The Issue of Guest Blogging

Larvatus Prodeo's recent spate of guest blogging is showing the power of community, but also the limitation of blog software. It is a shame that Mark Bahnisch didn't choose scoop for his site, rather than Wordpress. There is the potential there for a strong, inclusive community to build around that site, but it is being hampered by technology, not social will.

South Sea Republic is completely open in this respect. Anyone who creates an account here can publish a blog entry. We are not precious about it. South Sea Republic is based on collaborative community software. With an account here, you can post blog entries, articles, comments, or rate/moderate comments.

South Sea Republic

Most of the folks on South Sea Republic are community website migrants. We have generally followed the path of Usenet/IRC, to Slashdot, to Kuro5hin, to Hulver to here. When we started South Sea Republic, we did so with the glimmer of hope it would turn into an Australian Kuro5hin. This is of course, attempting to emulate Kuro5hin when it was in its hey-day of quality articles.

On the larger community sites, the Australian presence was often a minority, and Australian issues were drowned out by the larger numbers of Americans and Europeans posting en-masse. The international influence of the US is large enough that people around the world can debate domestic American issues reasonably well; however we thought there would be room for an Australian community site.

What I didn't expect - and I can't talk for the others here - is the strength of the Australian blogging community. It is so strong, that South Sea Republic gets categorized as a group blog, rather than a community site who's main contributors have a republican and refactoring government bent.

Political discussion in Australia, isn't like the rabidly partisan sites such as dailykos or freerepublic which dot the US internet landscape. The closest in this analogy would be Tim Blair's site. Instead, the Australian political commentary is a mix of individual and group blogs. For whatever reason, this has produced political commentary, that is constantly superior to much of the American online punditry.

Guest Blogging and Books

Because South Sea Republic is a community site, based on community software, it doesn't have privileged "Guest bloggers". Anyone who has an account on South Sea Republic can blog here. There is also the added bonus, every six months we pull out the best blog entries and articles on South Sea Republic, and publish them in a South Sea Republic book .

cam
Permalink, The Issue of Guest Blogging, Jun 2005, cam
Felix the Cassowary: Anyone *can* post here?: I\'m a K5 Veteran, and so I instantly recognised the engine (I recognise you from there, though I came via John Quiggin\'s blog, which I came to via a guest post on mumble.com, which I came to via, of all things, an opinionative in The Age ).

I didn\'t realise that anyone could post here. I could see that the technology was available; but I got the impression posting here was only accepted from an \'in-group\' of regulars. Maybe I just missed something so blindingly obvious that I never saw it, though.

Also, I don\'t think SSR could really be an Aussie K5 which such an obvious name as \'South Sea Republic\'... An Aussie K5 would be a cool idea though.
cam: Click on "New Diary Entry": and it will go to the front page. The \"New Article Entry\" sends the story through a moderation queue.

I didn\'t realise that anyone could post here. I could see that the technology was available; but I got the impression posting here was only accepted from an \'in-group\' of regulars. Maybe I just missed something so blindingly obvious that I never saw it, though.

That was why I wrote the above entry. There are several folks here commenting that probably should be joining in with diary and articles too. There is no cabal...... :) Not intentionally anyway.

Also, I don\'t think SSR could really be an Aussie K5 which such an obvious name as \'South Sea Republic\'... An Aussie K5 would be a cool idea though.

Yeh the name was chosen for a reason though. It was so the site would be 95% focused on Australian politics; progressive Australian politics, and long term politics/policy. Not so much the day to day stuff of the hyterical news cycle. Otherwise the site would probably have been called something like www.dailyAu.com.....

Feel free to post Felix, you have been around long enough to pick up this sites feel, and kind of know where the site is going.

cam

Most Popular on South Sea Republic

The articles that have been viewed the most:

Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix

Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for Phoenix, Scottsdale and Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area. This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most; My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are AZ88, Postinos, Bomberos with Grazie, Humble Pie, Orange Table, The Vig, Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on phoenixeatsout.com

Most Popular Hikes in Arizona

Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak. For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in Tom's Thumb and Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.

Alternate Australian Constitutions

Between 2004 and 2009 this site, southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues. One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome: The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.

Archives For South Sea Republic

South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then; The articles are ordered by views.

Who Is Cam Riley

Cam Riley I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident. I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end. I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now. The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.

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Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;