Simonsays

LabourList Review Part 2

LabourList: It's Approach to Digital Politics
From a quick glance it’s evident that LabList is going big on creating clever and vitriolic campaigning tools and content seen during the Obama presidential campaign (and playing on some of the same by ConHome). My instinct tells me that this worked for those two groups because both are/were in opposition and campaigning for an election. The risk for Labour is that although it may feel at times as though it’s in opposition, it isn’t.

My advice would be to go about making friends using LabList as well as trashing the opposition.. Show a bit of humility and demonstrate you’re listening and responding to people’s opinions (party and non-party) as well as taking the party political approach. I’m not saying that this approach doesn’t happen (or won’t happen in the future) but two observations I’ve made on LabList indicate that it hasn’t quite struck this balance yet.

Firstly is Derek Draper’s comments which from reading some of the posts come across as if he is flaming other users. In fact, in the site’s first comment thread some of what appear to be responses from Derek’s to complaints by commenters about over-zealous moderation are pretty troll-like. In fact, they’re so troll-like I half wondered whether they were really left by Derek himself.

Two random examples:

“that was because it was a libel and i thought i would save you the trouble of me suing you. if you don't "get" our comments policy read it again and maybe ask a friend to explain it”

“Well... you'd better hope you don't need the police, a school, get ill, need to use public transport etc. etc. if this is the level of debate we're up against I think we're going to be ok!”

Not exactly the best way to make friends and influence people. And I understand that in traditional politics there’s llttle chance of converting those clearly not going to vote for your party and thus little point expending energy engaging/trying to convince otherwise, I would argue this approach doesn’t work – or at least translate well – into the digital political environment. I can’t help but feel that Derek’s a bit traditional politician at the moment.

Secondly, some of the creative anti-Tory campaigning stuff is – while inventive and coming from the right direction – a bit too much. A couple of comments from broadly supportive users also flag the issue of going after the Tories as too much too soon when more in-depth debate about policy, news, etc is what’s wanted.

Coming Next - Part 3... LabourList: My Conclusions

LabourList Review Part 1

I posted yesterday that I was holding off posting my review of Labour's new LabourList grassroots site until I had worked out where the cunningly titled Labourist site had come from. Well, it turns out the site is a spoiler put together by Tim Ireland so I'm going to post my review. However, I'm going to publish it in a couple of posts to spread out the reading. My aim is to break up the review into the following sections: 1) A bit about the site's background and a review of the site's look and feel 2) a review of the site's approach to digital politics and 4) my conclusions. Here's Part 1:

LabourList: Some Background
First things first. What is LabourList? The answer seems to be provided in the memo I was leaked from the man behiond LabList, Derek Draper, in a memo to Ray Collins, Labours General Secretary. Draper writes that LabList is “an independent site that aims, in time, to be our version of Conservative home”.

“Hang on a minute.” I thought, “Isn’t LabourHome Labour’s equivalent of ConservativeHome?” Not anymore. One of the other people behind LabList tells me: “I've always said Labourhome has the wrong name - Labhome is a community for people to talk to each other - Lablist will be a content engine, offering insight, thoughts, news, [about Labour]."

That makes sense to me but I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens with LabourHome as LabList develops. Will the sites work together and complement each other or compete? I suppose the nearest scenario is that of the relationship between Guido Fawkes and ConHome.

LabourList: Look & Feel
The site looks nice and clean. It is probably fair to say it looks and feels more plain and blog-like than ConHom does – but then again ConHome probably started off quite blog-like before growing into a more content rich traditional feel website. I can only guess this is the direction in which LabList will grow as it develops. If LabList is designed to be more of a “content engine” (which it is according to insiders) then the site’s layout will have to adapt to help make the content easily findable.

I think the layout and functionality of the site could be tidied up. In general, it feels a bit messy, although I think we need to bear in mind that the site is more than likely to evolve organically and so settle down once it gets going. In addition the site has also been launched in Beta so presumably any teething problems can be ironed out before the full launch.

A couple of specific (some might say pedantic) bug-bears is the comment thread and software platform. While the site looks like a blog, the comment threads seem to run like forums. While I’m sure the idea of allowing comments to comments and sub-threads is a good idea in practice I must admit I find it confusing. Equally, one commenter wonders out loud why they didn’t go with an open source platform like Wordpress. It’s familiar to bloggers/new media types and there are a number of Government sites (Downing Street’s no less!) already built in Wordpress.

Part 2 - coming next... LabourList: It's Approach to Digital Politics

Gordon Brown's monoblogging is not dialogue

I posted the other day over at my politics/public policy blog eDemocracy Update on Gordon Brown's leadership campaign site and checked back with the blog today to read former-MP Oona King's latest entry.

I won't go into detail about the post except to say it read more like a piece of puffery for Gordon's campaign and Tony Blair's legacy.

Having well-crafted blog entries are one thing, but I find Oona's post a little too well-crafted to draw me in and engage with the points she's making. Try this for size:

"Naturally I can’t yet detect my toddler’s political preferences, but given his propensity to end up in A&E (this is the third time this month), I’m assuming he wants more money spent on the NHS. Gordon is his man. This year an extra £8 billion is going in, a cash increase of 10%. Last week we spent a night on a spanking new ward. Out of the window my little boy was extremely excited to watch several Bob the Builders building a new hospital from scratch."

Just on the sound-bite side of authentic for my liking. Although on the one hand at least Gordon is taking steps to interact with party members and the public.

But then you read the comments...

When I first saw GB's blog on the day he launched his campaign I thought: "Brilliant. I bet the blog is swamped with comments. It'll be a good ol' debate."

But looking at Oona's second post on A&E services I found 10 comments which read varously like this:

"I think the NHS is brilliant! ...Whats more Gordon seems to be saying he is not going to rest on these laurals but give us more - more hospitals, more doctors and more nurses. He is going to give us a NHS for the 21st Century and one worthy for the people of Britain! ... Go Gordon!"

There are also some critical comments suggesting funding the NHS by scrapping Trident or ditching PFIs, but even these are broadly supportive. Again, nothing wrong - p[er se - but where is the real dissent? I'm sure there must have been some.... even the odd negative one would make me think that a balance is being struck.

But another thing is odd. No-one has left links through from their own sites. I suppose that's because they may be non-blogging members of the public or perhaps the blog's policy doesn't allow it. But then there's no clear blog policy... and why no comments yet from high-profile Labour bloggers?

GB - and argubly Labour - needs to build a network of online activists if he/it is to suceed in the longer term.

Technorati tags: Gordon+Brown; Prime+Minister; political+blogging; NHS; Ooona+King