Policywonk's MN rep at 'Commentariat vs Bloggertariat: who's winning?'

[GeraldineMumsnet]

It's on Monday evening and the panel line-up is: David Aaronovitch (Times commentator), Martin Bright (New Deal of the Mind founder, and blogger), Iain Dale (political blogger and publisher), Mick Fealty (political blogger) and Anne Spackman (Times' comment editor).

Any points you'd like PW to make on your behalf?

Folks can of course always choose not to see stickies in customise Talk...

We're going to unsticky this one now, in favour of Daisy Goodwin who's on tomorrow. (Won't surprise you to know she's not paying though).

Who's Daisy Goodwin?

You'll post here to let us know how it goes, won't you policywonk? It is an interesting set of issues.

"But I take the point about clarity and maybe we should add a sponsored by button to all paid-for webchats so you know which ones are and which aren't (it's about 50-50)?"

Really 50-50 of the webcasts are paid for? I thought Mumsnet only had people who were a good fit and captured the Mumsnet zeitgeist- by parents for parents?

It is surprising, isn't it Swedes. Though I suppose you could make the point that the payers are all businesses -- you wouldn't expect them to have free access to the talkboard on the same terms as, say, a zeitgeisty charity.

But Swedes they're not mutually exclusive! We rule out about 2/3rds of chats on the basis that they don't work for us...
So really it's 50% of 30% ie 15%!

I suppose the disturbing thing is that 50% of the livechats have been bought, zeitgeisty or otherwise. In an intuitive sense that makes them adverts. Naturally you aren't going to take adverts that don't fit with the Mumsnet brand -- because you respect the community's shared values, but also because Mumsnet is itself a brand and for commercial reasons you need to preserve its brand identity.

The depressing thing is the lack of clarity. There isn't the distinction I had imagined between talk on the one hand, and the adverts funding the talk on the other hand.

Well I just had a flick throu the first 3 pages and didn't see any direct antisemitisim either - and as you all know I am Israels bulldog these days

That list you posted MP was pretty generic - they could have been describing anyone they thought petty or silly (which I am not saying they were - I have no opinioin on the matter).

Wittering, as long as people are entertained, who cares? We live in a commercial world now, we depend on capital growth for our quality of lives. I will be sure to know if I join a thread on Waitrose that it may well have been started as part of a 'viral' ad campaign. This is part of our culture now. It's not all bad.

andof course the ad/editorial content has always been fuzzy in magazines, though its usually always weighetd towards the ad

That's absolutely true about fashion mags I suppose -- that most of the copy is more or less advert-driven in one way or another. Good point. I'd been thinking of the bloggertariat vs. commentariat thing in terms of web forums vs newspapers, and the reliability or otherwise of the content in each. Perhaps the proper parallel for MN is more the fashion mag thing.

I did only go as far as MP's lists - will have a further look.

Don't think there is a problem with two discussions happening at once on this thread.

I have scanned up to page 14 and still not really seen any explicity racism, IMHO.

Belittling religion (any religion), making fun of it, exclaming FFS, offending people by doing these things is not racism or antisemitism. No one has exclaimed 'death to the jews', made references to money lenders, Zionist conspracy - so far, if these come later then yes, things are becoming racist (sic).

And I think LisaLisa's post about tolerence on MN for other religions is disengenuous. Rev has had some pretty robust debates on here, as have I on Islamism.

The right to offend if part of free speech. As is the right to ridicule. What isn't is the right to single out people from races or creeds as 'rats' or 'pigs' who should be exterminated. That is hate speech, not 'FFS'. There is still enough of this real anti-semitism around for us to be able to distinguish it from what was on that thread.

You can still argue with 'ffs' and the 'oi's' and say they are cheap and distatesful - especially the latter, but they don't constitute antisemetism imho.

Do you think it might be better to start another thread for this?

Yes another thread definitely. Where's policy? I'm on tenterhooks wondering whether the commentariat or the bloggertariat are winning?

Too many question marks

Perhaps it went to extra time and then penalties.
They might still be at it.

Oh yes, Wittering. The away supporters are invading the pitch, while PW tries to calm things down with her whistle and a plate of orange-quarters.

David Aaronovitch slips a quick ad hominem point into the corner of the net. The Waitrose fish bloggers complain that anything caught in a net should be disallowed because of the threat to dolphins.

The crowd holds its breath ...