But you don’t need to be an AM, the BBC once called me an anorak!

Scurrilous swines! And you make a good point. The last time I did a bit of media it was ten seconds for the World At One at the end of last year, and it was on the back of something I’d written on my personal blog.

I’ve seen mulitple times where people’s individual blogs are quoted and articles made.

Peter Black is a great example and no longer needs to send press releases as the Welsh Media just copy and paste from the blog.

But you don’t need to be an AM, the BBC once called me an anorak!

get my articles posted with a bunch of typos as an added bonus

Three days I can live with as a fair criticism, but all I ever do with contributor’s copy is copy&paste it! No-one else had problems with mystery typos being introduced

Yes, you probably won’t get quote in the Times or invited onto the BBC. But to be honest you probably shouldn’t have been in the first place, and it was my mistake to put you in a position where you were able to. People who haven’t been party members long enough to receive their membership cards generally have the good sense not to go on the telly and speak on behalf of the grassroots. I was happy to give you a platform to speak to the party membership, I certainly never intended to provide you with a springboard to the national media. My mistake.

Laurence, I think it would help your cause to have your own blog first, so the LD community online has more of a rounded picture of your offering. LDV would not, in my judgement, prosper as a stridently anti-establishment publication. We have Liberator for that…

Actually, I want to be that staff member! As it stands, LDV will shortly be a “very different creature” anyway. A dead creature to be specific. And the party will be the worse for it.

But Mark, Greg, Chris & co are absolutely right: if we want this site to be representative of the rich tapestry of opinion within the party, it can’t be ‘run’ by a member of staff. Try and put yourself in the shoes of that staff member – it wouldn’t be a lot of fun knowing when to ‘moderate’ discussions on here.

Oh, and a peripheral point perhaps, but our money hasn’t exactly got masses of cash or resources to spare. I’d rather a staff member were employed in campaigning (preferably outside Cowley St) than to run a site that can & should be run by volunteers.

Not to mention that it would be difficult to ask a staff member to put themselves in line for the kind of abuse which Rob has, on occasion, attracted in the line of duty…

All power to your elbows

Greg

That’s a pragmatic reason, rather than conspiracy or cowardice

I had thought about what Rob posts as his last thought as a best model for the future of LDV, it is sort of what I originally thought it was going to be – a sort of Liberator collective of the blog world (that should put a few people off ) I think it is a very good model. Add an Alex Foster to the list…

As to any possible successor:

I don’t believe a site of this nature can be successfully run by someone who has just joined the Lib Dems.

The other comments here about pitching in to a successor are the same as were made before I set up LDV – people saying (encouragingly!) that they’re happy to be part of a team, but don’t want to run it. In the end what it takes to actually make it happen is for someone to knuckle down and do it. Install the software, write, commission, and chase content day after day. Be prepared for it to intrude in to your personal time and private life when things kick off / go wrong technically. Be the driving force, in effect. Without such a ‘force’, it won’t happen.

I encourage anyone who’s been a member for a while to step up and help to create a successor. Without wishing to be patronising, it’s a role that might well suit someone who is retired / otherwise not in full time employment.

Eldoc in comment 23 highlights a problem I had – I struggled to find the time to provide ‘customer service’ to people who for whatever reason didn’t make it successfully through the process of getting in to the Forum. If starting this project from scratch, I’d leave out the forum – particularly as the LDYS boards are thriving.

There was a lot of talk, for a long time, about setting up a web forum. I tried the model I thought would succeed, and it had only limited success – others can decide if they want to pursue another model.

As to continuing the Lib Dem Voice name – I’m only nervous about that because it’s my perception that the site name is linked in the minds of people who know the site with my own name. If the new LDV went on to be massively controversial, I have selfish concerns about whether Lib Dem members might think ‘that brat Fenwick is up to trouble again’… If the leader of a new gang of people wants to allay my fears on that score, I’m possibly open to persuasion.

There is a market for a blog like this, I wholly believe that. In my head I can picture the much slicker, feature packed, content packed, discussion packed site of my dreams – a dream that can be achieved in a new LDV / other named site if people are prepared to commit to muck in.

I’ll sign off by tossing a final thought in the air which perhaps unfairly I haven’t discussed with any of the people I’m about to name:

A relatively small number of bloggers provide the majority of content in the Lib Dem blogosphere – I’m thinking of the likes of Nich Starling, James Graham, Stephen Tall, Paul Walter, Jonathan Calder, Peter Black and the ever fluffy Millennium Elephant. If they abandoned their own blogs and instead ran a collaborative effort, I believe they’d not only massively grow their own audiences, but also the audience for debating liberal politics online. Collectively, they could produce a fabulously compelling site.

In fairness, ‘Norfolk Blogger’ is Nich Starling, as one can see by clicking on his name. A number of people post under pseudonyms that are merely amusing (I post as ‘Faceless Bureaucrat’ on another site I value) rather than an attempt to mislead.

Isn’t this the problem? Most people do not have the time or inclination to search around “everywhere”. The whole this is hopelessly fragmented and getting worse by the day.

A second problme now is the way that so many people use anonymous names such as “Norfolk Blogger” which frankly makes me reluctant to take part in any discussion them them. If in a political community we are not real people we are nowhere people with no legitimacy of any kind.