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This was a story about blogging. Yes, it happened be about some place outside the US. Deal with it.

Has anyone ever noticed that the only time you ever see a politician in a public place inviting ‘chat’ is around election times? They all disappear from public malls very quickly

The one thing though that any government it seems can be counted on is for exhaustive red tape and consultative processes which in the end simply equate to the world passing them by

Now what most community hosts usually do: is basically decide themselves how the community should behave, in a fairly draconian way. Then they figure out they have to lighten up - before it’s too late. That’s not letting the community have ownership.

Another popular tactic: is to have NO code of conduct. And end up with spam-ridden forums like TechCrunch. You guys get a 10/10 for blogging and 0/10 for forums. Seriously. Though I personally found the “how to hack Yahoo AOL password” threads particularly useful.

The third option: community hosts pay a fortune for a social networks strategist like me to come in and help them navigate their way through the quagmire of establishing purpose, place, profiles, roles, leaders, etiquette, events/rituals and swarms. Tax money that could be spent elsewhere while letting the voters decide how they want to be managed.

So in spite of the fact that they are confusing the one-to-many limitations of a blog with a full scale on line community, it’s just semantics at this stage. and having the community establish and agree to the guidelines is going to put them in a good position when the old lovies at MainStreamMedia start screaming that the ‘government blog is full of … (insert pejoratives)’ - tricky to take that stance when you will have a community of a few hundred thousands screaming back that it was the “voters’ decision”

My motto is: I’m lazy, let the community run the community. Now, how much are you going to pay me to get your forums back on track hmmmm? (I don’t get out of bed for less than a coffee and a sandwich).

Is anyone else thinking of “Yes Minister”?

There was nothing in the paper that suggested the Consultation Blog would resemble a blog. It describes uploaded files and images and a series of forums. No journal or personal communications with comment threads. No series of blog posts on a topic.

I took a quick look at the PDF. What Duncan didn’t mention is that the public (including organisations) are invited to respond to this paper before 1st December. So if you have something to say about the policy, why don’t you submit a response? If we are unable to engage with pollies on our platform of choice (eg blogs) then we need to engage with them on their platform (white papers) if we want to influence the decision-making process.

Anyway, take a look at http://www.senatoronline.com.au … the Government is falling behind re online conversations with constituents, so the outcome of the white paper is likely a formality. They will have to produce a blog because the Australian public will demand it if they don’t.

PS - no, I’m not a public servant, I simply believe strongly in the citizen’s right to participate in the democratic process

Duncan, I truly hope you weren’t a staffer for that particular intellectual giant.

Oh btw - Sputnick & Wolke - would it be too much to ask that Australian issues get a run every now and again on TechCrunch or is this a strictly northern hemisphere site? No one is forcing you to (a) read them and certainly (b) not to comment on them.

Here’s an idea - if a story isn’t interesting to you, ignore it. Or do you actually have nothing else to do?

Seriously guys. If you don’t want to read an article about the “Australian Government”, then perhaps you could avoid reading articles whose titles begin with “Australian Government”. Caveat emptor etc.

Just a thought.

Go Maxine!!

Huh? Isn’t this just a silly slam? It seems to me to be 100% logically consistent and you’re just pounding them for not being immediate Kool-Aid drinkers.

Government works by consultation papers.
Evangelist proposes blog.
Government has consultation paper about whether it should in the future use blog.
[So far completely consistent, but watch out ...]
Evangelist rants you-don’t-get-it. Government was apparently supposed to *agree* immediately to the new process, since evangelist was self-evidently correct, and using the old process to consider the new process is proof of being wrong. Because that implies the old process has value, and evangelists knows _a priori_ that can’t be true (which you basically say!)

I think the irony is rather the reverse. You’ve just shown one of the major weaknesses of blogs, the incentive to pander in order to get traffic.