Along came the spider

Continuing my intermittent ramble about the potential for a network of environmental bloggers, and what’s already out there that does something similar – now we come to the politicals.

Lib Dem Voice, now as I understand it the Lib Dems have a more empowered grassroots, and a democratic decision making structure, which beggars belief when one considers how much of a pickle they’ve got themselves into. However Lib Dem Voice and LibDem blogs do a reasonable job of connecting together the disparate voices of the party. Interesting things include:

• Ask that each blogger is a Lib Dem member – we could do this, and it’d be interesting but probably too restrictive. Maybe we could offer a bonus badge / widget to such folk. This might be an idea in itself, as an offer to such folk, to use as they choose.
• There’s a more dominant mix of official blog posts, as features, than the blog roll which is kind of a big list. Given my current thinking as to how official blogs are separated from bloggers and from local folk, I think this would be an authoritarian step too far.
• There’s a link to LibDig which I don’t quite get. It looks like a more primitive form of micro-blogging. I should check out this Digg it thing. However there’s a slot here for video, which begs the question should there be a separate space / blog roll for videos and video diaries.

Still compared to Mumsnet there’s not much to learn here.

Labour have a Campaign Engine room, which I first thought looked like a bloggers machine, but instead it looks like a party political version of 38 degrees, inviting people to start campaigns and gather signatures on an e-petition. Well worth remembering the next time a Labour MP, complains about the worthlessness of such devices.

Labour central offers the promise of bringing all such blogs under one roof but fails to do so, and Bloggers4Labour simply doesn’t seem to work, which is kind of disappointing. How is one to pinch their ideas, if they’re broken?

Finally the Tories have conservative home, which looks a bit dull, a slightly better showing than Labour – it at least works but without the sense of community of LibDem Voice.

Just to make sure I had a quick look in at the Green Party blogs which is very dead indeed although there seem to be a fair few active blogs out there. I guess there’s a lesson here about being too reliant on the grassroots to keep such things up to date.

For now, that seems to confirm Mumsnet is where it’s at, so time to have a chat / setup a meeting and see what they have to say. And /or probably have a word with the Argentinians about the idea of a pilot in a 2nd language.