Check out the Scotweb2 in the morning to see how it is progressing.

HOLYROOD chiefs are to use blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube to make Parliament more accessible to the public, they said today.

People petitioning Parliament will be able to provide videos and photographs.

And Holyrood’s Public Petitions Committee is to have its own blog and Wikipedia page.

It’s the mention of Wikipedia — twice — that tweaked my antenna. How exactly does Parliament intend to “use Wikipedia” to become more accessible to the public? Perhaps they meant using wikis, and got that confused with Wikipedia.

I decided to delve a bit further in case The Scotsman got the wrong end of the stick (which, let us face it, is fairly likely). But the Scottish Parliament’s press release seemed even odder.

As from today blogging, Wikipedia and YouTube will be some of the new social media tools introduced by the Public Petitions Committee as part of its report publication. The report is the result of a year-long inquiry into improving awareness and participation in the public petitions process.

Petitioners will be able to provide videos and photos about their petitions as part of the committee’s new blog page. A podcast, Wikipedia page and dvd about the Parliament’s public petitions system all signal the committee’s commitment in encouraging access to and awareness of the petitions process. The committee also supports the creation of local petitioning systems with local authorities.

I was still confused, so I took a look at the Public Petitions Committee’s report to see what the plans actually were. You can read the details of its plans to use social media under the heading “E-Based” (paragraph 84 onwards).

In paragraph 119 the Public Petitions Committee says: “We are launching, alongside this report, a dedicated Public Petitions Committee Wiki page.” The footnote takes you to this Wikipedia article. This is an article which was already deleted when I checked it early this afternoon, and remains deleted as I write this article.

The Public Petitions Committee’s attempt to use Wikipedia like this completely misunderstands what Wikipedia is for. A page such as the one the Public Petitions Committee tried to create is completely against Wikipedia guidelines. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not some kind of worthy version of Craigslist. They could try reading about What Wikipedia is not, notably that Wikipedia is not a soapbox:

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda and advertising… Therefore, content hosted in Wikipedia is not… [p]ropaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind, commercial, political, religious, or otherwise…

[Content hosted in Wikipedia is not] Self-promotion. It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you.

An subject is considered worthy of an article on Wikipedia by the bottom-up processes upon which Wikipedia is based. It is not for the Public Petitions Committee to swan in and create a page for itself. Nor can it be the final arbiter on what that article contains. The report somewhat states in somewhat Orwellian fashion:

We are of course mindful of the ability to amend text given the ‘ongoing principle’ under which Wiki pages are created. Our clerks will monitor the page carefully to ensure it remains a factual and authoritative source of information about our public petitions process.

Moreover, Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook or scientific journal:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook. Wikipedia articles should not read like… Internet guides. Wikipedia articles should not exist only to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers, but should describe the site in an encyclopedic manner, offering detail on a website’s achievements, impact or historical significance…

In paragraph 109, the Public Petitions Committee itself says of its attempts to use social media that it is “not seen as ticking a box which says ‘look, we are doing this because everyone else is!’”. But this Wikipedia stunt has box-ticking written all over it. It has Dad-dancing written all over it.

I’m sure using Wikipedia to publicise the Scottish Parliament’s petitions process seemed like a good suggestion in a meeting room somewhere. But they could have done with having a bit more of an understanding of what Wikipedia actually is before actually proceeding with the idea.

Luckily, the Public Petitions Committee didn’t put all of its eggs in one basket. There will also be a “pod cast”, which currently seems to be a solitary MP3, tucked away at the bottom of the press release. Other than that, there is a promise to link to the Scottish Parliament’s own podcasts. There is no RSS feed and no option to subscribe.

Let’s look it up on the Public Petitions Committee’s new best friend Wikipedia. The article for Podcast is currently illustrated with a massive RSS icon. It says:

A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually either digital audio or video, that is made available for download via web syndication. The syndication aspect of the delivery is what differentiates podcasts from other ways of accessing files, such as simple download or streaming: it means that special client software applications known as podcatchers (such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes or Nullsoft’s Winamp) can automatically identify and retrieve new files in a series when they are made available, by accessing a centrally-maintained web feed that lists all files currently associated with that particular podcast. The files thus automatically downloaded are then stored locally on the user’s computer or other device, for offline use.

I therefore await the launch of some actual podcasts, not just MP3s branded as “pod casts”.

The Public Petitions Committee will also have a “blog page”. That can be found here and, in fairness, it doesn’t look all that bad. It looks like a good way to highlight the work of the Public Petitions Committee.

I think organisations like the Scottish Parliament should be using social media and web technologies more. So the Public Petitions Committee’s steps in this direction are welcome. The blog looks particularly promising.

But engaging with the public is about so much more than tossing around buzzwords like ‘Wikipedia’, ‘YouTube’ and ‘podcasts’. A proper understanding of social media would provide a better service to the public and waste fewer resources.

The event will take place on 19 June at the Melting Pot on Rose Street in Edinburgh. For more details and to sign up, click here.

As always, keep an eye on the Scotweb2 blog for all the latest information.

I have a friend who refuses to join Facebook, partly because he is worried that it is just another website to sign up to, only to be replaced by the new flavour of the month as soon as he’s done it. I can sympathise with that. We’ve all been there with MySpace and now Bebo, and I probably have dozens of dormant web 2.0 accounts.

There is also the hassle involved with getting your head around a fancy new social network. So many people tell me they find Facebook too complicated. Meanwhile, Twitter is so disarmingly simple that it confuses and spooks many first-time users.

Another of my friend’s objections to Facebook involves the perception that it is too posh. It’s a bit of an elephant in the room, but when you think about it it’s difficult to avoid the fact that there is a class division in the way different types of people use different social networks. Danah Boyd wrote about the case of MySpace and Facebook in the USA two years ago. Today in the UK you could say a similar thing about Bebo and Facebook.

I guess that was inevitable given the exclusivity of Facebook in the early days. At first you had to be at Harvard to use it, then one of the Ivy League universities. Then you had to be at any University (this is when I joined). Then when it was a few years old it opened up to everyone — to howls of protest from many of the people who were already in the exclusive Facebook loop, as I recall. It’s probably fair to say that Facebookers think of themselves as being a cut above their chavvier Bebo-using counterparts — though functionally the sites are very similar.

When someone says to you, “you really should be on [social network x],” it is almost like being invited to a new (slightly posher) pub or restaurant. You’re used to eating out at Wetherspoons (well, that’s all they’ve got in Kirkcaldy — even Burger King upped sticks a few years ago). Now someone has invited you to Di Chez El Nom Nom, or something.

You wouldn’t have countenanced going in by yourself. But it would be rude to turn down the invitation. When you go in it’s a bit unfamiliar. What is the etiquette? What is the third spoon for? Why is my napkin folded into the vague shape of a cockerel? Am I allowed to poke you now, or is that just for special occasions? What is this exotic feature? What is that strange item on the menu and how do I pronounce it? It seems too complicated!

It feels awkward. You will make mistakes at first. But soon enough you will get a taste for it, and you won’t ever consider setting foot in Burger King again (I still like Wetherspoons though).

I got that experience when I signed up to LinkedIn, on the advice of Chris Applegate in the comments here. I’d passed LinkedIn on the street a number of times and peered in, but it didn’t look like the sort of place where I’d be welcome. It describes itself as being for “professionals”. Pah!

Well now Chris has given me the green light to enter, though I still don’t quite feel welcome. Anyone who thinks Facebook is complicated needs to check out LinkedIn. It took me quite a while to work out that really no-one there is interested in my favourite music or my drunken photos. It really is just a glorified (and inflexible) CV.

Even after I have filled in all my details and added a few connections, there is still a little power meter on my page telling me that my profile is only 70% complete! And moreover, I am less likely to appear in searches until I reach 100%. How rude!

But I can’t help thinking already that LinkedIn is the way to go. I mean, if I meet someone in a professional capacity, I might well want to connect with them online in some way. And with its complete candidness, with my personality presented warts and all, Facebook is probably not the way to do that.

So my friend is kind of right. If he signs up to Facebook, he will probably find it’s only a matter of time before he finds himself being asked by his peers to join LinkedIn. I myself wonder what even smarter social network I will end up having to sign up to next.

It seems like a pain at first. But I guess it’s just like dressing smartly for a job interview then lounging around in Pot Noodle-stained boxers in your house.

All of this is quite a long-winded way of saying that I have recently joined LinkedIn. If I know you, you are welcome to connect with me on it. I will probably go on my own adding spree soon. If you’re a veteran, please excuse my only 70% complete profile…

Alex Stobart wanted Scotweb2 to have a blog, and he asked me to build it. Here it is. It has a gradient and everything.

There is not much there for the time being. But over time it will be fleshed out. We plan on it being a place where people can learn about interesting uses of web technologies from government, business, the third sector, or indeed any organisation.

In the spirit of web 2.0, in the long term we will be offering people the chance to suggest their own ideas to be featured on the blog, possibly by writing for the blog themselves. So if you have an interest in web 2.0 and the way it is used in Scotland, keep an eye on the Scotweb2 blog.

First off there was a great talk by James Munro who works on an interesting website, Patient Opinion. The site offers people a platform to make comments — positive or negative — about their experiences of the NHS.

It’s a great website demonstrating the idea that perhaps governments should not be making websites — they should be publishing data and APIs for other people to build upon. This is very much in the Mysociety mould. You might expect this sort of website to be provided by the government. Indeed, since Patient Opinion was founded the NHS has started a similar project on its NHS Choices site. Cleverly, Patient Opinion has created a mashup of their content at the NHS’s.

But there are potential problems with such a site receiving government backing. During the presentation it was pointed out by some that on an NHS-run or government-backed website, people might be tempted to rant or let off steam. But in the more neutral arena of an independent site like Patient Opinion, people are more likely to post more thoughtful comments.

Another point about Patient Opinion is that all of the comments that appear there are pre-moderated. If I remember correctly, James Munro said that 95% of all comments are approved on Patient Opinion while only around 75% of comments are approved on NHS Choices. There might be a suspicion that the NHS may suppress negative comments. People are more likely to trust an independent website.

It struck me afterwards (long after there was the opportunity to mention it) that this phenomenon could apply not just to government websites but to all websites. I have written about the poor standard of comments on mainstream media websites a number of times in the past. I have argued that newspaper websites might be better off putting some kind of Technorati-style widget at the bottom of each article rather than appending a comment thread where the poor standard of debate can sometimes be quite off-putting.

Then there are the implications for business websites. It was noted that web 2.0 is all about transparency. Another theme of Scotweb2 was the implications / challenges / opportunities of web 2.0 for small businesses (and, indeed, large businesses). What if a business decides to have a feedback section on its website? It will face the same issues that a government website will face — users will be reluctant to trust it and may be tempted to simply let off steam.

Perhaps the concept of Patient Opinion could be applied to all kinds of different areas. It seems to me that if it works in the realm of healthcare, there is no reason why it wouldn’t make sense in other areas like the voluntary / third sector, pressure groups, the media or even business?

Following James Munro, Simon Dickson made an engaging presentation evangelising about the potential of open source solutions such as Linux, PHP and particularly WordPress. I think I had read this on Simon Dickson’s blog before, but the cost of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website still has your jaw hitting the floor. £19.2m over five years — for one website. And that was it on target. Millions sunk before a single page is made, including £1.47m on the content management system alone.

Simon Dickson’s point is that you don’t need to use proprietary systems built by the likes of Microsoft. Why spend millions on a CMS when you can use the highly flexible WordPress platform which is free? The new-ish 10 Downing Street website is run on WordPress. And the Wales Office website is also now run on WordPress, and it cost a significantly lower amount of money. I’ve forgotten exactly what it was, but it was certainly not £19.2m.

Something that came up a number of times was that the cause of many of the problems leading to inadequate or ridiculously expensive government websites is to do with mindset. WordPress is seen as a risk; Microsoft is a trusted brand. Thankfully that seems to be changing in a lot of areas.

I got the sense that a lot of people were very impressed by the idea of WordPress. If you’ve been using it for a while it is easy to take it for granted. But the fact remains that it is a remarkable achievement for a community to have created such a powerful open-source, freely available and fully tweakable application.

After Simon Dickson’s initial presentation, we split up into two groups. Already being a convert to WordPress, I opted to skip Simon Dickson’s workshop about WordPress and instead I stuck around for Stewart Kirkpatrick‘s talk about content. The presentation basically highlighted interesting websites that have become successful because of the careful choice of content. For instance, YouTube beat Google Video because it gives you plenty of toys to play with (e.g. it’s dead easy to share videos on Facebook, embed them on your blog, etc) and relevant videos to tempt you further. Common sense stuff really.

I think it was at this point of the afternoon that we got talking about some startling instances of data unavailability. Apparently the Royal Mail doesn’t have a database of locations of all of its postboxes, while another person said he knew of a company that couldn’t even produce a database of its employees. if I recall correctly, James Munro mentioned the difficulty Patient Opinion had in simply getting a database of Scottish hospitals and their postcodes.

After lunch there was a talk about BT Tradespace. Then I hung around for Mark Ballard’s workshop about web 2.0 and civic society. The thing that struck me most during this discussion was the idea that some voluntary organisations are seemingly quite worried about web 2.0 efforts swiping the rug from under their feet.

All the while I had a good chit-chat with Stephen Glenn. I would have loved to have been able to join the others in the pub, but unfortunately I had to rush back home to work.

All-in-all it was a great day with many fascinating presentations. Hats off to Alex Stobart for organising the event. By the sounds of it there are going to be more events like this in the future. It would be great for the web 2.0 ball to get rolling a bit faster in Scotland.

Here is the agenda:

0930 Registration

1000 Introduction – Alex Stobart

1015 Presentations by Simon Dickson, Puffbox and James Munro, Patient Opinion

1115 Workshops

1. Stewart Kirkpatrick – W00tonomy – Content

2. Alex Stobart – Web 2 engagement and networks in Scotland

3. Simon Dickson – Using WordPress

1215 Feedback

1230 Lunch

1330 Presentations by Iain Henderson, mydex and Derek Hemphill, BT plc

1415 Workshops

1. Mark Ballard – Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations – web 2 and civic society

2. James Munro – Better Public Services ; how can web 2 make a difference

3. Derek Hemphill – Web 2 corporate applications

1515 Feedback

1530 Tea and close

I believe the venue has wifi so I might well attempt to blog or (more likely) tweet from the event.

I’m not sure that much of what Paul Boutin says is new though. The first time I heard about the article was through Mike Power who added:

…most people under 20 wouldn’t touch blogging with a barge pole, seeing it as old-fashioned and nerdy.

That’s an interesting point. A lot of outsiders tend to think of blogging and the like as something that young people do. But I remember a few years ago a survey finding that the average age of readers of political blogs in the UK is around 40. That might be younger than, say, the average age of readers of The Telegraph, but we’re not talking about the cast of Skins here.

Before that, I always wondered why there weren’t more people my age blogging. I started blogging six years ago when I was 16, but I am an outlier. I can’t think of anyone else who has been blogging for that long from such a young age (though no doubt there are some). I struggle even to think of many bloggers who are my age or younger full stop. There are a few that I know of, but I could probably count them on one hand.

This links neatly in with one of Paul Boutin’s points though. Blogging is being overtaken by social networking sites like Facebook. It’s worth remembering why I started blogging. It is simple: I was bored. My first post was written on a cold, boring night in the middle of the Christmas school holiday.

Moreover, if I had an aim with my blog, it was as a really easy way to reach a wide variety of friends in a really efficient way. At first I was peeved when I realised that my friends couldn’t be bothered reading my blog. What I had forgotten was that, while updating a blog was efficient for me, it was wildly inefficient to get all of my friends to keep on visiting my blog all the time.

Social networking sites fix that problem by giving everyone a central space to share their thoughts and news. No doubt if sites like Bebo and Facebook were around back then, I wouldn’t have started a blog. Indeed, I originally wanted to set up a LiveJournal rather than a blog, but back then you had to pay for a LiveJournal account, so I set up with Blogger instead.

The only reason I stuck with blogging was through the quite accidental discovery that, while my friends were seemingly uninterested in what I had to say, complete strangers would regularly visit to see what I was thinking. That amazing fact is what keeps me going as a blogger, despite some pretty dry patches over the years.

And I’m lucky to have discovered that. Blogging has given me plenty of opportunities that I would never have had were I a simple Facebook user. Undoubtedly my life has been enriched by blogging as it has furnished me with an armful of skills. A 16-year-old Duncan Stephen today would almost certainly not start blogging — but he’d be worse off for it.

But it is important for blogging that the landscape has changed over the past few years. Before 2004, the buzzword was blogging, pretty much exclusively so. Today you can add podcasts, social networks, Flickr, YouTube, wikis, microblogging, social bookmarking, tumblelogging and an increasing list of tools that are all lumped together under the “web 2.0″ umbrella. And when the landscape changes, blogging will inevitably have to evolve. As Rory Cellan Jones says, “its nature is changing.”

The evolution of blogging is nothing new though. By most accounts, blogging is now over ten years old, easily out-dating the web 2.0 phenomenon. The man who is said to have coined the word weblog, Jorn Barger, intended it to mean “logging the web”. That makes tumblelogging or linklogging services such as Delicious a much closer relative to the earliest blogs than what are today known as blogs.

Similarly, during a middle period beginning at the start of this decade, blogging was taken broadly to mean an online journal or a diary, often with very personal posts. Today, that would be seen as quite odd, since social networking sites such as Facebook are a much more appropriate, private place to talk about your personal life. It might seem inappropriate that people blogged so much about personal issues, but prior to the likes of Facebook, people had no choice.

Meanwhile, the stereotypical blogger writing about what he had for breakfast has now moved wholesale over to Twitter, a more relaxed place where there is no stigma to writing banal, inconsequential nonsense. Mind you, the advent of Qwitter may change that!

Over the years, my blog has evolved from being somewhere where I would (quite inadvisedly, and sometimes shamefully) leave personal rants, or write about what I had for breakfast, to a place where I would take part in conversations about current issues. Instead of writing a few short and snappy posts per day, this blog now more-or-less exclusively contains posts around 1,000+ words long typically published several days apart. Whereas a few years ago I may have written a stream of consciousness, today I might spend a few days (or even a few months!) mulling over a subject before writing it down. Places like Flickr and Twitter certainly wouldn’t allow me to do that, as Paul Stamatiou points out.

Instead of being a one-stop-shop for all things me, my blog is now just one part of a huge range of online activities. How all of these activities relate to each other and what I should publicise where is a problem that I still grapple with, and I probably won’t stop grappling with it any time soon. (I’ve currently settled on gathering everything in a ‘sidebar’ on the home page.)

A lot of blogs have undergone a similar transformation over the years. It’s notable how many people are now relatively quiet on their blogs, but are still updating Twitter regularly. As if to illustrate that, an item on the Today programme this morning was meant to discuss the death of blogging but ended up dwelling more on the popularity of Twitter.

But saying today that this shift to other services like Twitter is a sign that blogging is dead is just as daft as saying in 2004 that blogging threatened the death of the mainstream media. It would be deeply ironic if the once vibrant and hip blogging scene were to itself become threatened by new technology. But it won’t. The world evolves and blogging simply has to evolve with it, just as the mainstream media evolved with the advent of blogging. Rather than dying, blogging is maturing, as Gary Andrews notes.

I think Paul Boutin makes some really good points, but he misses the point a few times. Trolls and flamers in comments are a well-known problem. But let’s face it, that is hardly confined to blogging. That is a problem with the internet in general.

Meanwhile, the point about most bloggers being unable to compete with the top 100 is nothing short of bizarre. How many people really start blogging with the intention of being in the top 100? Though being in the top 100 would be nice, it is far from my primary motivation. Has Paul Boutain never heard of the long tail? As John Connell notes, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, is the father of the long tail. All-in-all, it’s just a really odd argument to be put forward in such an arena.

And the idea that Google doesn’t notice blogs any more is absolutely bizarre. This certainly does not chime with my experiences. Over three quarters of my visitors come from search engines. That figure used to be closer to two thirds. My friends often tell me that they accidentally found my blog when they were searching for something (that’s the only way I can get them to read my blog to this day!). I myself have, to my annoyance, had my blog come up as a high result in a search.

Then there is the idea that blogs need to be personal to be valuable to people. I hardly think this is so. In fact, this is a complete contradiction to Paul Boutin’s assertion that bloggers all aspire to be the next Huffington Post or Treehugger, not exactly the most personal sites in the world. As Robin Hamman says, Twitter and Facebook may lead to the decline of the diarist blogger, but the topical blogger remains unaffected.

Nowadays, with the likes of Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, there might be easier — and more personal — ways to publish your content than to start a blog. And there is absolutely no doubt that maintaining a blog is a major commitment. But that doesn’t mean that blogging doesn’t have an important role to play. In fact, I would argue that it makes blogging all the more important.

It will be an informal barcamp / unconference-style event. It’s being organised by Alex Stobart who works at the Scottish Government. Dave Briggs is also helping out and the event will be backed by BT.

I’ve mostly been trying to drum up interest among bloggers because it could also be a good opportunity for some bloggers to meet up and talk shop a bit. But it will be about much more than that. It will be about the application of web 2.0 technologies in general, in government, in the private sector and in the ‘third sector’.

Among the speakers will be Simon Dickson of Puffbox; Ross Ferguson of Dog Digital; Iain Henderson from MyDex; Stewart Kirkpatrick, former editor of Scotsman.com, now at w00tonomy; James Munro of Patient Opinion; and someone from BT to talk about Tradespace.

The best news is that attendance is open to anyone who is interested and it is free. All you have to do is sign up through Eventbrite and print out the ticket.

If you’re interested, keep an eye on the ScotWeb2 website. It’s not quite finished yet but it will be fleshed out soon enough.

More information from the Eventbrite page:

Web 2 seminar hosted by Edinburgh University, supported by BT and for all those interested in learning about Web 2 from practitioners, government and business users.

An informal, bar camp style event allowing participants to listen, network and share experiences with those who have designed and are managing Web 2 services.

Speakers and workshop leaders from Health, Business, Web design, Colleges and Universities, Social Enterprises, Social Media, Journalism, Government and Civic Society…

Other from Web 2 companies, Web 2 social enterprises, Web 2 designers ( public and private sector ), Not for Profit organisations, Academia, Business and the public sector will be there to run work-shops and explain their experience of Web 2…

There will be talks, opportunities to break out into discussions and to mix with those speakers who have used and built web 2 applications, and who are wishing to see change in the way users interact with their service providers and elecetd representatives.

There is an e-mail list here

If you are interested in web 2 as a subject covering communications, marketing, consultation, participation, engagement or service provision then this event will be of interest.

Richard Thomson says: You Scotland — RIP?

A couple of weeks ago, a video appeared on YouTube featuring Tommy Sheppard, former Labour apparatchik and owner of ‘The Stand’ comedy clubs. The film was a request for feedback from the founding fathers of a website called ‘YouScotland.com‘, asking whether or not they should continue with their venture.

That their video has at the time of writing had only 257 hits and attracted precisely zero viewer comments, is probably all the feedback they need.

Back when YouScotland launched, I wrote a rather critical post. It looked as though I was wrong when their viral, The Best Wee Numpty in the World, proved to be immensely successful.

But since then, nothing again. I have to admit that before Richard Thomson’s post, I had completely forgotten about YouScotland. I suppose it is natural that YouScotland was going to quieten down a bit once the election was over. But these are the people who thought they could kick-start a second enlightenment. One funny video then disappearing without a trace isn’t enough to achieve that sort of thing.

Looking at site’s failings, I think Richard Thomson hits the nail on the head. And I can’t help feeling that I was right when I wrote my first post about YouScotland in February. The virals made me have a re-think, but it looks like my initial gut instincts turned out to be right.

Funniest of all about YouScotland was the fact that they tried their best to sound like a state-of-the-art Web 2.0 campaigning machine. But the middle-aged clique who ran it fundamentally misunderstood what Web 2.0 is all about. I’m afraid it was a real disco Dad moment.

Even more embarrassingly, they seemed to misunderstand how grass-roots movements form. Hint: grass-roots movements tend to form from the bottom-up, not at the say-so of a clique.

And now that the SNP are in charge, they can’t really point at Scottish Labour and complain about the establishment any more. Change happened. They can’t use the same old anti-establishment rhetoric, because a pro-independence party is the establishment now!

They were also not helped by the fact that they didn’t seem to be very different to a lot of pro-independence organisations, or the established pro-change movement as a whole. Why be bombarded with requests for donations at YouScotland when it didn’t offer anything different?

Ah yes, those requests for donations. In Tommy Sheppard’s latest video, he says that the only way YouScotland could continue is if all of its users donated “a minimum of ten pounds”. Ten pounds!! What?!

I mean, really, how expensive is it to make a website like YouScotland (which was shoddy anyway)? There are any number of political movements who do not go around cap in hand — and they certainly do not ask for a minimum of £10.

As I said in my original post about YouScotland, it costs nothing to set up a blog. While I accept that you could not expect a website like YouScotland to be made for nothing, you have to ask what they were intending to spend the money on?

I mean, say that YouScotland managed to get 1,000 members (in some ways, quite modest for a revolutionary, rip-roaring grass-roots movement). If each member donates a tenner per year, YouScotland would have £10,000 to spend every single year. I mean, what on earth was that website going to have on it for it to cost that much to make?!

Try to visit YouScotland today and the website will not load. If I had donated some money in the run-up to the election, I reckon I would feel pretty short-changed.