I know, I know, it is poor form to criticise fellow blogs and fellow bloggers and that is not my intention. Especially when David Farrar has been and to my mind still is the leading icon of New Zealand blogging for at least the last 20 and it is probably 20 plus years.
Please be assured it is not my intent to criticise David and Kiwiblog but, rather to ask this question. Why have things slowed down so much on the blog and particularly as regards the General Debate?
These days there is not the diversity of opinion and I cannot help but feel that the tightening of the rules and introduction of sterner, less flexible, moderation has resulted in the GD losing some of it’s character and characters – Maggie Pie being a good recent example.
I am not sure how I found Kiwiblog GD in about 2005 but, I can tell you I was bloody nervous after I made my first comment, expecting it to be completely ridiculed and oh the relief when it wasn’t. Gradually my rate of commenting increased and I remember some to and fro discussions I had with Inv2, who morphed into Keeping Stock and now goes by his proper name Tony Stuart. He and I once designed a letter which I think went direct to PM Helen Clark by maybe more than just the two of us – buggered if I know now what the subject was.
There was a 16 year old die hard Labour supporter James Street from the Wairarapa. I wonder what happened to him – he would be in his mid 30’s now.
What has prompted this post is that I was looking at the GD yesterday at about 10am and if my memory is right there were less than 20 comments then. In the old days there would have been 50 by 9am even on a Sunday – hence the question – is this format in decline?
I do wonder too about the current moderators. Okay I know they are following instructions/guidelines from DPF but some of them seem to have lost their objectivity and the need for a bit of commonsense and even a bit of an injection to recognise humour or even attempted humour.
Nicknames have been a large part of the growing up of our four children, now aged between 54 and 44 and not many of their school friends visited our home and left without a nickname. Some of those like squizzy, hypo, wally walnut, egghead, willie and whopper, ding dong etc still hold good 40 and even 50 plus years later.
In recent months I have from time to time fallen foul of, I think, one mod in particular. This mod has hauled me up and even deleted posts on the GD with the following crimes relating to either Politicians or other commenters. For example you cannot:
Call Ghost – Ghostie
Call Mike – Mikey
Call Gerry Brownlee Big Gerry or sometimes Willie Jackson – Wee Willie Jackson
Yet `The Despicable Mallard’ seems to be okay.
My latest mod intervention was 7/10 days ago on the Debbie Ngarewa-Packer suntan expose when I asked if we should now call her Snow White – comment deleted by a mod.
Now I am not trying to tell David Farrar how to run his blog and the GD in particular but maybe it is time to loosen the reins a little. To make my point at 8.45am this morning there are only 15 comments on the GD.
Finally I had the pleasure of joining David Farrar and a few other Kiwibloggers for a beer at a pub sellling New Zealand beer in mid 2010. It was in a pub just off the Strand in London and from memory there would have been about 20 mainly New Zealanders there including Bryce Edwards whom most readers will know of. A very pleasant and interesting couple of hours was spent.
No Minister 
In addition to that I’ve noticed that he doesn’t bother applying tags to any of the posts any more, they’re all “Uncatagorized”, so you can’t search by topic.
It’s as if he doesn’t give a shit now and I do wonder if the whole Trump thing, plus a lot of criticism of National, has caused him to begin despising his own audience?
Also it could be that blogs simply matter less now in the age of X, TikTok, and Facebook than they did two decades ago?
Farrar has always been a lot more liberal than his audience, so even when I used to comment there up until the middle of the teens decade, the most interesting part of the blog was the comments. He’s never been particularly insightful or outlandish in his opinions, and in many ways his posts were outlines that readers could colour in as they wished. The moderation was fairly minimal up until that time (some used to call it “the sewer” for a while), but I enjoyed it. So I don’t think it’s hatred of his own audience, because his audience has always been like that. In fact, it’s now been curated to be more like him than ever.
When that dickbag shot up the mosque in Christchurch, Farrar decided to start censoring mean things. It’s only gotten worse since then. Eventually all the interesting people got banned, and now it’s Benedict Yu and David Garrett every second or third comment – both of whom are almost as bland as the host. There’s very little variety of opinion on there now, and you can be sure it will be censored out if there is.
There’s almost no reason to visit now, other than perhaps that occasionally I learn of news in New Zealand from it. The Trump hate posts are now by far the most interesting things he writes, which is not a good thing. He might be better off just retiring the whole enterprise while it has any shred of dignity left.
It is an advertisment saturated wasteland of Godless Globalism
Agree – intervening on people’s posts is a slippery slope and sometimes is an early warning of that blog’s demise.
On the other hand, blogs often get ruined by idiot trolls and spammers. Not sure what the answer is.
’tain’t the format.
Kiwiblog lost it’s Mojo years ago when Farar introduced anonymous policing.
The blog was originally fun and I participated in it for probably 10 years (also from about 2005) but then Slater got his just deserts and several other bloggers (incl. Farar) showed their yellow streak and ran for cover. I left and have not commented there since.
In recent years Farar has become nothing more than a shill for the National party, particularly it’s left wing.
It is no surprise Kiwiblog is in decline.
As an aside: I met Tony Stuart at the Basin Reserve one year (Ponting beat NZ by himself that test match). A bloody nice fellow. Keeping Stock was a good blog until the thought police got their way.
Tony is a keen Sports follower and supporter of NZ teams.
If my memory is right he was a first class cricket umpire. Knows a lot about cricket and NZ cricketers of the 60’s 70’s and 80’s. He and I exchanged emails occasionally but not recently.
“…nothing more than a shill for the National party, particularly it’s left wing…”
But you repeat yourself.
It’s “just desserts“, by the way.
No, it isn’t. ”Just deserts” is correct – deserts meaning that which is deserved, not a sandy wasteland – an old phrase frequently used incorrectly, as you have demonstrated.
Ok, I’ll believe you. I always assumed it was dessert, because it was the ultimate course of a meal, and therefore a just dessert was the ultimate consequence of an action. That’s some handy etymology to know.
Kiwiblog will get better when Labour are back in power. It was the same when the Key National government came in. Farrar is such a party apparatchik he won’t discuss the dumb shit National does.
That’s an interesting point. I noticed a radical shift in TDB when labour lost the last election. People who used to be welcome as commentators on there like Chris Trotter and Bryce Edwards suddenly became enemy #1 as they dared criticise labour.
I can understand people having particularly ideologies (let’s call them “left wing” and “right wing”), but I’ve honestly never understood this blind obedience to a political party
The decline began with the good content going behind a paywall
There was never good content. There was meh content that had good comments on it. Now there are no good comments and we are stuck with the meh content.
I believe that the moderation rules should be such that:
1. After making 20 posts you get the equivalent of a blue tick, and no pre-post moderation. If you offend (get your post removed) more than say five times you lose your blue tick and go back in the count for 20 again.
2. Post moderation still exists, but should rely on down ticks by the readers themselves more. Greater than 10 and the post get’s hidden as now, and if moderators in post mode think it is that bad remove it.
3. Any more than 5 down ticks per post gets a ban on down ticks for one week. That is to stop the useless b******* who down ticks every comment.
This will make the blog more lively, and user centric – not relying on the mods to be on all the time. The system will alert them if a post gets hidden, when it is time for them to be involved, and only then. Save DPF some money!!
Now that will require some work on the system, and if David is reading this, call me – this is my bread and butter!
When moderators focus on banning nick names, such as Te Reo Luxon, the blog has clearly been “got at” by the woke.
Luxon is a maori activist and sympathiser so the name is appropriate. However, Farrar reveals himself up as plonker when he bans such names which just happen to be true.
The whole moderator thing was a classic example of DPF being screwed by his acceptance of Leftie theories designed to destroy the Right.
In that case the argument of Stochastic Terrorism, that all the nasty anti-Islam talk on Kiwiblog over the years had contributed to the general environment that enabled a mass murder of Muslims.
And DPF’s effort had no effect on his critics; arch-cunt Russell Brown still described DPF as “a piece of shit”.
You can take that and apply it across most of DPF’s takes on things – and the National Party.
wow pdm we must have met and never even known it. I was at that event in 2010. Was a good night. blogging has dropped as twitter has become more relevant. kb has been wet wet wet for a long time
w&p yes we did meet at those drinks – if my memory still works you were living near Windsor at the time and were smartly attired in a suit. Straight from work probably.