...I think that we should actually set up a wee separate Scottish Political Blogs Directory Website...

Great idea Doctorvee!

There are (at least) 4 issues here. How much would each cost? (I like free things!)

1. Directory (which I have kind of started in my sidebar)

There are already several directories, with Scottish Blogs being the only Scottish one I am aware of. Ideally Gordon McLean could create Categories, including a Politics category (perhaps with sub-categories for parties or issues).

There is no reason that a new Directory of Scottish Political Blogs need clash with Gordon's site - they could link to and complement each other.

Should we only list people who "Register", or also seek out new blogs pro-actively and list them too? I prefer the latter.

2. Top of the Charts

Either via Sitemeter or Technorati links. Neither flawless or comprehensive, but better than nothing. There are models to work on:

http://www.britblog.com/director...y/ top_blogs.php

http://www.troubled-diva.com/ mos...edukblogs05.htm

http://www.europundit.com/archiv...ves/ 000384.html

http://www.firstfoot.com/php/top...s/in.php? id=177

3. An aggregator.

Excellent idea Doctorvee! Obvious model would be the fantastic UK Poli Blogs. Again no need to compete with them. It would be a complementary service.

http://www.voidstar.com/ukpoliblog/

Or, again, we could ask UK Poli Blogs to create a Scottish category, as they already have 4 or 5 categories.

Incidentally, very few Scottish political blogs are registered there yet, just me, Skakagrall, Perspective, Inveresk Street Ingrate, Honourable Fiend, Cabalamat Jourmal. It would be great to also aggregate blogs which do NOT register!

4. A weekly review service, modelled on Tim Worstall's.

http://timworstall.typepad.com/t...ndup/ index.html

Tim's is great, but it must be time consuming. I suppose that one of us could start such a thing on our own blog, but perhaps it would be more respected if it was very clearly neutral. I think Tim is a Tory, but he tries very hard to not let it spoil his roundup - but it probably puts more left-wing bloggers off suggesting posts.
Stuart Dickson | Homepage | Thu, 2 Jun, 2005 - 18:00 | #

I think that Gràisg meant to post this Comment here:

- "Poll idea is great. Cheers copied it straight away and running one on the merits of the Provost's pies "

http://www.haloscan.com/comments...31408484/ #52090
Stuart Dickson | Homepage | Thu, 2 Jun, 2005 - 18:05 | #

Stuart

that sounds like good idea, you could also split into regions eg Highlands, central belt, edinbourgh, east coast etc
alan | Homepage | Thu, 2 Jun, 2005 - 19:35 | #

As far as cost is concerned, I think a lot of that would depend on the amount of bandwidth used up. I think that's difficult to estimate though, and could fluctuate.

I think ideally getting new Scottish sections on existing websites should be avoided as it would all be fragmented. But I think approaching people who have experience of setting up these sorts of websites would be something that you'd need to do. As you say, these sites should not be competing, but complementary.

Like you, Stuart, I would prefer a directory to list blogs that were actively sought out.

I don't know about splitting into regions. You would risk diverting attention from the main purpose which would be to point out good Scottish political blogs.
doctorvee | Homepage | Thu, 2 Jun, 2005 - 20:12 | #