A small group of bloggers, myself included, intend to revamp Singabloodypore into a form of 'super-blog'. It will not simply be an aggregate blog but will receive contributions of essays and articles by the editors and myself. Hopefully over the next few coming weeks and months there will be contributions from other writers as well as myself.
The emphasis of the blog will continue to be social and political issues which have an effect on Singapore and Singaporeans. Contributions from those wishing to do so will also be respected and published after they have been moderated by one or more of the editors. I hope to set up a special submissions page soon. [temporary submission site available here]
The reason behind these changes from my personal perspective is that the job of dealing with issues effecting Singapore is becoming a task too great for one person. I will continue to post and host, but will give over much of the blog to others.
If there is an image of how I see the blog developing it will involve much more input from readers than merely posting comments to articles. All I ask is that in order to maintain a level of integrity that the suggested articles do not engage in 'hate-speech' or calls to violence against any person or organisation. I will also remove access to those involved in trying to waste my time and the time of the readers, by spamming, phishing or flaming.
Currently the only name associated with this blog is my own, and I have no intention of getting involved in cases of allegations of defamation in the Singaporean courts.
There are currently three or four individuals interested in publishing articles here and I strongly encourage others to approach me via email [stevenmcdermott'AT'gmail.com], anonymously if you like, in order to become a member of the group. Your political persuasion is irrelevant, in fact you can be completely against the current tone of posts here and you will be given access to post on this site. The idea is to create a space for open, and yes, mature discussion on issues relevant to Singapore and Singaporeans.
So for those of you interested, simply email me, letting me know of any sites you run or ideas you might have and I will forward access to you via email.
This revamp is at an experimental stage and I will proceed with caution.
Considering that you only get 300+ unique visitors a day, is this really necessary or are you 'jumping the shark'. I find your brand of 'cut and paste' journalism particularly boring.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=S10singabloodypore
unfortunately political thinking is reduced to a minimum these days; if there is a policy to channel people's energy to non-political pursuits, leaving thinking to the select, the policy has been very successful
ReplyDeletefor example, the Leninism article used to get a lot of traffic when first posted in 1999, but not now
thanks for the encouragement J.
ReplyDeletethanks for drawing my attention to the stats.
ReplyDeleteTotal 100,816
Average Per Day 323
Average Visit Length 2:36
Last Hour 19
Today 58
This Week 2,264
PAGE VIEWS
Total 148,455
Average Per Day 547
Average Per Visit 1.7
Last Hour 43
Today 123
This Week 3,830
You can inform me of the 'type' of journalism you would prefer to see here and I will consider shaping the blog to meet your wishes.
The sitecount doesn't take into account the people who subscribe to RSS feeds in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, I really like this site. It is refreshing to see a politically aware blog in the multitudes of angsty teen blogs and bitch blogs. So, julian, if you dont like the journalism here, you can just go somewhere else which caters to you.
Soci, can i contribute too?
Who says cut-&-paste journalism is boring?
ReplyDeleteGo and look at the Straits Times, then imagine it without all those cut-&-paste articles from Reuters, Bloomberg etc.
THEN you will know the meaning of the word boring.
So it's true. You are jumping the shark.
ReplyDeleteOk, more power to your Ctrl-C & Ctrl-V. Maybe after this you will have (gasp) 400 visitors per day.
could someoen explain to me what 'jumping the shark' means, honestly I have no idea what it means.
ReplyDeleteThanks, but we already have the fascinating Sintercom.
ReplyDeleteGood job Steven! This blog is where I come to as a one-stop blog for information not printed in the local press ok! I offer to contribute when I'm able to find stuff you don't get to first.
ReplyDelete>fascinating Sintercom
ReplyDeletepolitical discussion at newsintercom.org is pretty low level too; people simply have not developed the habit of making coherent discussions, since so many topics are "sensitive" - race, religion, nepotism, temasek wealth, homosexuality, CSJ, ...; silence has become deafening
"So it's true. You are jumping the shark."
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it's possible that Steve got tired of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, and is now going back to essays and articles. Shouldn't that be applauded?
"the fascinating Sintercom"
Apparently, an inability to differentiate between Sintercom and newsintercom. Possibly caused by the author's skipping of the events in 1991-1995, as a result of a space-time anomaly! Look. They're run by completely different groups of people. Completely different agendas. Sintercom is dead, shut down when Tan Chong Kee got tired of the Singapore government's insistence that he register the url as a political website; newsintercom is a different creature altogether.
Actually I wonder whether 300 unique readers a day is really not respectable? It probably depends on what you use as a benchmark. If I recall correctly, Mr Brown gets about 1,000 unique visitors a day, and you know that:
ReplyDelete(a) he is one of Singapore's top bloggers; and
(b) he writes for mass appeal, and his blog is designed for easy consumption.
Singabloodypore, in comparison, focuses on sociopolitical issues, is much more serious, and requires more thinking, and automatically caters to a more select readership. 300+ per day seems respectable to me.
There is a recent Andy Ho op-ed in the Straits Times where he cites some researcher talking about newspapers - whether they should aim for ever-increasing mass appeal; or whether they should aim for high-quality, in-depth content. The argument is that if they aim for high-quality, in-depth content, the overall readership number may fall, but the people who do read will tend to be the more influential people in society - people with power, money, influence, and who really want to know what's happening in the world.
wrong, mrbrown got around 10k unique visitors at the start of 2005. He's probably close to 15k by now.
ReplyDelete300 is pretty pathetic. It's just you and a bunch of other angry fat balding men agreeing with each other.
i'm frequently amused by how often people measure respectability with the no. of visitors on a blog.
ReplyDeleteI am sure SPG got more
ReplyDelete>inability to differentiate between Sintercom and newsintercom
ReplyDeletesince Sintercom is dead, there cant be any discussiong going on over there
the dead can be fascinating, but not in terms of discussions they make
To Julian and the other questioning anonymuses,
ReplyDeleteWhy are you all so afraid? Citing 300 and raising Mr Brown as a convenient shield makes little difference in this endeavour. Whether it is similar to New Sintercom makes no difference as well. Taking pot-shots at Steven's style is least useful in deciding whether this shift is workable.
Quibbling over figures of visitors is like the A-bomb historians arguing over Truman's "inflated" figures of a planned invasion of Jp. In the end, the figure is but part of a larger discourse of history-writing pertaining to the use of the A-bombs.
To Stevie : "jumping the shark" probably wanted to say the gun is my best guess. Yes, it is a good idea and most needed too. The only 'bridging' blog of note now is probably Sg Angle, possibly Void Deck, but the former is run by the Herculean effort of one person while the latter gathers from forums as well. More such super-blogs can only bode well for serious critical discourse and hopefully seed real change slowly but surely.
I definitely applaud Steve's efforts in creating what he calls a "superblog" whereby a community of interested and committed bloggers come together and "blog" together. In this way, it not only creates a sense of online solidarity but also allow readers to just visit one blogsite instead of multiple sites. Moreover, the popularity of Singabloodyypore can also be extended with word of mouth through these various contributors who can also, at the same time, piggyback on singabloodypore's existing readership.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely like to contribute to steve's blogsite with original submissions; and help him spread the word as well.
With regards to the fact that there are only 300 readers, I think it probably reflects the state of political apathy that general Singaporeans face; something which we should be ashamed of. Nothing much to do with Singabloodypore. The articles posted here are those generally not published by our mainstream media which makes te role of SIngabloodypore more necessary.
A superblog may change the way things work and turn the tide around around. Who knows?
Actually, Julian is quite wrong and Mr Brown only has about 1,300 - 1,500 unique visitors per day.
ReplyDeleteThere's a little icon at the bottom of Mr Brown's main page that you can click and see. He's using "Extreme Tracker".
I say that Singabloodypore is doing pretty well, actually, considering that it's a "special interest" blog and not a "mass appeal" blog.
I commend the effort as long as expectations are realistic; the invitation to provide material is not going to yield a huge supply, and readership will also be at the present modest level; the population has been so de-politicized that thinking and discussing are only for the select; whether such a population can produce future member os the select, now that's the interesting question; the modern leninism is still an experimental entity
ReplyDeletereaders of this website (and others like Newsimtercom) too are of the select, just selected differently
Hello Steve, I think it's a great idea to form a political superblog... It's been something Clyde and I have been talking about but never found time to do.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of such a superblog would be to build awareness and foster interest in Singapore's socio-political arena. If more articles were to be presented on one site, it would certainly be, as Miyagi puts it, a convenient one-stop shop for all things SG politics. Whatever traffic Steve gets doesn't matter because frequently updated, informative articles would appeal to a larger audience, which would mean more readership, and thus more unique hits. If it's one foot anyone of diverse intereses would put into politics, it may well be on Singabloodypore.
It's unfortunate that "hits" make for the most convenient benchmark for a site's utility, but that's no longer true now. As Steve Rubel said, "[t]his is 1.0 thinking. This is not a numbers game. A blog with two readers can “matter” if those two readers are people like Robert Scoble and Doc Searls".
Oh god please don't let this superblog turn into a Mr Brown type of blog. We desperately need alternatives to that sort of bland-rehash internet jokes from 10 yers ago-stuff.
ReplyDelete