Category: This blog

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Kiwipolitico’s January

Kiwipolitico readers and commenters will know that this blog has quickly established itself as a platform for considered debate about issues of concern to informed kiwis. This is what it’s all about, and it has been very gratifying for those of us posting to see the generally very positive response and constructive tone of discussion.

For a more precise picture, we have some stats. The wordpress blog stats tell us that we had 23,502 views in January. It took jafapete’s weblog months to reach that level of traffic, when it got into the Tumeke top 20.
We didn’t have a proper stat counter operating until 16 January, and can report that over the period 16—31 January unique visits averaged 293. According to the wordpress stat counter, the number of views in the second half of January was about the same as the second half, so the figure is close to what we would have seen for the month as a whole.
Calculating Tumeke’s score most probably places us in the top 20 for January!

290 + 19 + 14.5 + 80 = 403.5
Average daily unique visits = 290
Technorati “Authority” = 19
Average posts per week: 58 ÷ 4 = 14.5
Average comments of top 4 commented posts (96 + 84 + 75 + 66) = 80

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RfP: Hate speech laws

Recently I’ve read a number of paired essays, one arguing strongly for something and one arguing against it. I really like the form and reckon the arguments are much better than those that have to pretend objectivity. I’m wondering if we can get the same thing going here – two posts on one subject arguing strongly for opposing views.

So, with no more ado, I’m looking for anyone who might be willing to write a brief strongly argued post for or against hate speech laws. It’s a fascinating topic as it involves competing rights, and NZ has (perhaps without thinking too hard about it) legislated against racial hate speech but probably allows hate speech against other groups.

If you’re interested either email us (kiwipolitico@kiwipolitico.com) or post in the comments and we’ll get in touch.

P.S. If you’re keen to do this but run your own blog please get in touch, I’m sure we can figure out cross-posting.

P.P.S. If you don’t run your own blog I can promise you writing a post would be more fun and easier than you think! :)

[Many thanks to Lew and Rich, we have posts for the case for and against hate speech laws]

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Quoting: better or worse?

In response to some questions about quoting, and some pretty hard to read comments, I’ve just installed the clickquote plugin and would like some feedback about whether it’s made things better or worse.

Now if you click on a paragraph in a post or comment it will magically appear in your comment box all wrapped up in a blockquote. You will still need to type in who you’re quoting and add some of your own words too :)

So, is that better or worse? Anything else you’d like?

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Making it beautiful (and usable)

There’ve been a couple of suggestions about how to fiddle the layout to make this blog easier to comment on and/or more beautiful.

Suggestions are very very welcome, so please stick them in the comments here and we’ll see what we can do.

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Greetings.

Since the new year has started I figured that I would get the ball rolling here at Kiwipolitico. Although jafapete and anita are the originators of this blog, they kindly invited me to participate given the overlap in our perspectives. That is much appreciated.

I shall use the blog as an outlet for non-academic musings on issues of comparative and international politics, from a NZ-focused perspective. The hope is to generate interest and informed discussion on issues that otherwise may not receive the attention that they deserve (at least in NZ).