You are not really getting it are you. The thread is not about people who access OLO at work, but about the people whose work it is to monitor what is said on OLO. OLO is an internet platform, where light can be shone into some very dark and dirty places, and the cockroaches lurking there can be seen and exterminated.

This is not just an internet forum. As you have seen if you have read it for about four months as I have, there is a worldwide audience watching, and OLO is showcasing the vanguard of the Internet led free speech movement.

Rupert Murdock, the Fairfax Press, and the Packer group, don’t have an editor examining what is posted here. We don’t have Aunty deciding what will be published or aired. I would like to think that behind the nom’s de plume, used by some of the people who take the time to write here, are people whose job it is to know what the electorate is thinking, so that they can take whatever action is in the best interests of Australia as a whole.

I happen to think Australia is a Christian Country and that the Constitution is a Christian document enacted as the will of Almighty God upon whom we called for a blessing in the second line. I also happen to think that by Standing Orders 43 and 50 the Parliament of the Commonwealth is a Christian Institution, starting each days session with Our Lord’s blessing and the prayer from the Sermon on the Mount. Others disagree.

However, I think it was Voltaire who said: I disagree with every word you say, but will fight to the death for your right to say it. Words do matter. The English language is a wonderful medium for the expression of ideas, and English is the international language of the law. The law currently has enacted into it enormous contradictions, inconsistencies and conundrums. I happen to think OLO is working towards exposing some of those. Not just for us here in the lucky country, but on Planet Earth

The blog is mightier than the sword: From the SMH this morning. Paola Totaro is the Herald's Europe correspondent. Miranda Devine is on leave.

Sent to one of the British Prime Minister's most trusted advisers, the text message arrived with a chilling portent: "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, to hear the lamentations of their women?"

Three days later its recipient, Damien McBride, was forced to fall on his sword, his political career ended by a dirty tricks email scandal leaked to the text's sender, Guido Fawkes, an incendiary political blogger.

Fawkes's scalping of McBride, known around Westminster as McPoison for sending excoriating text messages to offending political journalists, was a good, old-fashioned scoop. It has also been billed as the day political new media in Britain "came of age", sparking spirited debate about its consequences for politics - and politicians.

Campbell says that from talking to teens and young adults his sense is that they do not read newspapers but are informed and politically engaged. "They know what's going on in the debate," he says. But he is also cautious about the real import of the political blogger: "I think they are running away from themselves. They are still all about positioning themselves, getting on TV or radio and trying to become alternative news channels.

But my feeling is that they are still tiny in terms of reach. I think the jury is still out on the blogosphere's long-term future or its real impact."

Australia may be half a world away but it, too, has Westminster-style parliaments and a similar media, albeit much smaller and less pluralist. Chances are that an equally spirited - perhaps even dangerous - political blogosphere isn't too far away.

Read OLO at work, I bet they do.

"This is not just an internet forum. As you have seen if you have read it for about four months as I have, there is a worldwide audience watching, and OLO is showcasing the vanguard of the Internet led free speech movement."

That's an interesting comment. Is this really true?

Digressing from the topic under discussion, to the editors: I think it would be good to get some broad info about the readership on this site (that stays within the bounds of privacy laws, etc).

The effect of blogs and forums like OLO worldwide, are part of the information superhighway, that the WWW has become, and a forum like this one, on which Kevin Rudd has had articles published twice, and which promote vigorous discussion on topics proposed both by readers, and selected topics gleaned by the editors from newspapers and other sources, often in a way that is not encouraged by the mainstream media.

Some Electronic newspapers have forms where readers can comment, but they have strict control on what they publish and frown on nom’s de plume. This forum where we go by a Forum name, is willing to publish anything except obscenities, and vigorous discussion ensues.

All Ministers in Government subscribe at our expense to a clipping service, so every time their name is mentioned in any media, they get to know about it, and I would bet that OLO is monitored in the same way. We have one poster who calls himself Shadow Minister, and I have very little doubt he is what he says he is.

Barack Obama used this medium most effectively in his campaign, and received an enormous amount of money from little people like ourselves who read blogs. One of the reasons he is probably going to be free-er than his predecessor is that he did not have to borrow money to campaign from the traditional power brokers.

I am sure Kevin Rudd and the well oiled federal Labour Machine, will be watching this media phenomena with interest. After ten years, OLO is one of the best established general access blogs around, and does not have too many uninteresting bloggers, on it. I would equally bet that the Liberals are doing the same. So this is democracy in action. Whether we win or lose an argument is irrelevant, people themselves winnow the grain from the chaff. Political staffers try to be the commuter on the Liverpool train, and examine what that person would think if presented with the same argument. Go OLO

I do not post or even use the net if at work.
I will go on line to research work matters but that is it.
3 workers on one site have been instantly sacked, for using mobile phones!
Bosses use them all the time, one got away with it, but later sacked a truck driver for? ordering parts for his truck while pulled over to answer the phone.
We are forced time and again to warn people not to miss use the bosses computor, every year many are foolishly caught downloading porn or such.
In mining and much more jobs lost are often very high income ones.
We all should under stand the impacts of being foolish in such things as face book.

"...I would equally bet that the Liberals are doing the same. So this is democracy in action. Whether we win or lose an argument is irrelevant, people themselves winnow the grain from the chaff..."

But Peter this OLO site is run by a single person isn't it? And can't they just delete someone or a whole thread if they don't like what they are posting or the way the conversation has gone?

That stops it looking like any democracy in action doesn't it?