I just know Hilton was the blogging equivalent of a pre-Pulp Fiction John Travolta. Now at least people are talking about him again.

/bitch

Also, I’ve not absolved DD of any blame – I’m merely saying he is using the same tactics within the same culture that the rightwing blogs have always done (faux outrage).

Lastly I’m not bigging up LC and saying this place is perfect. But this project is decidedly different to most other blogs out there. I hope that becomes more obvious in coming months.

Okies. I respectfully withdraw.

My blog got 180,000 uniques last year, and I haven’t taken it seriously in over a year. I occasionally write about US politics which wildly inflates my readership.

I doubt that more than 0.01% actually give a crap about what I have to say, mind.

Blogging is the ultimate vanity publishing.

You have made my day. Honestly.

But, this isn’t interesting.

P.S. Aaron, understood and agreed. Case closed.

I would define someone who “gives a crap” as someone who considers Dizzy an authoritative voice in the medium and follows the blog closely. Otherwise it’s just a transient visitor.

The problem is, web diagnostics is such an imprecise science we cannot make value judgements on very basic data. Advertisers have learnt as much.

I’m not saying Dizzy isn’t popular. There are a lot of frustrated salivating Tories who no doubt lap up Dizzy’s ill-informed claptrap. Not me, obviously, but then I find 99% of blogs fairly pointless.

Our discussion is inhibited by an absence of definition surrounding the term ‘give a crap’.

What is not in any doubt, as I am sure you are aware, is that 229,543 is a number that is more than 100,000, or, ‘one hundred thousand’, also commonly referred to as ‘hundreds of thousands’.

I think this has strayed off the initial topic more than enough.

Good luck with the website.

Oh….

He gets 25k per month unique visitors. A proportion of which give a shit about what he thinks. That’s hardly hundreds of thousands.

Before you respond, please stop and think.

Start laughing: http://dizzythinks.net/2008/11/at-last-some-stat-porn.html

That is just hilarious.

If hundreds of thousands find that boring idiot illuminating, the British blogosphere is in worse shape than I thought.

Btw. I’ve just spotted a spelling mistake on a government website. Quick! Dizzy! I have a scoop.

I re-phrase that paragraph a few times because I couldn’t quite get it right, and yes of course you are right that there are allied camps online. What I really meant (perhaps I should have spent more time on it) was that there isn’t so much partisanship online at the expense of etiquette and mutual respect. In other words, people tend to be more open to the views of others because they recognise them as fellow bloggers, rather than from the Labour Party, ergo wrong and not worth listening to.

So, my point was that Draper and Sunny (in the post above) seem to have taken that rigid adversarial approach and apply it online, and it just doesn’t fit. Draper was looking for a fight, and would have constructed one whatever the circumstances. (I’m not suggesting Sunny is doing anything like that here. I just disagree with his analysis.)

Also, I think that maybe there appear to be more extreme right wing bloggers because the extreme right is often more controversial than the extreme left. It’s kind of funny listening to people bang on about the death of capitalism and the rise of the workers; it’s quaint, harmless and irrelevant. Whereas the extreme right have seats on the GLA and elsewhere, and far more dangerous views that permeate society at a disturbing level. Thus, the extreme left doesn’t really get read. Perhaps. I am spectulating, because I don’t read either (extreme left or right, I mean)…

I would change one of your bottom lines (if that’s not too impersonal):
*Most (political) bloggers are united in what they do, but have two broad categories of political opinion: left and right.

I agree entirely that the net provides a forum for individuals to express a range of personal views which may oscillate between left and right, depending on the specifics of the item in hand – in other words not everybody toes the party line all the time, especially given the freedom afforded in the blogsphere, not to mention the dark psychological impulse to be a bit naughty from time to time.

Having said that, surely most bloggers are allied to the left or right, and this loose partisanship is represented by the type of subject matter on political blogging site, as well as the kind of the threads that generally ensue.
For example, it is my opinion that the so-called right wing blogs seem to draw a far higher proportion of extreme commentators.

The bottom line is:
*most bloggers are broadly divided by the general sensibilities of the left or right.
*most revert to type even if they enjoy flirting with the opposition on the odd item.
*this historic pattern is unlikely to change any time soon.

I suppose my seeing the hypocrisy as Iain explained above as not being defending racism far from it. Also the insistance of immediate action when even the big bloggers were engaged in other media activities reeked of setting an agenda. And accusing people of racism when it was those that posted on their threads were the one posting the comments [the highlights of which are STILL available on Labour List ironically] of racism.

To then use a term he wasn’t sure of the derivation without a quick check, and it was quick, only for it to turn out to be derogatory stinks of doubletalk.

So lets see:

1. The racist comments are still available to view on LabourList
2. The disability comment is still available and repeated and attempted to be defended on LL and DD’s own blog.

I don’t think anyone whether left, right or centre is attacking DD for his politics, for crying out loud most of us do get on most of the time, no matter what we post about each other at time. I bet even some Labour people have provided anonymous gossip to Guido’s blog over the years. It’s all checks and balances. However, the man is a loose cannon. Dale is partisan but at least is fair. Draper is partisan in the most poisonous of ways.

Won’t be long though Iain.

Hundreds of thousands of people give a crap what Dizzy thinks, and more people read Iain Dale and Guido than buy The Times or Telegraph each month. (If you need figures, let me know.)

Furthermore, Labour ARE looking to Iain Dale and others like him in a desperate attempt to work out how to get Labour online. Why are you worried? If it’s your job to sort something out, you would naturally take advice from/copy/emulate those most successful at doing so. (Not shout at them, Derek.)

What people like you, and Derek Draper is one of them, so spectacularly fail to realise, is that the Internet doesn’t give a crap about YOUR partisanship. There are people of all political shapes, sizes and colours that work together online to bring about discussion, debate, gossip, general commentary, because they understand the mutually beneficial relationship this has.

To say that the right-wing blogosphere is full of vindictive tossers doesn’t make any sense. It betrays your completely outdated notion that left and right even exist online. There is a blogosphere comprising billions of different individuals and organisations with an infintessimal number of different viewpoints; some right wing, some left wing, some around and in between, some vindictive tossers, some brilliant writers. There is no sense in compartmentalisation, and even less in labelling a ’section’ of blogosphere in any way.

Finally, I can pretty much guarantee you Derek Draper (MA) is most certainly not laughing.

Although if you’re looking for some psychotherapy on the cheap…?

http://www.labourhome.org/story/2009/2/16/131227/809

If – big if, of course – these threats have anything to do with him. Which is entirely supposition on my part; they may not be.