Stuff I’ve seen May 20th through May 31st

These are my links for May 20th through May 31st:

mySociety » Blog Archive » What the government doesn’t understand about the Internet, and what to do about it – take a look for a moment at Wikipedia, MoneySavingExpert, Blogger or Match.com – all big websites, all doing different things. Each one, however, is in its own way is reducing the ability of large, previously well functioning institutions to function as easily. These services are reducing traditional institutions ability to charge for information, seize big consumer surpluses, limit speech or fix marriages. It has, in other words, become harder to be a big business, newspaper, repressive institution or religion. Nor is this traditional ‘creative destruction’ going on in a normal capitalist economy: this isn’t about one widget manufacturer replacing another, this is about a newspaper business dying and being replaced by no one single thing, and certainly nothing recognisable as a newspaper business.

I’m not a tw*t — Getgood Guide – Nicky on why volunteer run very local media isn’t the territory of lunatics: I’m not mad (eccentric yes, mad no). I’m not a liar (too much Catholic guilt for that). Most importantly, I’m Not Stupid. I actually don’t think I’m that unusual in being Not Stupid. A lot of bloggers are Not Stupid enough to realise filling a blog with personal gripes, neighbourhood wars, scurrilous rumours and conjecture makes for a miserable read and isn’t going to get them or their blog very far.

Is this useful? An account of how I started blogging and how it changed my journalism | Joanna Geary – I had no more ownership over content or news than they did and, in fact, it was my responsibility, as supposedly employed to be “the eyes and ears of the people” to consult them about what I was doing.

Community sites ‘ain’t afraid of no trolls’ « Talk About Local – Tom Steinberg once said that that, on the web;‘If you don’t want a fight, don’t set up a boxing ring and invite people in‘.Good community sites follow this maxim and create a climate in which people don’t get abusive. Traditional newspaper websites of course don’t – by setting up a story as a ‘controversial issue’, you invite people to have a scrap.