Some stream-of-consciousness impressions as I go through the big three party websites.
NDP: features a prominent “youth” link on the main page. Nice. Items in the RSS feed are just a headline and a one-sentence summary; I want full content! Why am I only getting the “rapid response” items in my aggregator? There are lots of headlines and stories and they must be posted somewhere. Aha… the RSS feed on the headlines page covers all categories. There’s no indication that feeds are different, boo. This is a nice-looking site… I’ve never been a big fan of the green-and-orange colour scheme, but it’s toned down or integrated better, making everything more appealing to the eye than either of the other two.
Conservatives: next in the menus after “founding principles” is “c-boutique”, the party store. Seems apt. As long as I use Flashblock I can see the dropdown menus, but now I can’t navigate into them because they disappear as soon as I move the mouse from the menu title. Fortunately the title is clickable, but that only gets me to the first item and there’s no navigation to the rest. The tour blog… no RSS feed which means I probably won’t see it again. Started off a little lighthearted and focused on the campaign, but quickly gets into anti-Liberal rhetoric. Strange that it’s anonymous… the writer refers to him/herself but isn’t named. Who is “I”?
Curiouser and curiouser:
By now, I’m sure you’ve had a chance to visit the tour blog. [
javascript:link excised –ed.] It’s being written by a good friend of mine from inside Harper’s bus!
Like the official Conservative campaign blog, and despite the familiar tone with which the above is written, the “youth blog” is also entirely anonymous. Reading the “About Us” page doesn’t help either: Who are we? We are young conservatives…. we are CPC Energy.
Liberals: Feschuk’s campaign blog is funny, but there’s no and now there’s an RSS feed. Hey, why don’t you add one to be nice to that minion of Jason Kenney’s? Might as well let him/her misinterpret your posts on the fly. Podcasting link looks interesting but there’s no content yet—see previous RSS comment. Hmm, the Liberals have youth, women’s, seniors and aboriginal “commissions” (which I guess are internal party groups). Too bad they’re logos with tiny burned-in graphical text… I don’t know many seniors who’ll be able to see the graphic meant for them, and the aboriginal peoples logo is almost unreadable in those colours at that size.
Sheesh, it’s 2 a.m.? That’s enough for tonight.
Interesting. You want full content from the NDP’s RSS feed yet your RSS feed doesn’t give full content (at least not with my aggregator). 🙂
Then your aggregator’s broken. 🙂 I’ve always published a full-content feed.
Just curious as to why you wouldn’t include the Greens? Their website is very good considering they have only had federal political funding for not even 1.5 years. They also have an interactive policy building forum….so that the Canadian Electorate can actually DIALOGUE with them publicly on this site. None of the parties have that kind of feedback mechanism.
I do not belong to the Greens. See my blog entry on the bias inherent in our federally funded media:
http://frostyballot.blogspot.com/2005/11/issues-according-to-4-out-of-5-of.html
No reason for not including them other than time; I just haven’t made it past the “big three” to the smaller parties (or even large ones like the Bloc). Even with the NDP you can see that smaller parties more readily accept and use newer ideas and technologies; I’m not surprised the Greens have fora for those who are interested in them.
In partial response to your post: there’s a much smaller chance that the Greens (or any other party) will hold the balance of power in the upcoming minority government than that the Bloc or NDP will. I’ll still bet you hear more about the Greens on CBC than on any national private broadcaster.