should go next. These are my reflections.

Let me start with an excerpted quote from Jag Singh, one of the co-founders of Labour Home, from back in February 2007:

Juvenal really got my thought-processes running the other night, after he observed that Labourhome is essentially both a blog AND a set of forums. It’s true, we have a diverse community (1000+ users and counting), and many of these people like to have the last say (the challenge is to not turn into an echo chamber like ukiphome).

So what’s the problem here?

Additionally, high quality content often is lost in the midst of a shouting match. Could rating comments (aka Digg) solve any of these issues?

I think that the very diversity permitted by the website is too extensive for an activist site. A brave experiment, but in my view some lessons can be learnt.

These are my five suggestions.

Five Possible Steps forward

1 - Tighten up the System

The current platform was a brave experiment in allowing all and sundry yo post, but it is too open - it is too easy for fringe or silly (this example is in my opinion) views to gain prominence, and then those views can be caricatured as the position of Labour Home. Fortunately, some other people are more sensible (again in my opinion).

When the wrong article is given prominence, the whole community can be passed off as a collection of fruitcakes. Not necessarily a good idea if all and sundry (including me) can write articles.

What about a more restricted platform, plus a robust Forum setup (maybe public and private).

2 - Have an Editor not a Janitor

This is putting it bluntly, but perhaps the editor needs a more prominent role - in my view the editor should be more a Conductor of an Orchestra rather than the caretaker of Speakers’ Corner.

3 - Fix the Platform not the Community

From a recent article by Alex H:

I have been chatting with fellow geeks about whether to ban Tories from Labourhome, particularly after the swamping from trolls that we have seen in recent days.

There is a halfway house. I could, pretty simply create a new status of writer who can only comment and not write articles.

This has been followed by gibes about censorship and so on. I am surprised that it is possible for for political opponents to contribute articles to an activist site unmoderated, so I think this is a technology problem not a community problem.

I agree that “wind up” articles by opponents have no place; let them post comments and forum posts - yes, blog posts straight on the main site - no.

4. Give people an emblem

From a comment on Labour Home. Brilliant idea.

Perhaps you could take a leaf out of Anthony Wells’ excellent PollingReport website and allow users to choose a party emblem that gets psoted with their entries. Then you can get those who claim to be Labour members but are causing trouble.

5. Make a Point of Correcting Factual Errors

This is a bit of a personal peeve. Recently, there have been some comments on visitors not responding to replies to their comments (example):

> [the] numbers I produce can be found in 5 minutes searching on the internet - which is how I find them.

But when your 5-minute search numbers are challanged, you do not respond to the challange. I’m not sure we should be offering a wider platform for Tory 5-minute searches, which are often wrong.

This cuts both ways.

I have had a query over a factual inaccuracy by Richard Caborn hanging, unresolved, since August 26th.

This area needs some attention and a consistent policy.

One Model that Might Work

Labour Home will still want to allow a wide range of voices, while exercising a more careful approach to articles that make it to the front page.

One interesting model is used by the Search Engine blog SEOMoz. They have a blog called YouMoz, where users can write and vote on articles - and the higher rated articles will be posted on the main page under some editorial control.

That way the original articles are still available, but cannot be caricatured as representative of the community.

Eventually you could look at a system such as that used by SEOMoz to promote reader posts by vote.