Voting on the Blogpower List

There are two motions related to potential expulsions of members of Blogpower. The details are presented on the list, where you can make your opinion known and or vote. You can also vote directly to an admin, JMB, Ian Grey or myself.

The voting will take place until Sunday 15th June at midnight.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through this process.

Issues from Blogpower Vote

There are a number of issues that arise from the results of recent voting.

We need to resolve whether the outstanding members still intend to remain members of Blogpower. If you did not participate in the vote and did not respond to JMBs request to confirm your plans, perhaps you could do so. For those who are taking a break from blogging, we have a place for you without giving up your membership. All you have to do is email JMB at the email address in the side bar stating your intentions.

At present a vote is taking place in the mailing list for all current members relating to a proposed expulsion of one of the members, David from Bradford Degeneration. The background and issues are well documented in the mailing list. This vote will conclude on Sunday June 15 at midnight. Please go to the mailing list to cast your vote and share your thoughts.

This vote is an important one for Blogpower and it is hoped that all members will either vote on the list or directly to one of the admins, JMB, Colin Campbell or Ian Grey. A record of your vote will be documented, but not shared if it is your intention to remain anonymous or do not want to use the list. Email contact information is on our blogs. All that we ask is that we try to maintain a civil tone. The personal attacks that we have seen leading up to the vote are not acceptable and make Big Brother look pretty tame.

On a personal note, would like to thank everyone for supporting me in my new role as admin. I am hopeful that we can reclaim some of the original aims that James set for the group in his original vision statement to support fellow bloggers. My personal opinion is that this is a very powerful vision and worth supporting. My decision to take on this role was motivated by a desire to ensure that it was not lost in some of the changes in the organisation since that time.

Best wishes to you all.

Voting Results Summary

This is the summary prepared by JMB for the mailing list. It is worthwhile to have it posted here for the record.

My apologies for not sending the results of the ballot out earlier. Life is rather hectic at the moment for JMB.

First I would like to thank all forty people who responded to the voting ballot, either to my inbox or in the mailing list. While I am disappointed that I did not hear from all 66 whom I emailed personally, I don't think we have ever had such a good response to a vote previously. I am hoping that some people had the emails from "nobody important" eaten by the spam filter and are truly not so lethargic. I hear Yahoo has a very (over)efficient spam filter.

In those forty responses, three chose not to renew their membership in Blogpower for personal reasons, mostly being too busy either to continue blogging or to commit the time to Blogpower. Their votes were not counted. Those three are Matt Sinclair of Sinclair's Musings, Chris of the Russian Wolfhound and Juan Garcia of the Poliblogs. I am sure that we wish them well with their future endeavours, both in and out of blogging and I am also sure that they will remain in many of the BP members blogrolls in any event. Would everyone who has a manual blogroll please update them to reflect these changes.

However I'm sure you are all anxiously awaiting the final results of the thirty seven who cast their votes and I just want to say that we really appreciate any comments that were included since it gives us more of a feeling of what the membership are thinking above and beyond a simple yes or no.


Are you in favour of limiting the number of members in Blogpower? Yes 19 No 18


If yes what would you think is an appropriate number -- ten voted for 50, five for 60, two for 70,
one for 150 and one abstention on the number

Do you wish to continue as a member of Blogpower (including showing the banner and blogroll)?

37 out of the 40 replies recommitted as mentioned above


Do you confirm Colin Campbell as an administrator of BP ? Yes 37 No 0



Should a reapplication for membership by a former member require a new vote? Yes 25 No 12


Are you in favour of a black ball system for admissions and expulsions to BP: Yes 13 No 20 (2 abstentions
namely, 3 nays equals no admission, 3 ayes equals expulsion*? One split vote with yes to part(a)and no to part (b), so not counted)

Are you in favour of all discussion moving back to the comment section Yes 17 No 18 (2 abstentions)
on the Blogpower blog and the mailing list being closed for good.


The vote on the limit was a very close one. You can see by this that there really are two camps on this issue in Blogpower with the yes camp thinking we are past our comfortable limit. But although the majority is slim, that's the result of the vote and we will not be accepting new applications for membership for the moment.

Congratulations to Colin Campbell on his unanimous confirmation as administrator. We look forward to his input and help with the various administrative tasks.

Reapplication for membership will require a new vote for admission.

In retrospect I should have broken the blackball question into two parts but I did not want to be accused of trying to sway the voting so went with the exact wording of the motion. Some of the yes voters said that 3 was too small a number for expulsion and suggested other numbers, such as five, ten and even ten percent of the membership was mentioned.

The list vote was also very close but the status quo won out and I hope that those who voted for its closure will come to appreciate that it is a far more effective means of communicating with members of a group than using the comment section of a blog, which was why it was implemented in the first place. I think it is important to use the list responsibly and to make sure that the messages or daily digest come to an email address that is convenient for each member. If you need help then please ask any one of us how to go about changing your preferences.

A word about reconfirmation of membership. This means displaying the banner which is linked to DTB blog and since the blogroll is quite long you may consider using either of the two scrolling blogrolls which take up a much smaller amount of space. Both can be modified to size and the moving scrolling one of Thunderdragon also works with Wordpress fortunately. Again contact us for any help you might need with this issue.

Thank you for your patience and thank you to all who participated.

JMB

Important Vote ---Ballot form on its way

For those not on the mailing list this is to notify you that we are conducting an important vote within Blogpower during the next week. It concerns the issues in the post below plus several more raised in the discussion on the mailing list. You should receive an individual email immediately which includes the form and using the reply function you will easily be able to fill in your preferences and send it back to be tallied.

Please let me know if you do not receive the form and I will send it to you immediately.

Important Issues

We apologize for the delay in addressing some of the issues which arose recently in the mailing list, surrounding the vote for membership for acceptance of some new blogs.

It seemed to Ian and JMB that there was some considerable support for a limitation on the number of members in Blogpower from those who spoke up and obviously this has to be put to a vote of the general membership. Something that also ties into this is establishing who are the current members of Blogpower.

Since the beginning of the year we have had some formal resignations but while others did not officially resign we are not sure that they are still members since they are not displaying either the banner or the blogroll in their sidebars. So we have decided to include in the vote for limiting the membership a request for a reconfirmation of membership, so that we can reconcile the blogroll with the actual membership. We will not remove anyone who does not contact us for the moment, since we want to be sure that we reach everyone, including those who are not on the mailing list and not everyone has an obvious email address, but we do hope to catch everyone with this.

We would also hope that the membership would agree that anyone who has been a member of Blogpower could rejoin on application without another vote required. So if we were to decide on a restricted number of members it could be merely a guideline, since we might have more than that number at times. Should there be a decision to restrict it to a number lower than the current we would not accept any new applications until the number had dropped to that level.

A voting form will be sent to all members in a few days time. We encourage you to discuss this on the Yahoo groups mailing list for Blogpower since comments will be closed on this post.

Some members have not joined the mailing list and we encourage those who have not to register with Yahoo Groups and follow the link below and ask to become a member. You will be confirmed as soon as possible so that you can take part in the discussion.

Link to Blogpower Mailing list

News on the Blogroll Front

You may have noticed that Thunderdragon has redesigned his blog and moved to Wordpress. In doing so he found that our Blogrolling.com blogroll now works with Wordpress, probably as a result of their recent update which is excellent news. He also has used a different code which actually shows the names moving upward continuously. This code allows for a change in width and height and also background colour and the scroll speed. You can see it by clicking the link above to his blog.

I played around with it on my practice Blogger blog, Somebody Important, where it works but I could not find a great colour to change to. Probably because I didn't know what colours were available. I tried red and blue but they did not look good, so for me that needs further exploring. However what I did do, which I quite like, is I combined the clickable small BP banner and this moving blogroll into one page element. You can see that by clicking on my link above. So that's another possibility which is probably best with the no-colour background that I am using there.

If you are interested in this new code please contact me or Ian Grey or Thunderdragon.

This is crossposted in the mailing list.

Update: Thanks to Ian, we now have an option with a border which also appears on my practice blog and I have found a suitable background colour. Could be tweaked a little more I'm sure.

New Member -- Cafe Grendel

It gives me great pleasure to welcome "Grendel" of Cafe Grendel as a new member in Blogpower. He delivers all you ever wanted to know about coffee and may I quote: The real Black Gold comes from Beans, not Barrels, and lubricates Minds not Motors. If you are not familiar with his site please go over and explore and introduce yourself in the comment section.

His site has now been added to the blogroll and I am sure he will be displaying it along with the BP banner very shortly, as a fully fledged member.

I hope there will be no confusion between the two Grendels, our new one features quotation marks and the other is simply Grendel. Well it will keep us on our toes.

Cafe Grendel

We have a new application for membership from a blog called Cafe Grendel. Yes another Grendel. He found us by googling Grendel, expecting to find only himself, but no he found our Grendel too and in following that up found Blogpower. He describes his blog as: Coffee Flavoured Commentary; the Politics of Coffee; Coffee and Technology and Coffee and Religion. Yes he is a coffee aficionado but there is more than that. He's a fellow Aussie from Perth.

Please take a look at Cafe Grendel and make your feelings known in the comment section here. Any objection will move the discussion and voting to the mailing list, with comments subsequently being closed here. The seventy two hour countdown begins at Friday 1800 UK time and ends Monday 1800 UK time.

Globus Blogus

We have a new application for membership from a blog called Globus Blogus. He describes himself in his header as an addict; of fine wines, fine fillies and fine expletives. He does indeed seem rather fond of the f- word.

Please take a look at Globus Blogus and make your feelings known in the comment section here. Any objection will move the discussion and voting to the mailing list, with comments subsequently being closed here. The seventy two hour countdown begins at Friday 1800 UK time and ends Monday 1800 UK time.

Update: There has been an objection, the comments are now closed and the discussion moves to the mailing list.

A Half Century

Someone in Blogpower is celebrating a big milestone on April 10th and he's having a very big birthday bash this weekend. Because I'm in a different time zone this will be a bit late, but please go wish a very happy birthday to Shades of Grey. He's even Warholized himself in celebration.