A few days ago I praised Microsoft’s policy and mechanisms for blogging. Today this quote turned up in an SMH article about the new government blog:
Microsoft Australia’s head of government and industry affairs, Simon Edwards, said he remained a sceptic as to the capacity of political blogs to enhance knowledge and inform decision making processes.
Mr Edwards said that, to date, such blogs had tended to be not much more than cliques of common interest that reaffirmed partisan positions and denigrated alternative points of view.
Sigh.
Update: A correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous points out that the quote of Edwards was actually lifted out of context from his Microsoft blog. So in actual fact it’s ozblogistan bete noir “THE MSM” who dunnit wrong.
I withdraw my unkind remarks about Microsoft in this context.
While this is not universally true, surely everyone can think of a large number of political blogs where this IS true? For every Piping Shrike or Pollytics there are plenty of sites where smug, mindless groupthink in the comments dominates the culture.
As long as the crap remains publically prominent, it will be easy for people to maintain misconceptions like Mr Edwards’.
Jacques, if one is being charitable about Edwards, I can see him being fine with standard tech blogging (like one finds on MSDN), but finds political blogging a waste. If one is uncharitable, Edwards is just clueless about blogging altogether. Personally, I’m inclined to be uncharitable.