CiF Guardian Webby Award

Matt Seaton should give us the below the line low down, asap.

But the strange and sad thing is that this is the first year that CiF itself has not been nominated as a top political blogging site when it obviously is. If we thought about it we would have to think about the weaknesses of the present arrangement on CiF.

1. The terminal 5 -type screw up of the redesign.

2. The fact that posters are no longer equated with bloggers. Bloggers post in big fat thundering letters, while posters write in a tiny little squeaky type face and disappear from view after 50 comments.

3. Then instead of really tackling the big issues face on what we get is a constant polling of the Guardians market segment: "readers". Us. That's why Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell excite the Guardian, because we get the celebrity fan clubs posting (the kind of "Oh David, I love you," swoon, swoon thing.) and the Guardian believe a new posting dawn has arrived. It hasn't. You build up your posters by building up a loyal base.

4. Overt signs of having a conversation obscured by the fact that the editors don't bother, or dare, to communicate directly with the posters any more. Agoraphobia.

5. Then you have the traditional journalism coming through. The lack of faith in the medium shines through as David Mitchell and Lance Price are set upon posters to tell them to shut up and listen ("Well it just goes to show you can't be too careful.") or merely to insult them (Read a quote from Lance Price below).

6. CiF bites the hand that feeds it because let's face it, we posters post for nothing. Posters are entertaining. What's the difference between a big debate sparked off by an article or just an article? Well one, the article, is just an orphaned little text and the other is a living evolving multifaceted thing of beauty or ugliness.

(That's the way the Books Blog used to be until good free people got censored by an Editor protecting a "brand". And yes I did take down my Sarah Crown ctitique because it ranked higher on Google than her wikipedia entry and that seemed unfair.)

6. Then there is the moderation. It varies from thread to thread and seems ad hoc. On Israel and Palestine we are going to do this. On the belief threads that. And so on.

7. The moderation is deferential to certain journalists and legitimate, if harsh, comments are removed. While insults are allowed to stand when the bloggers proper post.

In conclusion:

I think the feeling shines through that some of the people who run CiF have lost faith in the medium and are just biding their time in order to move on. I imagine that people like Grayling and established professionals who have described posters as people who write on toilet walls, don't see the need to stoop to conquer because they have already conquered in their fields. And it hasn't just been on CiF threads, it's taken place on the arts threads too. A sort of mental involuntary clamping of consciousness.

My recommendation is that the Guardian take stock immediately and really think about what they want to do with CiF and that Matt Seaton write an article asap and explain it to us. To the people who hang out round on CiF and give it a bit of life. And maybe next year you/we will be nominated and win the Webby award.

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