So, What’s Happening With The Blogging Dippers?
Looking around the internet lately, there seems to be some confusion with the Blogging Dippers. Some of this confusion seems to arising from Anne McGrath’s now famous letter, and others arising from the transition of the administration from Robert McClelland to the three elected moderators Devin Johnston, Ravi Joshi, and Paladiea. So, I’ll try to answer some of the questions.
Question #1: So what about the official NDP-controlled blogroll?
Question Seen: Alberta Spectator: Werner Patels, Le Revue Gauche.
This question arises from the McGrath letter, where she states that the NDP is creating a new blogroll, and the most recent talk coming from the NDP is that they are no longer pursuing this:
“Blogging Dippers is an important progressive community, and we appreciate their desire to maintain independence from the Party’s federal office.
We are not developing a separate blogroll and are optimistic the new elected moderators format will hopefully help strengthen Blogging Dippers community.”
-Joanne Deer, NDP Communication Director, interview with Giant Political Mouse
Question #2: Are the new administrators there?
Question Seen: BDVS, Calgary Dipper (Werner Patels).
There seem to be a few complaints about the responsiveness of the new administrators. This is simply a problem arising from the transition of administrators. During the time of the transition, there were many real-life things going on, such as final exams. As well, it seems that the new administrators are trying to implement new features into Blogging Dippers.
But still, I think that the About Page should contain some information about the new administrator system.
Question #3: So, what about the Blogging Dippers Charter? What’s up with that?
During the storm of events that changed the way that the Blogging Dippers was run, one of the things that was meant to be done was the creation of Blogging Dippers Charter which discusses how the Blogging Dippers Administration operates, and a Code of Conduct meant to reduce the amount of controversy directed towards us.
So, file this one under “stuff you can blame NBCD for.” I’ve written the draft for the first part of the Charter, that of operation, but because of real life commitments, I have not begun the second part, the Code of Conduct. Some of the reason that I have not really begun the Code of Conduct is that I’m really unsure how to balance between free speech and protecting the Blogging Dippers blogroll.
Question #4: What is the future of the Blogging Dippers?
There has been a few informal discussions about the future direction of the Blogging Dippers, but nothing concrete and official has come up.
But, there is a special project to be announced in the next couple of weeks.
Now, what would be my guess as to what the special project is? Well have a look at this statement:
Combine the WordPress templates with the special project that I’m going to be announcing in a couple weeks’ time, and it’s a good time to be an NDP blogger.
Now, why WordPress Templates be important for the special project? Well, the fact is, there is a multi-user version of WordPress. What do you use a multi-user version of WordPress for? Hosting blogs. Kinda like the new Blogging Tories service, BTBlogs.
Just my guess.
Political Blogrolls
Lastest BC NDP News
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Northern BC Dipper 
thanks.
Hey NBCD,
Good post. I have a couple of comments to help flesh things out a bit:
Bingo. Not necessarily as part of the Blogging Dippers, but as something that I’m taking on of my own initiative. Not sure how long it will take to set up. I need to find a summer job and get my first paycheque before I purchase the domain and hosting, but that is the idea.
I think these criticisms are fair. It’s not so much that there is nothing going on right now, but there has been very little communication between Ravi, Pal, and I and the members of BD as to what we’ve been up to. There is a backlog of membership requests right now, and we have been holding up on responding to these because we are in the midst of developing clearer membership guidelines. We have a draft of these guidelines ready to go now, so we should be getting to these shortly.
In terms of updating the BD site, we are actually planning on moving it to a new server and running it on Drupal with a whole pile of new features. Until we make this transition, there probably won’t be a lot of activity on the existing site, because we will just be overlapping our efforts. I’m not sure about an ETA for this new site, but hopefully we should have some concrete information some time soon.
I believe Paladiea is also interesting in putting some work into this, and once we have our new BD site with voting system, discussion boards, etc., there will be plenty of opportunity for all BD members to play an active role in this process.
Cheers,
Devin
Hey NBCD,
I posted a comment up here a few days ago, but it doesn’t seem to be showing up, so I’m going to re-post my comments.
As far as I am aware, this has been nixed.
I think these comments are fair. For certain, we have been very busy with school, etc., but there is definitely a lot of progress being made. I think that one of the things that has been a problem is that we’ve been doing a lot of work, but not communicating it very well. The biggest thing right now is all of the planning involved in migrating the BD site to Drupal and planning new features for it. We’ve also got about 16 pending membership requests that should be resolved within the next couple of days. I think that communication between the BD admins and the BD members will be a lot better once we have the new site with discussion boards, a voting system, etc. We’re also working on developing clearer membership guidelines right now.
I believe that Paladiea is also interested in putting some work into this. Again, once the new site is up an running it will be a lot easier for everyone who is interested to collaborate on this.
Bingo. I’m hoping to go live within a couple of weeks.
Devin,
Sorry about that. I didn’t check my spam filters.
No worries. My Askimet catches about 600 spam comments per day, so I feel your pain.