Posting Arrangements
January 31st, 2005As we get nearer the General Election there will be more active moderation in order to ensure that the site remains a place where people from all parties can feel comfortable discussing the effect of issues in relation to political outcomes on which betting takes place. We should try not to get into debates on the issues themselves, particularly if they are controversial, and we should avoid being offensive to others who make comments
We have slightly changed the posting arrangement so that the site will no longer accept comments without a name and an email address. Hopefully this will not cause too much inconvenience - most browsers now remember this information so you should only need to type it in once.
Also please remember the laws of libel. Anything that is potentially defamatory will be edited as I had to do yesterday.
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I’ve been wondering if as posting increases - particularly in the run-up to the election - it might be worth having a UBB/vBB-style forum in addition to the blog comments. It would allow a lot more clarity for discussion, and a much wider range of topics on the go at any one time.
Iain - I think it would be a good idea as then threads could be pursued and continued in context rather than on a daily basis amongst other stuff as a present. You could have threads on each particulr seat etc - but then there may be other sites better equipped to do that.
However, this site is Mike and Roberts “hobby” (ie they do it in their spare time for no income, not that its not thoroughly professional) and I don’t know if they have the time/expertise to set it up like that.
They aren’t as complicated to set up as you might think, although very popular ones are quite server-intensive. I could set up a simple phpBB forum in a couple of minutes on my server.
As a quick example of how easy it would be - http://politicalbetting.iainlindley.com/
Iain - that’s great - over to Mike, really.
I think it would be a lot better in terms of discussion. The only issue would be whether that sort of set-up would make the blog itself look less busy.
Ian it looks good. But I understand this. I for one would need a guide book
Sorry Iain - not Ian. I forgot that you are a Conservative and as Steve once pointed out you all have the extra ‘i’. Having said that, according John O and Sean, I would more likely consider you had an extra eye
That’s quite alright.
My personal pet hate is people realising there is an extra “i” and then spelling it “Iian”. Argh.
Graham, Wot a cheeky bugga…and I was going to extend the hand of friendship and conciliation by agreeing with you, yes 100%, about the need for some kind of guidebook to enabled baffled semi-senescent buffers to understand Iain’s spiffing new cyberspace wheeze.
Ditto to Iain’s suggestion - most of the site ends up being discussion that is only vaguely related to the post it is attached to. It would be far better to have a phpBB board (I’ve had a practice with it as well and, as Iain says, they are very easy to set up).
Gents -this follows the classic usenet “tree” approach. It’s a bit like the file structure in a PC, eg:
2005 GE Seats
Con Targets
LD Targets
Lab Targets
Betting Odds
Spread Markets
Seat Markets
Opinion Polls
YouGov
MORI
ICM
etc etc - you get the idea.
You go to the discussion thread relvant to the topic and post thereon.
oops - that didn’t translate the indents.
JohnO. I like to feel I am still friends with you all.
Although I agree to an extent with all this new fangled stuff (sorry coming over a bit conservative here - can you convert me, ‘the vile unbeliever’, yet?) - I quite like the wandering nature of it.
Hi all,
Thanks for thinking of this! We are already on the case, and will have a working (more comprehensive) bulletin board system in place very soon.
Please, just tell us how you want iut to look and we’ll do our best.
Cheers,
Robert
Terrific news Robert. Great stuff.
Graham - I too like the ebb and flow of conversation here, but the main problem now is the shear volume to be got through now that the site is so popular. Having spent the weekend off-line (decidedly un-anorakish behaviour I realise!) there was too much to trawl through this morning.
As the election approaches this will get worse, and the new format will allow people to narrow it down to the topics in which they’re most interested. Such as who will win Wiltshire N
On the other hand it will mean that we all have to look at all the different threads all the time. I personally like this ’stream of consciousness’ aspect.
But Robert. If you insist I want it to look like warp speed on hallucinagens. I want it to sing - to dance - and have a spell check!
Can I suggest (in true LD fashion) we do both? Daily “stream of consciousness” and ongoing Message Boards. The latter would be particularly good for individual seat debates.
I want to maintain contact with the site during the election…but will have very little time….if we have area based threads eg Wales, Scotland etc it would help me to contribute…
in the last few days there has been very little about specific seats levels of activity etc…..this is the stuff I am mainly interested in and fear it could be drowned out by the “national battle”…
I think that we do both - the more formal forums as well as the comment stream on the main news articles. I can see whole sub-threads on specific seats. As Iain says a strength of the site is that it feels busy and we don’t want to lose that but build on it.
I also want a place where people can just come in and comment without having to register.
Some blogs have the news items with a link at the bottom ‘if you want to comment/read comments on this’ which takes you to a bulletin board. Good structure imo.
As traffic increases it would be good to have a board for the more esoteric discussions.
However as site owner you must be careful. A big board with lots of threads means lots of room for personal insults, libels, internet loons invading (esp far-right ones or conspiracy theorists). Might be taxing on you and whoever else you give moderation power to.
Well, if we want a bit of cross-party consensus among posters once the starting gun is fired, we can always fall back on dislike of Master Hari and YAB (I’ve yet to come across any poster of any party who’s got time for either).
Oh, and of course there’s Platell. Another marvellous example of her chippy sourness masquerading as wit was in Friday’s New Statesman, where she wondered if Charles Kennedy’s alleged corpulence was the result of following his wife’s example of ‘eating for two, or three, or four’. Is it defammamatory to say she’s a nasty piece of work with no journalist talent whatsoever?
Whoops, that should be spelt defammatory. That was on a par with George W Bush saying ’subliminable’.
Defamatory is spelt with one m I think.
Interesting bet on berfair. You can now bet for or against May 5 as the date. Odds are 1.22 for yes and 4.6 for no.
Sounds the right way to go - The bulletın board set up by İain ın 1 ıs lıke Leıcester Tıgers whıch seems to work well - It allows personal messages to be sent that dont get on the board but wıthout revealıng your e mail address ıf dont want to
Re last post I dıdnt have to gıve a name an alıas wıll do - shouldnt we regıster wıth a name and address just ın case BTW I would happıly contrıbute a modest sum - whıch like share ware could be voluntary
I rather like Plantell, although she really annoyed me as an advisor on that ‘If terrorists attack’ style programme on the BBC.
I can’t say I am fan of Platell, she was unable to step in when Hague was making mistakes left, right and centre. As a journalist she is really catty about other people.
Completely agree with 30. I think she really showed herself up on that programme since although she was playing a role (i.e the voice of hysteria against the experts) it did expose the really nasty type of populism that she (and the Tory party) stands for (i.e do anything for short term gain). She was also pretty incompetant in her job as the only thing I remember her for was her self serving video diary. In some cases she serves the same purpose as ‘Mystic’ Reese-Mogg - in that I always hear her views on a subject and then believe the opposite. What we need now is for her to predict a Tory victory and then we’ll (Labour) win by a landslide. BTW does anyone know if the Beeb are planning to do any repeats of Crisis Command?
30 and 32, absolutely. Her decisions ended up (in the fictional scenario) killing hundreds of people. What came over most, apart from her lack of intelligence, was her petulance, alternately whingeing and snapping at the other people on the programme.
I wouldn’t mind her bitchiness if it was funny. But it’s just witless (and banal) vitriol.
Whatever my misgivings on Platell (and I have plenty) I think it’s a little harsh to criticise her for playing what was pretty obviously a fictional role.
I don’t - it revealed much of the real person (certainly the petulance is of a piece with her writing). She’s almost exactly the same on Question Time, whingeing and snapping at other panel members.
Still, for a really good indictment of her, turn to Private Eye. I like the way they skewer her hypocrisy in wagging her finger at other people for leaving out their dirty washing in public, while treating the reader to far too much information about her own sex life (including the charming observation that an ex-husband of hers had problems getting it up - if it was a man writing about a former wife’s inability to perform in bed, there’d be howls of outrage). Craig Brown’s parody of her sub-Bushell/Littlejohn style of writing is also a joy.
Matthew Norman touts Jeremy Paxman to be a replacement for David Dimbelby as GE anchor on BBC1. I’m not so sure - it’s clear that the Beeb is grooming Huw Edwards to be the new Voice of the Nation (compering the Queen’s Speech last year). Paxman’s acid sarcasm is often enjoyable on Newsnight, but over the 12 hours of a GE programme (when things can go awry, such as the camera catching DD eating a mars bar), I suspect it might lead to a mass-walkout by the other people on the programme.
If the Dimbleby duopoly is to be smashed, I’d say Edwards on BBC1, Alistair Stewart on ITV1. Stewart was very good anchoring the US election results last November, and also does a good job on the ITV News Channel’s mid-term elections coverage.
On the main point of the thread, however much we may whinge about the detailed postings, many thanks to Mike for giving us this opportunity to talk - we appreciate all the hard work!
Nick
Re 37 “Hear, Hear!” (Waves imaginary Order Paper)