Sunday, January 14, 2007

Decision time

The results of the poll were inconclusive:

Disband Blogpower ...... 0
Ask CN to depart ...... 10
Leave things as is ..... 10
Comments .............. 4

The comments were 2 for leaving things as they were and 2 just general.

Given these results, it would not be just if Central News were asked to leave. This then divides us along political lines but there IS a solution. Before angrily departing, please at least read to the end and see if the variants* don’t meet with your approval.

Firstly, Blogpowerers, the banner really should be displayed [and we’d not like to put it more strongly than that], as it is symbolic of the initiative and is virtually an advertisement for Blogpower. Not to run the banner would seem to defeat the purpose of the initiative.

There are two variants:

a] the plain banner from the Tin Drummer, linked to this site;

b] a banner, still linked to this site, with a disclaimer which you can read for yourself at the Thunderdragon and would presumably be available from him.

Secondly, there are three variants of the blogroll which members can opt for:

a] the fully automated roll as it is now, administered, as usual, by Ian. The main reason for this variant is that all our members’ names are displayed on many blogs, thus maximizing our chance of being hit, which was one of the prime raisons d’etre in the first place for Blogpower. Against this variant is the situation that it can cause the type of trouble it has, over unwanted sites plus it occupies a large amount of the sidebar;

b] the fully automated roll, as in a], which you keep on a separate page on your own blog and link to your main page sidebar, thereby cutting space requirements on your main page;

c] *an html version which I’ve put together on one of my pages, linked to the DTB sidebar [you can see the link HTML Blogroll in the sidebar now]. The roll is accurate up to Sunday, 18:00. Follow the link, copy and paste into your sidebar. With this variant come certain Blogpower conditions:

[i] You may delete up to 10% of the total roll at any one time, thereby removing the sites you find offensive;

[ii] You need to and are honour-bound to manually update the roll yourself within a week of any stated changes. [These changes will always appear at the end of the html link from the DTB sidebar.]

The variant of a categorized roll turned out to be unworkable, had virtually universal opposition to it when it came down to details and has been dropped. It’s the opinion of the administrators that this virtually solves the problem of undesirable blogs.

Thirdly, the policy for new blogs needs to be discussed. My own recommendation is that if someone indicates he/she intends to upload the banner, then the administrators take a quick look at the site and either instantly admit the blog or else, if there is some issue involved, it would immediately be put to the members via a post here. From the comments, we’d make our next move.

Hope the above streamlines the procedure and is acceptable to members.

13 comments:

_ said...

Good work. I appreciate the resolution you've put together. It's obviously demanded a lot of work. We can all be thankful it wasn't me making the decisions. I never would have mustered the understanding and patience you've shown.

For me, I'll keep the full automated blogroll.

And by the way, if spicy cauldron applies to re-join, let me lodge an objection now on the grounds he was such a girl's blouse about the whole thing. ;-)

youdontknowme said...

I will be ok with all suggestions however I would rather you just put something like BNP or CONTROVERSIAL in brackets after my blog name.

and yes spicy cauldron was being girly. I don't mind if he comes back though.

ThunderDragon said...

I like it a lot. That solves all of the problems and allows for future ones as well.

I shall be keeping the full blogroll (I actually use my own blogroll so that it fits the design on my blog, but update it regularly) but with the blogpower logo with the disclaimer I added on (available here).

And a big thank you to james and the others who worked on this solution. Excellent work!

Bill Haydon said...

I agree wholeheartedly, James. Excellent work.

Anonymous said...

onyx stone: girl's blouse? That's an interesting take on someone taking a stance against a racist party that's well-documented down the years for its thuggish, intimidatory behaviours, and verbal and physical attacks on blacks and Asians. If that's a girl's blouse, make mine gingham and I'll wear it proudly.

The fact that you'd object to an anti-racist re-joining Defending the Blog - not that I would apply - is very interesting. I can draw a conclusion from that which is wholly unappealing. Of course, anyone who would resort to name-calling is unappealing anyway.

Sadly, Blogpower is now tarred with association. And Wayne continues to tell lies on his own blog, such as:

"Spicy Cauldron who was made blog of the week earlier this week was so offended by being blog of the week that he has apparently flagged my blog because it is offensive and racist."

I am offended by the BNP. This childish tactic of trying to be provocative in linking to my site didn't offend me at all, but was another proof of the kind of person you're dealing with.

"I don’t publish racist material so I don’t know where he got that from but if my blog suddenly goes offline you know why."

Of course he publishes racist material. It's pathetic to suggest otherwise.

"Spicy Cauldron is more upset about me blog of the week than I ever thought he would be because he has IP banned me from his site. I didn’t know the honour of being blog of the week was so offensive. Oh well."

Again, I have made it quite clear that I am not upset about such childishness. I simply did not want links coming to my site from a BNP site, and was able in my situation to do something to address this. Clearly, Wayne's ego is such that he needs to believe he as an individual has the power to upset me. He does not. His repeated assertions that he has further reveal his own weakness - but then anyone in the BNP is weak in blaming ethnic groups for all the ills in British society.

I would not under the circumstances outlined be applying to rejoin. I am entirely happy to be disassociated from the likes of onyx and wayne but do feel other members may later come to regret the decision to take the BNP under the wing of this group. It's a cuckoo.

Fare ye well.

youdontknowme said...

can you show me this racist material that I have published?

Anonymous said...

Onyx Stone, YDKM, the "traditional" comics of the 70s were fond of homophobic insinuation dressed up as humour, and it wasn't funny then, either. James is working very hard right now with us admins to maintain some cohesion within the group, and your remarks about Spicy Cauldron are, to put it mildly, unhelpful. We will not tolerate Blogpower becoming associated with one viewpoint or another.

Andy, I am very sorry that things have descended to this level. I personally feel that Blogpower is much the poorer for your and Steve's absence, and have a great deal of sympathy for the stance you both took.

youdontknowme said...

We weren't calling him a big girls blouse because he was gay

Nich Starling said...

Confused ? Have I got to have the blogroll or is it an option. I have the logo, but the scrollable blogroll does not scroll and more than doubles the size of my existing blogroll which already contains some blogpower people.

James Higham said...

Norfolk Blogger - welcome and yes, it is the convention to run the blogroll but each of us does it to fit in with our sites. There are basically the two types to the automatic version [the long and the scrollable]and an html version as well, which allows a certain ... er ... discretion as to who's on it.

The purpose of the roll on members' pages is that we carry people there we ordinarily mightn't and anyone coming to your site then can see them and might click on them.

The Blogpower banner proclaims that it is a BP roll, not yours personally but if you want to make double sure, Thunderdragon has a 'disclaimer' version of the banner. That might be for you.

If Thunderdragon is willing, we'll run his e-mail on our sidebar, to make that easier.

Maybe you should read the last few posts and comments as to what's been going on.

In my case, I simply transfer the people who were in my regular roll to my Blogpower roll.

The scrollable option currently isn't working for me either so it will have to be looked at. Something with the code, I suppose.

Nich Starling said...

Well that is going to cause me a massive headache. I am not HTML literate, I rather assumed there would be a clickable link that people could go to or simply a link to a page on this site that we could insert in to the sidebar.

I'll have to see what I can do ...

Anonymous said...

Norfolk blogger, and everyone, I seem to have got the scrollable roll working on Imagined Community. I will shortly be updating my post Unruly Blogrolls to correct the error (it seems you need to add "px" to the figures for height and width). Apologies to all for the confusion - it worked fine on my own PC, and as you probably know I am currently plagued with connection problems, which didn't really help live testing...

Norfolk Blogger, there is some code that you can cut and paste into your template so that you have an automatically updating blogroll - see here for details. Feel free to contact me via e-mail if you need any further help.

James Higham said...

Norfolk Blogger, it's really quite easy. Don't forget that half of us are barely computer literate and we managed. I an and Thunderdragon are our prime whizzes, should you need help.