There are a surprising number of blogging candidates in this election… but how to keep on top of all of them?
Here’s one answer (and the latest Social Signal project): Confeederation.
Confeederation is your one-stop source to read blog posts from candidates in the 2006 election campaign. We aggregate candidate blogs from across the country, and from all parties.
We’re trying to create a kind of giant, online all-candidates meeting. And you’re invited to participate in the dialogue; please feel free to comment on the posts here or at the original sites.
To do this, we use a simple but powerful web technology known as news feeds (sometimes called RSS feeds, Atom feeds or XML feeds). These are text files that describe the content of web sites such as blogs. News feeds use a standard format that computers can easily interpret, allowing a blog’s content to be easily read, reproduced and remixed.
We believe blogging can make a valuable contribution to Canada’s public dialogue, and Confeederation is our way of welcoming candidates to the online conversation.
Some questions and answers
Are you including every candidate’s blog?
To be included here, a candidate’s blog must meet three stringent criteria:
- It must be a blog.
- It must be from a candidate in the 2006 federal election.
- It must have a news feed.
We’ve added a lot of blogs in a very short period of time, but there are some candidates we’ve missed and maybe others who’ve just started blogging.
So if I know of a blog you aren’t including, can I suggest it?
Yes! Please! Just click here to go to our suggestion form. (You’ll need to sign in or register first.)
Can I comment on the blog posts?
Absolutely. You just need to be a registered user; there’s a link just below the login screen. (Or sign up by clicking here.) We ask only that you refrain from personal attacks, libel, hate speech or advertising, and keep your comment related to the blog post.
Which of these candidates will be Members of Parliament after January 23rd?
That would be telling.
How did you build Confeederation?
With an assist from the friendly folks at Bryght, we built Confeederation on the open-source Drupal content management platform. We’re using the Aggregator2 module to do the magic of bringing all those blogs in here for you to read, and a little hand-made PHP code to do things like make sure the parties are listed in random order on the front page.
