Getting personal makes blogging a success

It's safe to say that one would seldom associate the House of Lords with the cult of personality or, as a number of commentators have pointed out, with the internet. The Hansard Society knew differently on the latter as we've been working with their Lordships behind the scenes, prior to the launch of Lords of the Blog in March. We're also starting to change our mind on the former too, as we'll explain later.

The aim of the project was to provide access to what the House of Lords does, written as a commentary by peers themselves. We hoped it would be educational, we hoped too that it would allow a glimpse into the upper chamber in a way that helped the general public start to get what it does.

What we didn't expect was for the peers themselves to turn into the stars of the show. It's obvious really, but blogging isn't like writing for print. It's not like making political speeches, it's certainly a world away from the formalities and tradition of the House and it's definitely different to writing an academic paper. Yet Lord Norton, a self-confessed ‘political anorak', has demonstrated a willingness to disclose, a good dose of humility and a genuine desire to engage people. These are all ingredients in an interesting and successful blog.

Other peers have also provided some significant insights not just into the workings of the House of Lords but into their parliamentary lives. It's clear even at this early stage that they are enjoying the medium and the visitor statistics and survey feedback shows that the public are too. The site had 4,000 hits on the first day and receives hundreds of visitors every day, with obvious peaks when an interesting or topical post is added. It appears timely, certainly the media coverage has been positive not just in the UK but also from Australia and the US and the Google search results run to 20 pages already!

One of our fears in launching this project was that the blogsphere can be notoriously feral. Hardly appropriate for a website that is after all funded by the House of Lords! You only have to look at the Guardian's ‘Comment is free' to see what can happen! Yet, Lords of the Blog has received very positive feedback (OK, some of you thought the design was dull, but it's really not about the design... this isn't a Virgin franchise, it's the House of Lords). And the quality of comments is overwhelmingly high, impressively so from our point of view. These comments in fact demonstrate the real need for a forum such as this where people can not just passively learn about the House but also ask questions and engage with peers.

One month in we've done very little in the way of moderation and rejected only two postings. Rejecting a post is always a difficult decision and in many ways subjective but we do have a clear set of guidelines and we don't censor or stifle debate (in fact quite the opposite - that's the whole point of the blog!). The posting we rejected today was part of a valuable conversation that had drifted too far off-topic for a blog that is about the workings of the House of Lords. That happens, it's easy to do but we just needed to pull the conversation back on topic.

Overall I'm pleased with that moderation statistic. Considering that we've had 96 posts and approved 486 comments, with another half-dozen awaiting moderation by respective peers (authors approve comments themselves, that's why sometimes there's a bit of a delay in getting things on the site).

Andy Williamson
Director, eDemocracy Programme
a[.]williamson[@]hansard[.]lse[.]ac[.]uk

Barry Griffiths
Project Manager, eDemocracy Programme