The Wardman Wire

One of the regular contributors to the Wardman Wire, Carl Gardner, who used to be a lawyer advising the Government on policy, has redesigned his Head of Legalblog.

He has a new logo which is a stylised set of Scales of Justice, but also makes me think he has joined an orchestra as triangle player, or made a mobile out of ear rings borrowed from a Lib Dem Councillor (sorry, couldn’t resist).

I invited Carl to start contributing to the Wardman Wire because I think that we need to continue working at breaking down the walls of the “politics” silo to give a more rounded debate. That is one way that we can build a wider engagement with politics.

It also helps to have professional specialists commenting on political questions, as their opinions cannot be dismissed as “just political bloggers in their underpants”. I’d suggest that people who are not political anoraks are the most important part of our political life.

It is also worth having a look at Carl’s comment setup, where he has several features designed to persuade visitors to respond and help stimulate conversation.

• The CommentLuv plugin, as used on the Wardman Wire, which traces the RSS feed of a commenter and adds a link back to their latest post to the comment.
• Subscribe by email to a comments thread – so it tells you every time somebody adds to the conversation. You can do this whether or not you have made a comment.
• A Send to Twitter option, so it is easy for visitors to promote a post.
• The ability for commenters to add a Twitter ID (but it does not add that ID to the comment). He uses Jon Bishop’s CommentTwitter wordpress plugin.
• A “highlight poster comments”, which emphasises replies that Carl has added himself.
• Carl has also set up his logo as a Gravatar, which is picked up in the comments. The blog also picks up he Gravatar’s of visiting commenters.

This is a good and welcoming comment setup, that also gives something back to commenters in the form of promotion.

Anyway – the blog is recommended.