The Wardman Wire

The Geek in Politics

The Problems

Interview Incomprehensibility

Politicians being interviewed talk over each other and interrupt each other while we want to listen to what they are actually saying. We need an incentive to undermine this yobbish tendency.

Who won the discussion or interview?

We have no easy way of determining the winner of any studio discussion. This leads to tedious arguments in bars and debate in the comment section of blog posts. It also makes it difficult for media managers to evaluate the performance of politicians under their control.

The Solution: Interrupt Count Analysis

This is very simple. the loser of any discussion is the one who interrupts their co-nterviewees the least.

The Interrupt Count is the number of any interruptions.

This is a devastatingly simple way of solving both problems above, and could even be displayed automatically on the Television Screen, or on “Quiz Show” style boards above each politician.

As a refinement, each interviewee’s micophone could be automatically turned off when their count reaches a predetermined number of interruptions.

The John Humphries Exception

John Humphries always interrupts everybody more than anyone else, therefore he is automatically declared the loser when he is the interviewer, regardless of any other factors – since it is assumed that the interviewees will have no time to speak or generate interrupt counts themselves.

This article is a continuation of my previous reflections on Twitter in Politics.

I have spent part of the last week or so building a new blog about Twitter and what can be done with it called Twexpert. As such I’ve been overexposed to the section (still small – 6 million) of the Net community that is using the service.

I thought it would be useful to revisit the list published 12 days ago by Mr Dale’s list of “Top Political Blogging Twits”, to have a look at the rate of change of Twitter use in the political niche. These are listed in the same order as they were on Iain’s site on February 19/20th. I collected data on the morning of the 4th March.

First I’ll list the data, then make some comments.

I probably missed this, but I can’t find a reference.

Why does Nick Robinson’s Newslog never have any comments in the first half of the month?

This applies to April, May, June and July this year.

Nick’s posts in the second half of each month get hundreds of comments, but none at all in the first half of the month.

What is going on?

Has your website been hacked or defaced over the weekend?

I have already come across one website this morning that was apparently hacked (by having all its page titles changed) last Friday.

Just give your websites a quick check – just in case.

If it has, and it’s a blog – do 4 things:

• Post on your blog that you have been affected.
• Make sure it goes to your RSS feed.
• Take it down and leave a status message on the web address. Possibly create a backup blog (perhaps on Blogspot or Wordpress). Preferably do this NOW, but certainly today.
• Get the site back up ASAP.

If you spot another blogger or somebody else with a serious problem, phone or Instant Message them if you can – or at least send an email.