After watching the Liberal Leadership Convention and the calls for unity, I have decided to make a very ambitious undertaking. (Hopefully) with the help of the other Liberal Bloggers, I want to spearhead a new United Liberals Blog designed to be one voice for the blogging community. My goal is to have 25 Liberals from across
***And then there were seven, Rob Edger is now an official Saskatchewan blogger, Dave Monroe is now the official Northwest Territories blogger, Ruth Ellis Haworth is now an official Ontario blogger, Audacious Ontology is now an official British Columbia blogger, Sebastian Jodion is now an official Quebec blogger, and Darren McEwan is now an official Ontario Blogger for the new United Liberals Blog. Scott Robarts has confirmed interest but has not yet been approved by the current members***
**Update, I have decided to change the format of the contributors of the blog. It will now be based on provinces and not cities. See below for the values for each province. People in brackets are confirmed, quotations are for people I wish to have.**
1.”Women in Politics”
2.(Audacious Ontology)
3. (Me)
4. “
5.
6.
7. (Rob Edger)
8.
9.
10. (Darren McEwan)
11. (Ruth Ellis Haworth)
12. "Jason Cherniak"
13.
14.
15. (Sébastien Jodoin)
16. "Fuddle Duddle"
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23. (Dave Monroe)
24.
International
25.
Alternates that I don't know where they are from: Warren Kinsella, A Canadian Leaf, Scott Feschuk.
Now, there are still some bloggers I want to contribute, but I don't know exactly where they live, so they may conflict with my choices. The people I posted up top are my first choices for those areas/cities but you are still welcome to put your name in the hat for those areas if they decline. As I said, this is a very ambitious undertaking and the contributions by the bloggers I stated, will definitely help bring a strong voice to the blog and get people to listen to the Liberal message.
I also want to get Liberal MP's, both current and former to be a part of this blog as well. As this will be a major Liberal Blog, having their voices will help them reach the common people and in some cases show a softer, more natural side of them. If any Liberal MP wants to be a part of this blog, send me an e-mail at unitedliberals@gmail.com using your parliamentary e-mail address. This way, we can make sure that you are who you say you are and we don't have people posting using your name and tarnishing your image.
Once somebody accepts the invite, they will be involved in the selection process as well. Once you are in, you get to decide who else gets in...if you are number 25, then you don't get to use that decision until somebody drops out and we go on the hunt to replace them. We will try to make this completely bilingual and hopefully, we can find a person who knows something about html scripting so we can have a pretty site as well. If all goes well, we will consider a petition to become the first full time Liberal Blog. This will also be a group decision with a majority rules vote.
I hope this interests a lot of you people out there as this can potentially be the biggest thing to hit Canadian politics since my blog.....or something that actually has had an impact on politics. Once again, if anyone is interested in joining this blog, please e-mail me at unitedliberals@gmail.com and we will all join together to bring a strong United Liberal voice to Canadians.
Thank You,
10 comments:
While your intention is laudable, I don't agree with it. In fact, I think it's a bad idea.
I posted a comment to your original post, but you deleted the entire post to get rid of my comment and then re-posted the entire original post.
Liblogs is alraedy the united voice of Liberals. We don't need yet another group, aggregator, or whatever it is you want to do.
Such a group could dilute and weaken Liblogs.
Also, it seems you take it upon yourself to choose, more or less, the ones who are "privileged" enough to join your group.
Finally, creating such a "sideline", it would not create more unity, but in fact create a split among Liberal Bloggers.
In agreement with Werner. By saying who you "want" it gives the air of exclusivity - something the delegates voted against when we elected Stephane Dion as leader of our party. What's it say about all the other bloggers that you're essentially choosing people you like? Where's the "unity" in that?
This whole exercise in "unity" would have the exact opposite effect.
And deleting an entire post so as to get rid of a critical comment regarding the idea, and then re-posting it without the comment, is not exactly a "unity builder" either and merely adds to your "air of exclusivity".
Shoshana Berman is a well-known criminal with serious psychological problems. Do you really want her on your site?
Ok people, time to comment,
Werner, first off, I didn't delete your post on purpose, the only way I know of to get Liblogs to repost my blog is to delete and post a new version. If I was trying to hide your comments, I would have just deleted them and kept the original post.
This new blog is not really geared towards hardcore Liberals. This blog is going to be geared towards swing votes, red tories, and semi-sane NDPers. Having several small blogs with a couple of people reading it a day won't really change people’s minds to go back to the Liberals. One larger blog with several bloggers pumping out information would give a lot more access to the Liberal message and get them to change their votes. I am using the Wal-Mart mentality to spread the message. Everything under one roof. Also, having one major blog will attract a lot more attention and will get more users to access and read the blog.
The only reason I chose those people were either because of their strength in their blogs, which would make them good choices for UL, or they have name recognition which would draw people to the blog based purely on them posting. I could have picked everyone I wanted as there are a lot of Liberal bloggers and I could have chose them all myself. The rest of the bloggers will be chosen by the consensus of the group. My only true role in this is founding it and posting in it. I will have as much of a say in what is going on as the rest of them. I created the groundwork for the site, the bloggers will be the ones who build it into a powerhouse.
As for Shoshana, I was unaware of anything that has gone on in her personal life. I used to read her blog and I found it to be a good and insightful blog. My decision was based purely on that. Since there is such a strong backlash, I will remove her from the list.
Anonymous: you should not be writing anything about her and her legal situation, because there may be a publication ban in effect (not verified, though).
As for reposting this article again and again to keep it at the top of Liblogs: that's spamming in my book and won't make you any friends.
Milan, I believe if you edit your entry and republish it, it is reposted by Liblogs. Lots of posts seem to appear again and again, and I assume that's the reason.
I don't know why Werner is making such a fuss over this. Let's give it a try and see how it works out. It's not a threat to Liblogs, if that's his worry. If anything, it should increase the Liberal blogging presence. I really like the idea of getting some MPs to blog - wouldn't it be cool if Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Garth Turner joined.
Finally, I think the egregious behavior of a number of Liblogs blogs over the last few months has suggested we need a place for rational discourse that isn't full of nasty, overly partisan rants and whines. I got worn out by all the crap flying by - smears of candidates, smears of supporters of candidates, nasty stuff. I for one am looking for an alternative and I think this is a great idea.
Yappa, you used to be able to do that...now it won't catch it. Tried changing the name of the post, tried editing the time, tried editing the post itself, nothing. This was the only way to do it without having 25 posts of the same damn thing. We are one third of the way there for bloggers with 4 members, 2 bloggers I am awaiting a reply from, and 2 just confirmed interest. As for Werner, I think it may be a combination of two issues. One, he is not a Liberal...checked his site, and he supports the Alberta PC Party. The second one, I think he is miffed that I didn't choose him for the Calgary spot. I don't know which one...or if it is a combination of the two, but he just has a hate-on for me.
Lookout Mountain
Lookout Mountain said...
We already have liblogs. Whats the point of this?
6:19 PM
Justin Tetreault
Justin Tetreault said...
I'm from Sault Ste. Marie.
6:34 PM
Just re-posting it back to this posting. I am deleting the last one and I forgot to block comments.
By inviting certain people to join, you are stuck will all their old baggage. Darren McEwan has a street rep as a troll flake, definitely someone the liberal party needs to distance itself if it ever wants to gain credibility...
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