love your enthusiasm forrest

but a note of caution re the members is indicated
many may not be what they pretend to be

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/18/revealed-air-force-ordered-software-to-manage-army-of-fake-virtual-people/

seems they can even arrange divergent service providers etc
the thing is ..we may not know ..all the unknown knowns

but glad your doing what you do
its only when we [real people]..give up ..that we loose
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrpfvHm1D78

anyhow the time of unknown knowns
is fast becomming known by re-nown

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php

http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/

http://rt.com/usa/news/jpmorgan-profiting-hungry-americans-usa/
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/bahrain-protesters-swarm-square-police.html

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/eu-farming-subsidies-for-royal-family.html

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/scientists-suns-approaching-grand.html

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/retired-usaf-pilot-col-guy-s-razer-says.html

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/treasonanddisloyalty.php

and still nothing changes
isnt the media serving the beast well

once we loose our blogs were dead
get behind grayham folks

for less than ..the cost of a cup of coffe a month
give till the pain ends

http://revolutionarypolitics.com/?p=4742
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=13996

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/the-cultural-boycott-either-youre-with-us-or-youre-not/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-protest-signs-at-the-wisconsin-capitol

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-20/iceland-president-blocks-bill-guaranteeing-5-billion-u-k-dutch-deposits.html

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=74

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/activists-around-the-world-are-way-ahead-of-the-u-s.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

could it really be
that were in hell
but dont know it yet?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsv8vJ45hWNxvco5tgcPE_iHt6dQ?docId

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/02/20/william-cook-%E2%80%9Cwe-the-forgotten-people-of-the-united-states-%E2%80%9D/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358829/Obama-accused-double-standards-family-holiday-telling-Americans-to.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97jdftiLk4g

http://uruknet.com/?p=m75165&hd=&size=1&l=e

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/9-11secretservice.html

http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20110220-264477.html

http://toryardvaark.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/global-panic-as-green-sector-crashes-and-burns/

oh heck whats the use

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/18/us-usa-globalwarming-fraud-idUSTRE71H7Q020110218

its all a ponzi sceme..[ah'la berni/maddof and enron]
but why do we chose to forget?

http://dailybail.com/home/michael-crichton-annihilates-al-gore-and-global-warming.html

http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/bbc-dead-water-attack-uss-liberty-1of7

Graham Young said, in the third-last paragraph of the article, speaking as to the background to the founding of OLO,:

"I believed that the Internet opened up
a huge opportunity for doing politics and
governance better than we used to. On Line
Opinion, and various blogs in the blogosphere,
are part of that better way, but they don’t
have a long-term future without financial support."

IMO an important part of 'doing politics and governance better' is the holding to public account of the merit of policies and the performance of public officials. To do that, there needs to exist a public record. With respect to a record of public opinion, GrahamY says:

"On Line Opinion is an open platform for ideas. We have
a larger audience than any other Australian opinion site
outside the mainstream media because we offer diversity
and quality, and because we treat our readers with respect,
promoting equality as a core value."

I have already touched, in my post of Friday, 18 February 2011 at 4:51:38 PM, upon the threat posed to continued public access to the record of public opinion constituted by the OLO archive of articles and posts made to date, by the loss of revenue that would keep OLO going in accordance with its founding principles.

An archive can be valuable not only from what it CONTAINS, but also, in the context of internet information access, for the standing record it may constitute as to REMOVAL from the public domain of potentially important evidence as to performance, or failure in performance, in relation to governance. One such instance of apparent removal from public view of referenced information is, for example, recorded in relation to flood mitigation and water storage in the Brisbane River catchment.

In Australian politics as it has been done up until the present, the suppression of 'inconvenient truths', or the public promotion of policies different from those favoured by the incredibly small number of persons having effective input into policy formation by political parties, has been all too easy.

OLO poses a threat to that.

Is this the start of some good news on the advertising front for OLO?

This is a twitpic of a screenshot taken this morning while reading the article 'Bias at the national broadcaster is as easy as ABC',
( http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11658 ):

http://twitpic.com/42ocvg

I think the Defence advertising budget is already getting bang for its buck from placement on OLO. I will be referring the content of the DSD ad to a hot prospect later today.




There is a most relevant article posted on OLO today that touches upon the subject of much of this thread, to which I have already given the link. Worth a read.

FG, by analogy with the ABC incident are you suggesting OLO took appropriate action regarding complaints about offensive comments posted, or that it didn't go far enough?

Michael.

MikeyBear,

The analogy I draw with the ABC publicly funded blog incident is twofold. The first aspect is to do with the range of viewpoints tolerated on The Drum contrasted with OLO. Marc Hendrickx has asserted that a bias exists on The Drum blog that is adverse to the presentation of views sceptical of AGW. This contrasts with the publication by OLO of articles both pro and con with respect to gay marriage, a discernible matter of fact to anyone perusing the OLO index pages.

The second aspect is as to the manner in which a comment which made assertions that erred seriously as to matters of fact was eventually removed from The Drum, contrasted with comments made on OLO which did not err as to matters of fact and/or were expressions (however unpalatable to some, or indeed many) of opinion, that were not removed.

The irony is that a comment was eventually able to be removed even from a site able to be seen as somewhat biased, that of The Drum, by procedures that did not immediately threaten the financial viability of that site. By contrast, on a site that displayed provable balance in the publication of both pro and con views on an issue, immediate action was taken against its financial viablity whilst pursuit of the removal of comments felt to be offensive was not followed up in a manner that would have allowed the OLO administration time to deal with those comments themselves, nor was recourse made to other legal remedies available.

In the light of the terms agreed under which persons use OLO (set out on the 'Legals' page, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/display.asp?page=legal ), yes, OLO took appropriate action regarding allegedly offensive comments.

However, it should be born in mind that it was never the comments that were at the heart of this contention. It was, ostensibly, the very fact of publication of the Muehlenberg article. I say 'ostensibly' because it is my opinion that that article provided a convenient smokescreen for a commercial/corporate law enforcement play aimed at removing a competitor, OLO, from the advertising placement market.

You're stretching the truth FG:

"However, it should be born in mind that it was never the comments that were at the heart of this contention"

The complaint, as Gregory Storer has quite clearly stated:

http://gregory.storer.com.au/?p=286

"So, I sent a very upfront email to Graham Young, expressing my feelings and saying that I intended to raise awareness with the advertisers on his site about the sort of comments they were supporting. The full exchange can be found here.

After it was clear that Young was not interested in pulling the comments I then wrote to IBM and ANZ."

was about the presence of a *comment*:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/show-post-article.asp?comment=190365

and *not* about the article by Muehlenberg. That is irrefutable according to the email chain between Gregory Storer and Graham Young. Follow?

You can read the email exchange between Gregory and Graham here:

http://gregory.storer.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Email-Exhcange-Online-Opinion.pdf

As for the response from OLO, according to you:

"In the light of the terms agreed under which persons use OLO (set out on the 'Legals' page, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/display.asp?page=legal ), yes, OLO took appropriate action regarding allegedly offensive comments."

That's highly subjective and given the tone of the comment posted and the potential for distress and vilification arising from it, which clearly isn't a matter that you're prepared to show an iota of empathy on, I would say that there has been no goodwill or professionalism shown on Graham Young's part here. He has left an extremely sour taste in many people's mouths, and tarnished the reputation of this site.

Arising out of this situation are the unsubstantiated and untrue claims that myself and Gregory Storer have had it in for On Line Opinion from the outset (or at any subsequent stage), and that we have orchestrated a campaign to destroy the site and it's financial income.

It's unfortunate that so many want to judge without evidence on this matter and are prepared to believe lies and mistruths propagated on this site and elsewhere about myself and Gregory Storer.

Michael.