Tag Archives: moderation

Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 2 October 2023 – autumn has come…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 2nd October 2023 - 7:41 am

It’s October already, and despite the rather pleasant September that we’ve had, today offered a sense that the seasons are turning. And whilst the Conservatives are still in Manchester, engaged in what the Economist described as “magical thinking” (paywall, I’m afraid), the rest of us have moved on to what will happen in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Tamworth and, of most interest to Liberal Democrats, Mid Bedfordshire.

If the polls are accurate, Labour should win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, but Tamworth is supposedly neck and neck, despite Labour’s recent performance in local elections there, and Mid Bedfordshire is being claimed by all three major parties. Should the Conservatives hold either or both, it will be a confidence boost for them, even if it persuades them to keep going as they are – in the face of the national polling data. Thus, it’s important that we keep pushing in Mid Bedfordshire, and I’m perpetually impressed by the reports of activists converging on the area from across the country.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Mark Valladares

Moderation and the politics of gender and sexuality

By Mark Valladares | Mon 27th September 2021 - 1:07 pm

There has been some controversy on the pages of Liberal Democrat Voice over the past few weeks about articles on gender and sexuality issues, and especially in terms of how comments have been, or not as the case may be, moderated. It would be fair to say that our decisions have not met with universal approval.

And, from the perspective of a member of the Editorial Team from a rural community somewhat lacking in diversity, such debates offer up a real challenge.

Yes, judgements are pretty simple where the comments policy is obviously breached – there are some of our readers who really cannot grasp the fact that their tone and language is offensive to a reasonably tolerant person, or who simply cannot resist the temptation to be gratuitously offensive.

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Posted in Site news | 23 Comments
Adrian Sanders

Mods and Libs – who are we?

By Adrian Sanders | Sat 8th September 2018 - 4:48 pm

Some enterprising organisation at our conference, my money is on Liberator, will be selling ‘I’m a Liberal not a Mod’ badges, although I’d be careful not to wear one outside the Brighton Centre for fear of upsetting the Scooter fanatics.

That old rocker Vince Cable has certainly captured the attention of the Party with his March of the Moderates vision, but before it is dismissed out of hand by those who see dangers from opening up decision making powers to non-members, it’s worth looking at how some of this vision is already working in practice, and why fears that Lembit Opik …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 14 Comments
Mark Valladares

You’ve spoken, so what am I planning to do about it?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 29th January 2018 - 2:23 pm

We humble day editors are given a surprising amount of leeway by Caron, and readers will note that I’ve taken the opportunity to think about moderation and content. It’s been… interesting, and from the perspective of a returning member of the editorial team, it’s given me a useful steer in terms of how I might proceed in the months ahead.

So, let’s outline how I’m going to respond.

Firstly, we stopped polling you, partly because it’s all a bit complex technically. And funnily enough, given the radical change in the nature of the Party over the past two years – …

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Posted in News and Site news | Also tagged | 17 Comments
Caron Lindsay

On making LDV more inclusive

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 29th October 2014 - 9:38 pm

Today has not been a good day. It’s not a good feeling when you discover that someone has left the party over something you did, as Lester Holloway has done. I hope that he reconsiders his decision.

The story begins on Saturday when I published this story about Lib Dem Campaigns supremo Victoria Marsom’s visit to Botswana at the culmination of a year long  project to help our sister party in the elections there.

Lester said in the comments that he was unhappy with our interference in this African election. In the ensuing debate, onc eommenter, who as far as we know is not a member or even a supporter of the party, made a racist comment at around 11pm on Monday. I woke up to an email complaining about it at 8am on Tueadsy. I immediately removed the comment and had a fairly lengthy email conversation with a number of people who were copied into the email. I would have been quite happy to bin the comment completely, but I gave an additional option that it should be reinstated but with a very clear statement that comments of that nature are completely unacceptable. It was agreed that this is what we should do and two of the people who were copied into that email thanked me and seemed happy with the outcome.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 105 Comments
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