A thought on the comments about the "quality" of articles.

Perhaps yet another tab for articles by developing authors. Maybe one where authors could be identified by an OLO alias's rather than requiring a real name. The General page gives opportunity to raise issues but the word limits on the opening post preclude putting up an article unless it's done in installments as was Gibo's life story.

A lower level of writing skill could be accepted on the "Developing Authors" tab subject to the author committing to take part in the ensuing discussion, and attempting to take on board constructive feedback on their writing etc. Some posters have pet topics(wheelbarrows) which are never really explained and which the posters lack the confidence to to write an article for the main articles section.

R0bert

The main "relevance" problem for OLO is the tiny, tiny amount of "contribution" traffic the forums receive.

This forum is definitely relevant.....but the truth may hurt, it's only relevant for those who participate. It's not healthy to spend too much time on internet discussion forums. There's many hundreds of thousands of them in cyberspace. It's the "new addiction", for which some people are seeking treatment.

If relevance is measured by size, my gut feeling is OLO's readership is small compared to the more traditional news outlets and so OLO isn't particularly relevant. I rather like it that way. Its small size means there isn't that much competition in the editorial queue. Anybody who has got something to say can say it. This means the quality of the articles is uneven, but in exchange you see a very broad range of views so you get to hear from every die hard conservative, not just Andrew Bolt, and from every liberal greenie - not just the most extreme. If OLO makes it, it will bigger. Its popularity will draw more established writers, and it won't be the soapbox for the common man any more. Pity.

Which raises the question how is OLO going. They is a fair on the users page.

Here are the users that:
- joined (posted this year but not last year),
- % change on people who joined last year,
- left (posted during the year, but not at the end),
- % changed on people who left last year,
- Active (posted in Nov & Dec)
- % change on people who were active last year.

2004 Joined:0208,100% Left:0119,100% Active:0208,100%
2005 Joined:1810,+88% Left:1362,+91% Active:1899,+89%
2006 Joined:2083,+13% Left:1906,+29% Active:2620,+27%
2007 Joined:1878,-11% Left:1955,+03% Active:2592,-01%
2008 Joined:0901,-99% Left:1007,-95% Active:1538,-68%

This doesn't tell us how many people read OLO, but assuming it tracks people posted the a comment the number seems stable right now.

The turnover in posters is large. Of 6884 people registered 901 posted this year and only 531 posted this month. After the initial inrush it appears only 10% of new posters hang around. So we opinionated blow-hards are a small minority, but I guess we all knew that.

Most posts in total:
5604 BOAZ_David
2414 Yabby
2390 Col Rouge
2252 R0bert
2174 Pericles

Most posts in 2008:
1032 BOAZ_David
980 Foxy
817 CJ Morgan
776 People Against Live Exports & Intensive Farming
767 Col Rouge
711 Yabby
..
446 R0bert (14th)
...
420 Perciles (17th)

You are a remarkably consistent lot.

A lot of people here seem to be happy with simply discussion of opinions, rather than finding out the truth of our situation and how it's exploited by corrupt groups.....fair enough. But for those who care about society a little more than that, I want to say that opinions are decidedly not equal when it comes to truth or accuracy.

Some might like to read this because a lot of people suffer from this disorder to pretend they are morally superior:

-=-==-=-=
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whycentrism

""Centrism" is the tendency to see two different beliefs and attempt to split the difference between them. The reason why it's a bad idea should be obvious: truth is independent of our beliefs, no less than any other partisans, centrists ignore evidence in favor of their predetermined ideology.

So what's the attraction? First, it requires little thought: arguing for a specific position requires collecting evidence and arguing for it. Centrism, simply requires repeating some of what A is saying and some of what B is saying and mixing them together. Centrists often don't even seem to care if the bits they take contradict each other."

-=-==-=

This is a rather large problem in all societies obviously. Here in Australia we aren't helped by our corrupt media and our politicians who can't or won't lead due to personal cowardice and/or the personal profit in being a populist amongst an expanding base of people who think centrism is a solution. it is anything but a solution...however, this does not mean you go back to being a partisan on the traditional political spectrum supporting the two centrist, populist parties we have that are identical and who share terrible agendas.

What is the significance or relevance of OLO?

What, are you trying to gain an estimate of how important you are by reflection? It's a small backwater of the internet frequented by cooks. Nothing more nothing less.

You lot make me laugh. How important are my comments? Who's listening? Am I at the most important forum site, or is there a better one? How can I measure how important the site I frequent is?

'I’m constantly trying to weigh up the significance of OLO, both in my life and in the shaping of our collective future in Australia.'

Delusions of Grandeur!

But, US, precisely the same comment can be made about reflections on any human endeavour. By extension, one could argue that any reflection is worthless.

Sounds like a spiral of postmodernist guff to me.