Category Archives: Site news

Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th March 2010 - 9:50 am

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …

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Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Feb. ‘10)

By Stephen Tall | Mon 1st March 2010 - 6:20 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 33,686 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in January.

That’s a small decrease compared to our Jan. ’10 figure of c.38,000, but then February is a shorter month – and we are up over 40% on the equivalent figure for Feb ‘09 of c.24,000.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 March 2009 – 28 Feb 2010) to 316,939, almost 40% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 228,076.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. Clegg sacks Jenny Tonge …

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Stephen Tall

The official new LDV comments policy

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th February 2010 - 9:40 pm

A month ago, LDV launched our comments policy experiment, appealing to our readers to ‘make nice’. As I explained at the time:

… though we reckon this site is better than most political blogs in offering a space where all can feel free to debate with mutual respect, it doesn’t always happen. And those few occasions when LDV’s comments become overly personal and abusive (and invariably testosterone-charged) can deter others from ever daring to join in. So for the next month – leading up to Valentine’s Day, appropriately enough – LDV is going to try and ‘love up’ our comments

…

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Wed 10th February 2010 - 1:50 pm

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Mark Pack

How to get your picture to appear next to your comments on Lib Dem Voice

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th February 2010 - 5:50 pm

It’s been a while since we last reminded readers about this, so now seems a good time to publish the information again. You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:

If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.

  1. Visit Gravatar.com, create an account

…

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9 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th February 2010 - 1:20 pm

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing you …

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Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Jan. ‘10)

By Stephen Tall | Mon 1st February 2010 - 6:25 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 38,593 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in January.

That’s a big jump, unsurprisingly, compared to our December ’09 figure of c.28,000 – and is up some 60% on the equivalent figure for January ‘09 of c.24,000.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Feb 2009 – 31 Jan 2010) to 309,123, over 40% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 218,360.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. Revealed: the Lib-Con pact election poster (34) by Stephen Tall
2.

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Stephen Tall

It’s “Let’s Make Nice Month”: experimental change to LDV’s comments policy

By Stephen Tall | Mon 18th January 2010 - 7:45 am

The Internet is a fantastic place. It can also be an angry place. Lib Dem Voice has a high quality of passionate-but-reasoned debate in our comment threads, with many of our 30,000+ readers contributing their thoughts and enjoying LDV’s role as “Our place to talk”.

However … it’s not unknown for debate on LDV to get heated, for commenters sometimes to get personal with the authors of articles, or with each other. The editorial collective has generally adopted a laissez faire moderating policy: save a handful of exceptional circumstances, comments are left untouched.

Partly this policy has been driven of …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 48 Comments
Stephen Tall

Welcome to Sara Bedford

By Stephen Tall | Sun 17th January 2010 - 9:45 pm

A parish notice here from the LDV editorial collective … Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a new person has recently joined the Voice’s team – Sara Bedford.

Sara joined the LibDems as a student in the 1980s, becoming National Chair of YLD (the predecessor to LDYS and Liberal Youth) between 1990-92. After serving as a member of the Federal Executive and Federal Conference Committee between 1991-95, in 1996 Sara settled down to motherhood and serving as a councillor for Abbots Langley on Three Rivers District Council, which has been majority Lib Dem controlled since 1999. She is also an active …

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Alex Foster

YourThurrock.com talks to PPC Carys Davies

By Alex Foster | Thu 7th January 2010 - 8:50 pm

An email arrives from the editor of YourThurrock.com pointing us to a YouTube interview they’ve done with local PPC Carys Davies.

You can see the interview here, as well as register to leave comments.

Thurrock, if you didn’t already know, is in Essex. Gotta love a place whose Wikipedia History section begins “Mammoths once grazed in the Thurrock area.” Is it the WP equivalent of “First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came…” ?

At the end of January, the LDV team will be meeting to discuss how we cover the general election. As a site launched …

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Also posted in General Election | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Belated LDV statporn for 2009. And my answer to the question, does it matter?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 4th January 2010 - 9:05 pm

Call it laziness, call it New Year ennui, but I’d half a mind not to re-commence my monthly LDV statporn posts. I realise they can be a little bit self-congratulatory and/or self-obsessed. But I’ve finally got round to doing it. And here’s why.

First, because I think it’s only fair to LDV’s readers and, more importantly, our contributors (both those who write for us, and those who comment on what’s written here) to know how many people read this site. It is not my blog, or that of any of the small, volunteer team who runs LDV: it is …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 2 Comments
The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Sat 2nd January 2010 - 1:50 pm

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

Continue reading »
2 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Sun 13th December 2009 - 4:50 pm

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Wed 9th December 2009 - 10:20 am

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Nov. ‘09)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st December 2009 - 12:50 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 29,252 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in November.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Dec 2008 – 30 Nov 2009) to 292,073, over 40% higher than the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 205,099.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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Alex Foster

New copyright rules for Lib Dem Voice

By Alex Foster | Tue 1st December 2009 - 9:24 am

There now follows a short notice updating you on the copyright rules we use for articles that appear on Lib Dem Voice after 1st December. In effect, these are the rules we have used all along, but we are now putting them on a more formal footing.

Articles that appear on the Lib Dem Voice after 1st December 2009 will be copyright Lib Dem Voice and the original author, and will be licensed under the Creative Commons terms Attribution, Non-commercial licence.

Lib Dem Voice reserve the right to use material commercially to further the aims of the blog. Articles from before

…

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3 Comments
Stephen Tall

So, farewell then, Richard

By Stephen Tall | Tue 24th November 2009 - 1:25 pm

Lib Dem Voice sadly bids au revoir to one of our Contributing Editors – Richard Huzzey has understandably but reluctantly decided that his work on the other side of the Atlantic must come first.

On behalf of the whole LDV team, can I thank Richard for all he’s done, both ‘behind the scenes’ and for the public blog, writing approaching 150 articles for the site in the three years he’s been associated with it. His first post, Thoughts on the Amazing Mrs Pritchard, continues to pick up a steady stream of Google-inspired traffic to the site. You can read …

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Stephen Tall

And in LDV parish news …

By Stephen Tall | Sun 8th November 2009 - 1:20 pm

The Lib Dem Voice editorial colective is descending upon the Big Smoke today to plan ahead how to improve the site – so advance apologies for the slack blogging this afternoon. We will, of course, all be online and contactable via Twitter @libdemvoice if anyone has suggestions for items to add to our already over-long agenda.

In our survey following this year’s party conference, we asked LDV-reading party members for their views on our content – what you appreciate, what you don’t, and suggestions for improvements. Here are the features you told us you enjoy most, in descending order:

Opinion articles

…

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Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Oct. ‘09)

By Stephen Tall | Mon 2nd November 2009 - 11:00 am

… We’d say a big thank you to the 31,331 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in October.

That’s a 10% uplift on last month’s readership, and a 38% increase on the same period a year ago, when just over 22,000 readers visited LDV.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Nov 2008 – 31 Oct 2009) to 312,829, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 169,320.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Sun 1st November 2009 - 9:20 am

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

Continue reading »
1 Comment
Mark Pack

Welcome to Iain Roberts

By Mark Pack | Sun 25th October 2009 - 10:52 am

A parish notice from the team here at The Voice. Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a new person has recently joined the team in the LDV Towers – Iain Roberts.

Iain was elected a councillor earlier this year for Cheadle & Gately, in north west England. You can follow his local work as a councillor here, but he’s been active in the party for many years prior to this election. Indeed, back in 1992 he founded Hairnet, an email discussion list for the then Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (LDYS, the forerunner to Liberal Youth). That makes him one …

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Voice has a new co-editor

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st October 2009 - 9:30 am

A parish notice on behalf of the LDV team …

I am delighted to announce that Mark Pack is joining me as Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, effective immediately. Mark was a founding member of LDV, alongside Rob Fenwick, back in August 2006. His first post was entitled, Ming Campbell movie online. Ah, those were the days.

Over the past three years Mark has made a huge contribution to making this site the success it is, helping build LDV’s monthly readership to over 30,000 unique visitors, and ranked as one of the top 5 blogs in the UK.

I first asked Mark …

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Thu 8th October 2009 - 1:50 pm

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s great, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Mark Pack

Have you done the reader survey yet?

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th October 2009 - 10:20 am

As I covered previously, Liberal Democrat Voice is helping two academics do a survey of the readers of political blogs. If you’ve not yet done the survey, it would be great if you could spare a few minutes to complete it. Thank you!

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Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th October 2009 - 3:20 pm

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …

Continue reading »
Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Sept. ‘09)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 12:55 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 27,708 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in September.

This takes us back closer to our pre-summer trend readership of c.30,000 – and is up some 43% on the equivalent figure for September ’08 of 19,435.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Oct 2008 – 30 Sept 2009) to 306,418, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 158,046.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Mon 7th September 2009 - 5:35 pm

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Get Lib Dem Voice direct to your inbox

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th September 2009 - 12:20 pm

What better way to start the day than with Liberal Democrat Voice appearing in your inbox? (Well, discovering you have won a free lifetime’s supply of chocolate possibly, but that aside…)

You can sign up to our daily email news service, which contains the headlines from the latest stories on the site, along with links you can click on to read those which catch your fancy. You can also see which posts have attracted the most comments, and also get handy links to find us on Facebook and Twitter.

We also have a special once-a-week email you can …

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Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (August ’09)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 9:30 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 19,655 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in August.

This is our lowest readership figure of the year to date, down a notch on last month’s 22,000 – not surprising in a holiday month and when genuinely exciting political news is scarce. For the record, August’s 20k is still more than 50% up compared with the same month last year (13k).

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Sept 2008 – 31 Aug 2009) to 299,315, more than double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 147,363.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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The Voice

New link to Lib Dem Blogs

By The Voice | Sat 22nd August 2009 - 5:50 pm

A small housekeeping announcement: when we revamped this site, we removed the list of links to the latest blog posts on Lib Dem Blogs as the list was slow to load, took up a lot  of space and only showed posts for a very short period of time (given the volume of posts over on Lib Dem Blogs).

Many readers have said though that they appreciated the convenient links through to other Liberal Democrat blogs, so we are testing out a Lib Dem Blogs button in the right-hand column, just under the latest poll. This gives you a clickable pop …

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