Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The following list is not intended to be exhaustive:

What if ...? Solving the Iran stand-off (Craig Rowley ) published 9 February 2007: 1629 comments

Cease fire!... (Craig Rowley) published 14 August 2006: 1370 comments

The irises and Patrick Fitzgerald (Kerryn Higgs) published 27 October 2005: 829 comments

Perverts in the shrubbery (Paul Walter) published 24 May 2008: 524 comments

Confronting Islam (Solomon Wakeling) published 9 November 2006: 454 comments

Is New Orleans the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq? (Stephen Smith) published 5 September 2005: 435 comments

“They hate us for our values” (Bob Wall) published 20 March 2006: 410 comments

Morality without a God (David Roffey) published 19 January 2007: 405 comments

US Economy: Rudderless and reeling from direct hits (Guest Contributor) published 19 September 2008: 373 comments

What’s changed about me? (Irfan Yusuf) published 3 January 2006: 325 comments

Exposing intelligent design (Phil Uebergang) published 6 September 2005: 308 comments

What an interesting couple of posts, I have hung around Webdiary for a number of years and thought it rather elitist in content and comment on many occasions, which gets very boring. I got accused of repeating myself by some of the elitists here, yet it's very hard do anything else when the subjects are the same, get the same tired ideological biased replies and feature the same old illusionary stances they always do with small semantic changes and empty bureaucratic, politically correct style babble. I've seen a number of sites collapse because of the fervent ideology and bias by those moderating and editing, the only ones who seem to survive are those who are open to difference and are prepared to debate it in subject, rather than just scoff and dismiss it because it doesn't fit their narrow ideological stance. Most Webdiary subjects are very boring presently and meaningless to the real world, any interesting threads, no one seems to get involved in. Maybe it's their programming which refuses to let them think freely and not dogmatically. If journalist students are submitting these threads, then it does appear journalism has sunk to meaningless semantic waffle. I don't read news papers any more, the grammar spelling and semantic make up is pathetic and on many occasions doesn't represent the truth of what is being reported, but a weird distortion. I hope Webdiary continues, but it does need an editorial and direction change. I think a good way to boost it is to open up the number of posts per day and moderate after posting, so the flow of discussion continues unbroken, unlike as it currently tends to do. By the time something you've posted is put up, it could be the next day or so and the reply may be only useful and relevant at the time and not out of sequence with the conversation. So why bother.

Scott: Alga, editorial resources are pretty thin but I know what you're saying.

This comment is rather long. I submitted it as a threadstarter two weeks ago but received no response from the Management Team. So now I am putting it on as a comment, in line with Webdiary’s policy of free speech and transparency.

It appears to me that Webdiary is now in a terminal decline; a fate I do not welcome. If a rescue is to be attempted, the decline must be understood. I believe this can best be done in the context of the evolution and fate of many community blogs.

Webdiary was set up by Margo Kingston as a discussion site, utilising resources made available by the Sydney Morning Herald, where it was an extension of the opinion pages and Letters to the Editor. From the paper’s perspective, diversity, discussion and controversy were Webdiary’s lifeblood. However, over its history as an independent site, its contributors of threadstarters and comments have diminished in numbers and gravitated towards a uniformity of outlook on major issues. Inevitably, on any of these, there is a majority position and a minority one, with those taking the majority position on any one issue having a high correlation across the spectrum on each. In other words, knowing one commenter’s opinion on one topic gives you a high predictive power of that commenter’s position on them all. The division has been mainly over the following, with majority opinion indicated [thus]:

1. The Howard Government and all its works. [Against]
2. President George W Bush [Against]
3. The Iraq War. [Against]
4. Climate Change [For high priority response]
5. The War on Terror, Guantanamo, Halliburton etc bundle.  [Against]
6. Hicks, Haneef and terrorism trials [Support for Hicks; skepticism re AFP and outcomes of trials]
7. Asylum seekers. [For greater ease of admission]
8. The Financial Meltdown [Corporate world responsible]
9. Indigenous issues [Against  intervention]
10. Religion [Against]
11. Israel/Palestinian conflict [Against Israel]
12. Uranium mining and sales of uranium [Against]
13. Iranian government statements [Defensive]
14. ABC and media [Support outlets and ‘left-wing’ journalist opinion in line with the above]
15. Bill Henson’s art [For liberal approach to]

On the Web, there is considerable blog variety, and some excellent sites via which one blogger posts to the world, sometimes with and sometimes without reader commentary being invited. The best all-in bunfights are found at sites such as Comment is Free, which is run by The Guardian. They are typically maintained by newspapers, and as we have noted, Webdiary started as one of those, then went independent. Its greatest present challenge is to maintain a genuine controversy with maximum diversity of viewpoints, and to be a polyculture as opposed to a monoculture. In that it is failing, unlike many newspaper in-house blogs.

Webdiary’s raison d’etre is policy; that is political discussion. It decides nothing. It has a statement of ethics and guidelines for discussion, and editors whose proper role is to moderate the discussion and to prevent it from descending to exchange of personal abuse. But its current editorial staff are of like political mind on most of the issues listed, which commenters of differing opinion soon detect, through the editors’ own comments, their editorial footnotes, or through their own submitted threads or posts. Non-conforming editors are unlikely to last long, and the most persistent dissenters among the commentariat seem to be there only for the purpose of baiting the old guard, in other words, for ‘trolling’. It would be far better for the site if they went beyond mere comment, and put up some threadstarters of their own.

The site has no by-laws, charter or constitution, and its only assets are its participants and its archive. Though there is always much in contemporary politics to discuss, those participants have their own collective preference. Naturally, some threads generate more comment than others; and the most memorable have been the most controversial. The debate organized in 2005 by Phil Ubergang on ‘Intelligent Design’ was the greatest comment generator of all. More recently, we had the Henson issue, in which opinion divided as much according to the sex of commenters as their politics.
 
The purpose of life is life, and the purpose of Webdiary is comment. The ‘more the better’ is taken for granted. There is nothing wrong with that, but the challenge is to keep it all interesting to the readers. Unfortunately for Webdiary, the election of the Rudd government took away its main issue. Much previous discussion and comment was about bashing the Howard regime, particularly relating to the first seven policy items, including the Iraq War, climate change and asylum seekers/refugees. Only the last item in the above list (ie #15) has no relevance to ex-PM Howard. The same effect was seen on November 4, when George Bush was replaced by Barack Obama. That change will meet with approval from all but a very small handful of present Webdiary commenters.

The task of the editors in the post Howard era has become the finding of new material to put up as threadstarters for the same old crowd to comment on. As the latter are only human, the scope of the comments, if not their detail, has become decreasingly novel.  When editors themselves choose and/or contribute many of the threads, and then submit and approve their own comments, the site risks taking on the shape of any of the thousands of personal blogs out there, where disagreement tends to be resented. The danger is consequent perception of favouritism and bias on the part of individual editors. Some people have quit the site in the past two years over this.

It would seem prudent for editors not to involve themselves in approving comments on threads in which they have strong views themselves, but resources do not permit this. At the very least however it would be wise for them to refrain from personal comment and intervention between other Webdiarists who are in disagreement on such threads. There is a perception on the part of a number of commenters that the editorial role has moved beyond moderation and into censorship. Whatever its foundation, this is not a good development.

Gradually and for some of the above reasons, most commenters with differing viewpoints, and those who have sought to bring some diversity to the site have left. Attempts to bring and encourage diversity have failed, and the remaining old guard tirelessly bat the ball back to the two or three ideological dissenters or fall back on humour and chat room exchanges. It appears that the few less ideologically bound contributors value Webdiary mainly as a social connector. Indeed, lasting off site friendships have been made this way. A few old hands drop in from time to time to join in the chatroom experience, while others deplore it.

Clearly the site is no longer one where one would go to find in-depth and novel input, and the small group of remaining commenters shows restrained interest in either presenting or commenting on pieces that fall outside the framework of those listed.  The recent and potentially valuable exercise of publishing course pieces by journalism students has not to date resulted in any change in direction of the site, or in a broadening of its contributor base. While the students have put up some threads, they have not engaged in comment exchanges and the established commenters are not engaging with the students in any depth. They may do so in future if those students graduate and become seriously involved in online journalism. Without such broader involvement it is inevitable that narrowing content streams and range of voices in the Webdiary commentariat will make it an increasingly incestuous site. Never was that more apparent than it has been over the past year as the number of commenters has contracted and their breadth of opinion with it.

So for a glimpse into the site’s future, we might turn to another community blog, namely LastSuperpower. It has the following history and record:

topics [= Webdiary threadstarters]  362; 
replies [= Webdiary comments] 3,983;
views [visitors] 4,068,098.

It was opened for online business on 23 November 2004 by some former Monash Maoists, who were breaking away from the mainstream Marxist left over the Iraq War. It is now archived, and is at http://archive.lastsuperpower.net/members/+disc+members.htm

Its first piece was The Emperor’s New Clothes http://archive.lastsuperpower.net/members/+disc+members+737130529836.htm

Its new site is Strange Times  http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/

Like Christianity and Islam, Marxism as a philosophy and guide to action has developed many variants. Though from the outset it was never one doctrine, there remains the old observation that ‘it’ is actually a religion. This idea has been greatly resented by those inside all of its many schools or orders, but cannot be dismissed lightly. Leninism was such a school, and Stalin founded another order based on it. Mao founded a Chinese order, but while in dispute with Stalin saw fit to adopt much of his authoritarian method. The Monash Maoists were inspired by Mao, and took his side in his dispute with Stalin’s successor, Khruschev.

LastSuperpower was a party line on the Net; in both senses and literally. So it appears, is Strange Times, which has no time for the climate change alarmists (of whom incidentally I am one) and which sides with their opponents, the denialists.  As most denialists hail from the right of the political spectrum, and have been critical of a perceived leftist and anti-enterprise stance on the part of the Greens and their ilk toward the wealth-creation activities of the deserving rich, this involves an approving stance towards many on the right, eg the blogger Jennifer Morohasy. But that is not important. What is important is that, like the Church after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, they have the line worked out, speak with one voice, and brook no internal dissent; which is testified to by the fact that there isn’t any.

At present Webdiary is in danger of becoming just such a monoculture, because it is not attractive to the minority viewpoint within its own context, and because of the decreasing breadth of that context.  Even within it, the danger is not that newcomers with a differing political, religious or social viewpoint will be disagreed with, or have their opinions attacked, but that they will be told by the old guard in a thousand subtle and otherwise ways that they are not welcome; unless of course they fall in with the mainstream of what is becoming a mutual agreement society. The greatest danger is that the typical newcomer will act on that information, and go elsewhere, leaving the site to atrophy, and those still populating it to sit around nodding their heads in agreement, with all issues settled. Except perhaps for some minor points on which whatever trifle needs resolution before the council is closed. Like the one at Nicaea long before it.

A sectarian site will resent intrusion of opinion that does not conform to the prevailing norm or ‘party line’. The boundary between moderation and censorship will become blurred, and diversity will not be valued for itself. The more difficult the moral issues over which that diversity forms, such as the Henson business, the greater the temptation will be on the part of some to cut the Gordian knot by switching to personal abuse of the (troublemaking).individuals seen to be to blame for it. When editors themselves fall into that trap, approving boundary-crossing comments of their own while simultaneously applying a different standard to the rest of the Webdiary community, over whom they retain editing and publishing privileges, the outcome is pretty inevitable. Contributors subject to this tend to vote with their feet.
 
Such a site can expect to repeat the history of LastSuperpower, which was launched with great enthusiasm only to fizzle out and be permanently archived about five years later.

I first became involved in Webdiary in 2003 with a piece submitted to Margo Kingston on the Iraq War, and have contributed numerous articles and comments since. I have considerable affection for the site, but my interest in it has waned in recent times. This piece points to some of the reasons for that, and offers only a general prescription for a cure. But though the site legally belongs to Margo, and is administered by the Manager and the editorial team, without the Webdiarists themselves and their good will towards it, it will become nothing.

I avoid it when I can, Paul Walter; things going wrong are difficult enough, without my stirring up emotion to compound it.  I try to keep emotion out of disruptions.

The men in my life were strong enough to say:  "dear oh dear oh dear."...and that includes some now in their 20s, who perceive a man's strength to lie in his ability to control of himself.  Not a popular viewpoint these days.

I'm not as good as them. I told lies.  I say "bugger" these days, but, more usually "damn" or "blast".  Most usually nothing - I've learned to separate emotion from an incident, so expletives unnecessary.  Not that I think that those words are superior to "fuck" - as I said, habit .

.. certain recorded foul-mouthed conversations between Jeff Kennett and some other leading liberal luminary, do I not?   There was a stage where "fuck" was a sign of being both tough,  avant garde, and a rejector of bourgeoise values:  and this certainly crossed political boundaries. And still does. And was much embraced by the "upper" class, and the creative class, and still is.

I don't swear, partly because I'm not interested in what is fashionable, (as swearing definitely is).  And, because of the era that I grew up in.  No kudos:  habit.  My father was in WW1, (yes, 1), worked on ships, in logging camps, in the outback.  I never heard him say a word as harsh as "damn" or "darn". ...ok, he was educated. He said that, as they marched through France, they sang, "Corned beef and blooming lumps of fat" to the tune of "The Anvil Chorus".  Can this be true, or did he clean up "blooming" for his daughters?  I believe that it is true, in that I believe that he thought that he was fighting for civilisation.

My children came across almost no foul language until they went to prestigious private church schools.

You see?  To me, it's "foul"....a bit of a cliche, ok.

However, in some respects I disagree with Jenny Hume.  

Once, certainly when I was young, "fuck" was so obscene, so powerful, that its rare graffiti, around railway stations usually, was akin to an actual sexual assault. I cannot convey how powerful and offensive it was.

Simon and Garfunkel portrayed this shadowy ,deviant , disturbing attack  in their song "A Poem On the Underground Wall."

..."a single worded poem comprised of four letters

And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding

The poem across the tracks rebounding

Shadowed by the exit light

His legs take their ascending flight

To seek the breast of darkness annd be suckled by the night".

Usage has drained "fuck's" power.  It's now just another word. It is no longer a deviant's tool.  I applaud this.

I respectfully submit that if Webdiary has a policy of not printing the F word expletive that it be applied in all its forms. It is a word that may well have wider acceptance in some circles of society today but by no means all, and it is still deemed by the courts to be an offensive word. It is a word that is traditionally associated with disrespect and commonly sprayed around by drunken hoons and other low life who use it to amplify their total lack of respect for any social norms or for other people.  Such then usually also accompany it with the up you finger salute. 

As Margo said, if you would not talk to each other over the dinner table like that, then don't do it here. Most of the people I know, in all professions, social circles, and generally would very rarely ever use the word. Why? I suggest because most people still believe it reduces standards in social discourse and is disrespectful to the person to or at whom it is being directed or is abusive, be it conveyed verbally or in writing.

If someone posted a comment to me on any blogsite which was headed  Jenny, fuck off, then I would not bother posting on that site again. on the basis that it was a site where normal standards of civility and decency were clearly not valued.

The word, in all its form, either in full, or with those ridiculous asterisks which do nothing to disguise the intent of the writer,  is totally unnecessary and I am sure that those who want to express ire, frustration  or disgust or whatever other feeling or emotion they think the F word embodies for them, could, if they used their imagination and their rich English language, find a suitable alternative.

Objection has been raised to the use of frolic as a substitute. Well I think a post headed Jenny, frolic off  is far better than one headed  Jenny, fuck off. But neither are particularly edifying and if anything are simply abusive.   

Well that is what I think anyway. Now I am going to not, eff off, nor frolic off, but simply sign off for the day, and enjoy the gentle falling rain that I can hear on the old tin roof. No I revise that - the drumming of an army. the steady soaking rain.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Anybody get the impression that the students have an assignment due soon.

Well done.  Remember the Duncan maxim: "That which may become unnecessary to do tomorrow need not be done today." 

...that a lot of impugning of character, where the person rather than their argument is attacked, has crept in lately.

Richard:  That being the case, a gentle reminder forWebdiarists to play the ball, not the player.

Webdiary is also a place — or becoming a place — where people without much distinction can present themselves to the world as marvellous, while dismissing others of similarly little distinction as "dills".

A place too where little coteries of like-minded nonentities can gather together in little cliques to protect each other from well-deserved ridicule. And when they get desperate, conspire to exclude those who refuse to join them in their attempts to dumb the site down to their level.

It wasn't always thus. Only time will tell where it will end up.

What is Webdiary and what should it be?  Well it seems it will be whatever it will be and what we who bother to write for it, are allowed by the editors to make it. For me:

It is a place where serious issues are discussed - politely and not so politely. 

It is a place where people tell stories, of their life and the lives of others, boring some, but uplifting and amusing others.

It is a place where poets long dead, or still alive, can get a free plug.

It is a place for fun, and a place of to express sorrow.

It is a place for music and musicians, a place for cooks of fluffy morags and a place for those cannot boil an egg.

It is a place for sharing ideas, philosophies and political views.

It is a place where history is relived, revised or interpreted to suit the writer's purpose.

It is a place for the bright and the not so bright, the educated and the not so educated, the old and the not so old, to come together and share - whatever. 

It is a place for wowsers and self-appointed drunks.

It is a place for cockies and a place for the faces in the street..

It is a place to try and expose the truth and the lies.

It is in fact just a living place in cyber space and it is a place where no one has to come or if they do and don't like what they see, are not compelled to stay.  

Well, that's what I think anyway.

Bloggers have discovered that proffering conspiracy theories is a very good way of looking wise to the ways of the world while being utterly ignorant.

Some of the comments exhibited plain paranoia. There's plenty of that on the blogs; paranoia about certain journalists, certain newspapers, paranoia about certain pollsters, paranoia about Catholics taking over civil society, paranoia about (yes) Zionists and paranoia about US government conspiracies.

The remainder of the 64 comments were general denunciations of the blogger's pet hate, the mainstream media, otherwise known as the dreaded MSM.

The sheer fact it's mainstream, though, means it must offer two crucial elements missing from the world of the blogs. They are balance and fact.

Christian Kerr in the Australian.

Are you sick of only hearing about Federal politics from political journalists. Would you rather get an insight from a government insider. Well, you've come to the right place. Hillary Bray is one of two sexes: male or female. He/she has definitely worked for the Howard government and may still do - we're not saying. This is his/her first column for Crikey.

Money talks if you want balance and fact: Christian Kerr or Hillary Bray says we should read the Australian. Yes, that right - the dreaded MSM. Christian Kerr, a former liberal staffer and journalist for Crikey, says the mainstream media is balanced and factual just because it is mainstream. Come on Christian, this must be the joke of the year.

I think I will stick to Webdiary. I know for a fact if I show any bias or an incorrect fact someone will put me straight quick smart. We have auto correct Alan Curran, Paul Morrella, Eliot Ramsey. Thanks fellas for keeping us honest.

The mainstream media has no monopoly on balance or fact.

Getting convention credentials for her blog, a news site for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, was the easy part. As air fare, lodging and incidentals began piling up, paying for the trip to Denver became the bigger obstacle.

For Ms. Spaulding, 45, who works full time as an IT manager at Duke University Press in Durham, N.C., blogging is her passion, an unpaid hobby she pursues at nights and on weekends. So she called on her 5,500 daily readers to help raise funds: “Send the Blend to Denver” reads the ChipIn widget on her blog’s home page that tracks donations from readers; so far they have pledged more than $5,000 to transport Ms. Spaulding and three other bloggers to the convention.

As Webdiary continues to grow, funding will always be an issue. It is encouraging to see bloggers developing fund raising ideas elsewhere. Move over Packer and Murdoch - the era of political blogging is here.

I’m at a loss. Is first, or personal name Liying, or Zhang, or?   

Liying sounds right, but I don’t think I ever understood the Chinese name procedure, though people spent no end of effort in trying to teach me.   

Whatever, let me an occasional contributor to Webdiary, wish you welcome.  A new person, new view of the world, knowledge of an area we don’t know, or certainly do not know well.     

I am sure that those who want can learn much from your contributions
You wrote:
    ‘There are historical, political and cultural reasons which could hardly be explained in few words and understood by people from western background. But things are changing. China is opening to the world, economically and politically. There are still a lot of problems in most aspects of the society, among which population is the biggest and root one. What Chinese people need from the rest of the world is tolerance. What China need most from itself is time and time again.’
 
    There are still a lot of problems in most aspects of the society..     What Chinese people need from the rest of the world is tolerance. What China need most from itself is time and time again.’   

Written like this, it applies equally to Australia and the US, both, though  there are a good many who would deny the fact.   

You will find some who see China a threat, or potential threat.  Others who are interested how China is managing and see China as no more than another country struggling to muddle its way through, as is everybody else.        

Again welcome!  I hope we see you here often.

Hi, Richard, how to post a new entry rather than a comment under other entries? Sorry for this stupid question from entry-level me. :) 

Ian M (ed): Liying, I have asked Richard to respond to your request. I look forward to seeing your new entry, which I assume is what we here would call a 'thread-starter'.

David R: but for future reference of others, the process for submitting a new entry can be found by clicking on the "Write for Webdiary" link at the right of the page ... 

On August 1, one week before the Olympic Games, China President Hu Jintao accepted a joint interview by more than 20 international media. The following day, most of those media commented that Mr Hu smiled from time to time and showed “generous self-confidence”.  They described that he was wearing a black suit and white shirt with red tie, with a pair of gold-wire-edged glasses.

I was interested by these comments which seem impossible to be written by Chinese domestic media.  In China, Political leaders are always reported in an over-formal and over-serious way.  But in fact, they seem to be closer to people when they are figured as a human being rather than a mysterious figure.

As a typical Chinese (though I once have been a journalist for several years), I have a blurring impression about the highest leaders of the Chinese government when it refers to their personal life and their personalities. How many children do they have? What are their spouses’ names? Where do they live? Do they have pets? Their hobbies? and etc.   

It was the second time that President Hu Jintao accepted this kind of joint interviews as far as I could figure out. There are historical, political and cultural reasons which could hardly be explained in few words and understood by people from western background. But things are changing. China is opening to the world, economically and politically. There are still a lot of problems in most aspects of the society, among which population is the biggest and root one. What Chinese people need from the rest of the world is tolerance. What China need most from itself is time and time again.

Richard:  Xiexie Liying Zhang.  Welcome to Webdiary.   Where are you writing from?