Petition the PM and TheGovernmentSays.com
One of TheGovernmentSays.com's features it allows people to comment on any story. Generally, there aren't that many comments, but the vast majority of those that we've seen in the last month or two have been on petitions (mainly found by people googling the petition) and commenting on it. I've had the idea for a while of attaching the RSS feed for new petitions to a bulletin board system, creating a new thread for each new petition and seeing what happens.
There is clearly demand for people to comment on petitions. Some are clearly more inciting of comments than others. Government involvement in everything has impacts, and the issues are never clear cut, and some issues are highly emotional.
There is a large question over whether the Government itself could host such comments, both legally, politically and practically; although the debate around issues should be hosted and engaged. Independence of operations may be useful.
Debate is essential, and a large amount of that may get quite heated and passionate. Some of that will be critcism, some of it will be right, and some of it will be trivial, and some of it will be substantive. All of which must be allowed.
There is clearly demand for people to comment on petitions. Some are clearly more inciting of comments than others. Government involvement in everything has impacts, and the issues are never clear cut, and some issues are highly emotional.
There is a large question over whether the Government itself could host such comments, both legally, politically and practically; although the debate around issues should be hosted and engaged. Independence of operations may be useful.
Debate is essential, and a large amount of that may get quite heated and passionate. Some of that will be critcism, some of it will be right, and some of it will be trivial, and some of it will be substantive. All of which must be allowed.
1 Comments:
Do it! (if you can find the time). Commenting on TWFY is great; it feels good. The problem is the dispersal of places you can comment. If you feel, for example, the government's stance on the Iraq war or replacing Trident is mistaken you probably want to make yout point once. But there are a zillion places you could make your point. And there's little sense that anyone would read it.
So I think youre right to wonder whether TWFY comments can be streamed, grouped or tagged. But is the petition site the right mechanism? I think its valuable, but specific and limited. What you want it a "what we all think" service. I'm seeing YouGov soon - shall I raise it with them?
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