Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Housekeeping - things we need to do

Rather than rewrite this, I've taken the original post and removed references to the Awards and Awards Ceremony, retaining those issues relating to the AGM

1] Sorry to rain on our parade so soon but we need to hold our first AGM - and issues to discuss include:

a] Automatic spill of all positions and election of new administrators in the possible categories:

[i] Keeper of the Codes [blogrolls and banners together]

[ii] Resident Techie

[iii] Birthdays Officer

[iv] Pageflakes Profiles Coordinator [think this is obvious]

[v] General Rouseabout [founding grandfather - this is almost obvious]

[vi] Anything else you can think of.

b] Creation of three blogrolls, kept by the keeper of the rolls and categories of membership:

[i] Provisional [new members awaiting membership approval - usually a formality]

[ii] Current membership

[iii] Resting roll [the Istanbultories of the world].

c] Formulation of the policy on membership. This is up for discussion because sufficient members e-mailed me about it and want it discussed:

[i] Elimination or blocking of undesirables as a policy or not

[ii] Ejection of members [specific person mentioned] - discussion only at this point.

[iii] How to stop us from becoming unwieldy

[iv] How to recognize "friends of BP" who are not actually members but stay close to us. This is especially important now because of people like Bag who had a lot to do with us during the awards, plus many others.

2] I suggest we now take suggestions from all of you via e-mail to either me or in comments on this post on any or all of these matters. Our fallback position is that the current admins will do it all themselves but it's better we include your ideas.

Therefore, would you either e-mail or comment until Sunday, July 8th on any or all of the above issues or any others you may consider need discussion. Then the current admins will draw up and agenda.

31 comments:

youdontknowme said...

Isn't the awards ceremony in less than 3 weeks?

Gracchi said...

Wayne's right- July 1st is in 2 and a bit weeks time and that's the award ceremony unless I'm wrong.

Good idea I personally think there are issues to discuss- though I think as far as officers go I'd cast my vote for the status quo unless people want to resign (which I can understand- in which case I think a vote of thanks is needed).

Just to kick off proceedings one of the ideas behind Blogpower was that we should all visit each other- and looking at my visitor stats I know that quite a few of us take that seriously- I do think that as we get bigger and bigger though it might be more and more difficult for people to get round all the blogs- I'm writing up a PhD at the moment and have a lot to do and its difficult to get from blog to blog in the appropriate manner- I don't know if others think like this as well but its worth considering whether if that's true it changes the nature of blogpower and whether we should do something about it in some way. (I'm only outlining a problem here- not suggesting a solution!)

Crushed said...

If there is a policy on membership, then it should not be based on politics.It should welcome all opinions, even those most of us might disagree with. I don't think recent events should alter that ethos. Blogpower allows the opportinity to establish good debate between opposing opinions, and it would be a shame to lose that.
I think that a lot more interst has been generated in joining BP and I bet there will be lot of new applications to join. This a good thing.
I think it is good that we put structures in place. But points ci and cii made me a little uneasy.

pommygranate said...

James

What is the best forum to give feedback and ideas on these agenda points?

Here?

Gracchi - agreed. If the membership gets too big, it loses its appeal.
I also think the onus is on all of us to try and get round to the blogs as much as possible. After all, that's what the purpose of the BP is, isnt it?

CBI - yes to a point.
It should welcome all opinions

Not all. This is private property. I wouldn't want racist hate sites on BP for example.

James Higham said...

The problem is that politica is in everything. My reason for getting stuck into the BNP during the awards was that I felt, rightly or wrongly [Wayne would say wrongly], that the awards were in danger of being politicized.

Having said that, I voted last time for Wayne to stay. I have nothing personal against UKN&P either - I just didn't want that lot hijacking the awards.

I would have done the same with the communists.

We do need to discuss these things again and it's quite possible there'll be fallout again, like last time. We lost people, good people and we gained some more too,

The thing is not to be precipitate. Allow me my blog hiatus first and then we'll hit the issues, OK? Let's put them on hold for now.

The more I thnk about it, the more it seems it would be better to do all this stuff after the Awards but that's getting into July, when people go away.

Anonymous said...

I am loathe to support expelling people - after all where does it end? What about those who occasionally veer close to the edge of good taste for example? I am willing to help with BP in anyway that people might like - but I am far from technically skilled in these matters. One important point for me in the whole blogosphere thing, is that more and more of the writing is by people who are not technically skilled but simply use the technology available.

May I propose that there should be a banner with "Second Place" on it?

youdontknowme said...

Well james there was no proof that the awards were being politicised. UKN&P was not found to be a member of my party which I proved.

The BNP never got involved in the contest. It was just your severe paranoia caused by people telling you fairy tales which you believed. How many BNP sites did this site get hits from?

I think next time you should have better judgement and realise when people are telling you fairy tales.

James Higham said...

I'm tempted but I won't reply to the last one. We'll deal with it after the Awards, all right?

Ian Appleby said...

Re a[i], I have been struggling to keep up with recent requests for enrolment - about which I shall have more to say anon. Although I think it would be melodramatic of me to talk of tendering my resignation - and I do hope to continue doing what I can - I would like to invite other Blogpower members to put themselves forward either to replace me or to join Lord Nazh and me as co-enrollers.

James Higham said...

That's why I wrote of a spill of positions. We must hold memberships [they can display banners for now] until our meeting to decide these things. It is getting very large now.

So Ian, let's put the banner code in html form somewhere, somehow and people can jsut copy and paste to their templates.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Good idea to have this ongoing agm. I agree with Gracchi - I try my best to get all around the blogs and enjoy doing it but it's not always possible every 2 days (as I think we first said) and then I feel terribly guilty if I "miss" people. I don't have an answer! Re membership policy I need to ponder on that. I, too, would vote for status quo admin unless anyone felt they needed a break. A birthday officer is a good idea for we do need to lighten up a little. And please appoint several resident techies! I don't have a 3 year old in the house and sometimes I just don't know what you're talking about despite the clear instructions that you give! You are all always brilliant at coming to my aid but I'd feel better if I knew that was the person's role! I need to think about the other issues. It's been a great initiative and we all know who we need to thank for it; we must keep it so.

Crushed said...

Welshcakes, you're doing better than me in terms of technical know how than me, though one seems to learn as one goes along.

Personally, I think it's good that so many people want to join. Why should there be a size limit on Blogpower?

I would agree that is difficult to visit every site in Blogpower daily AND visit non- blogpower friends too. I am aware that there are some BP sites that I visit infrequently, which is very remiss and does make me feel guilty sometimes, but I already use up about two-three hours a day blogging and commenting.

I love the Blogpower ethos and I hope it continues in the spirit James first explained it to me.

youdontknowme said...

I am able to visit everyone once per day. Infact I visit 90-100 blogs per day. It only takes a few hours but then again I am a student.

Not Saussure said...

Wayne, at the risk of prolonging an argument that James wants to leave until after the awards, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to reconcile your remark that The BNP never got involved in the contest with remarks such as And one last canvass for votes – I am the only BNP blogger in the competition so just imagine a BNP win if you support the BNP or all those BNPers that nominated me can be proud that you raised the name of the BNP. If I get a good vote you can be even more proud of the online organisation of the BNP.

Are we to take it that your comrades ignored you and failed to turn out to support you and your party?

ba ba said...

Thats exactly what your to take, yes. I only came here because i hoped to see girly hysteria, as reported by House of dumb here;

http://houseofdumb.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html#1244453432769905366

I actually didnt bother to vote, for anyone, despite knowing of the things existence. Im surprised im even bothering with this comment quite frankly!

pommygranate said...

Welshcakes - sounds like im at your level on the techie stakes!

However, would be happy to help out in other more technophobic ways.

Question for everyone - like CBI, i am thinking of upgrading the look of my site. Does anyone know of a good (and cheap) web design company to use?

Idea for the future - have a weekly round-up on this site of the Best Posts within BP. Appoint a team to do this (say 5 bloggers) and rotate the task (as it will be a lot of work).

Lord Nazh said...

Ian, if you're swamped with requests, are they just going straight to you?

As I told James, I have zero requests in my in box...

Lord Nazh said...

oh and to 'visits':

I don't have every BP'er in my blogroll (i have most around 90-95%) and I visit those sites in my roll 3-4 times a day. Plus whatever traffic came into me, I go back to.

I check my logs, I get 3-5 visits from BP every day... (unique sites, one site may visit me 3-4 times by itself) so roughly 90% of BP doesn't bother to make it to my site.

James Higham said...

People, I'm trying to solve four problems before my blog closedown:

1] Keep the BNP isswue dormant until after the ceremony;
2] Get the banners to people [provisionally done];
3] Resolve the banner and blogroll codes problem wherby they seem to be in three separate places at the moment and no one seems to know what anyone else has.
We need ONE person controlling enrolments.
We need three rolls NOW - provisional, current member and resting member.
We don't have them and we have people banked up waiting to join and I can't get any response to my requests.
4] I'm rewriting our original manifesto in draft form to present tomorrow before I close down.

Of all of these, the membership issue is the most urgent and needs resolution today, the rolls and banner codes centralized with one person [I'd like to think Lord Nazh]and the three rolls displayed in the sidebar here.

youdontknowme said...

Are we to take it that your comrades ignored you and failed to turn out to support you and your party?

Yes you are right. If they did I would have won and I never.

Saying what I did was an attempt to get some of my readers motivated enough to vote who probably couldn't be arsed voting. Thats all it was. Threatening Santa was probably more effective

James Higham said...

I am hereby asking all members to not discuss this issue until after June 29th and if possible, after the awards.

Please refrain from commenting on the BNP issue until then but do please comment on all the otehr matters raised here for discussion, boring though they may be.

Ian Appleby said...

Lord Nazh, I'm aware of three outstanding requests: Deeply Blasphemous, Lady Macleod, and, er, UK News & Politics. I hope to get all three on a pending roll before too much longer. As far as I can tell, there have been no requests to the address in the sidebar since that of UKN&P. If anyone knows of anyone else who needs adding, please e-mail me or comment here.

Lord Nazh said...

ok Ian, that was what I was wondering :) I thought maybe the copy feature had stopped.

ba ba said...

The polls should only have been open to blogpower members, that's the point.

YDKM, i just didnt think that the way it was set up was very sensible, as the blogs with the bigger readership always had the advantage. Nothing personal mate, i like your blog and link to it, as you know.

ba ba said...

- or failing only allowing BP members to vote, you could make it so each IP can only vote once. This doesn't help with AOL members though, but there is another way of identifying computers too - some site statistic applications use it - so you might be able to find a polling system that does too.

I think that that will make for results you can trust more, without all this unhelpful angst.

Crushed said...

For what it's worth, I'm not in favour of imposing a size limit. Things evolve and Blogpower is growing fast, but that's good. It means something good has been started and people are buying the Blogpower spirit.

I'll admit, were there to be two hundred names on the blogroll, it would be impossible to display the full blogroll on every site or for most of us to visit every blog on it daily, or even weekly. But we have a choice. Either we stay n exclusive orgainisation which adopts a 'one in, one out' policy like a crowded nightclub, or we fulfill our motto 'defending the bloggosphere.
We can't do both and at this point one of those principles has got to give.
I say we retain the inclusivity principle, but adopt this policy on membership.

When a new blog joins, it should be showcased at defendingtheblog, so that all can read it. Blogpower should also showcase the post of the day from each Blogpower member in turn. I think we should say that Blogpower members should always retain at least thirty other Blogpower members in their blogroll as a condition of membership (one of a only a few, I should add), but if we grow larger thabn displaying them all may not be possible.
Of course James already does Blogfocus, but we can expand that into a daily feature of Blogpower.

youdontknowme said...

I think having a daily blogpower roundup will be too time consuming for those involved.

It takes me 2-3 hours per day to visit the 90-100 blogs that I read everyday. I could maybe make 200 blogs work. Very time consuming though

Colin Campbell said...

My only concern is that there is a potential that we could dilute the communal ethos that existed. I understand that this is organisational evolution, but I would be sad if that were to change dramatically.

As for getting around blogs, I think 10 a day is plenty for me. I have a life that precludes more time for blogging.

James Higham said...

Just reviewed all these comments and as far as I can see, all are fair, even Wayne's and the BNP visitor.

The first question is - do we admit UKN&P, assuming the poor chap still wants to join?

The 2nd question is if we eject all BNP and there are many comments above about that. I myself have been going over and over the documentation and will post my tuppence worth as a comment probably on Saturday.

I'll keep my comments on the ejection or rejection issue in here, in the comments section but on the basic AGM things, e.g. new admin positions - this will be done as a series of posts.

I think all need to be decided on Sunday evening.

youdontknowme said...

I think he should be allowed to join.

I am the only BNP member in Blogpower. Have I been offensive to anyone? I don't think that I have. I don't think any BNP bloggers have been offensive to Blogpower either.

Ian Appleby said...

In the interests of keeping the debate in one place and easier to follow, I will close comments on this post and invite you all to post your thoughts on the post above, entitled "The Burning Issues".