BLOGGING DURING BUSINESS HOURS A WASTE OF TIME

The Prime Minister's first blog post -- on climate change -- opened for discussion at 2pm 16 July; with 680 replies so far, many running to several hundred words, Mr Rudd's blog is a roaring success. Or is it? Actually, it's a mess. Here's why (bold in original):

Moderation and publication of comments will take place during business hours, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. While users may submit comments at any time, comments will only be processed and posted during business hours. We undertake to moderate all posts within 24 hours of receipt.

As of the close of business Friday, 17 July, 374 comments had been posted, this number remaining the same until shortly after moderation staff returned to work this morning, at which time the comments that had backed up over the weekend began to be posted. Over 100 comments were posted within the first hour.

Just trying to find the point at which the conversation concluded on Friday is a major project -- the comments are neither numbered nor permalinked. So, anyone wanting to take up the discussion where it left off has to search through the comments page by page looking for the last comment on Friday. Using the 50 comments per page viewing option, this is on page 10.

Now since a huge number of comments had obviously collected over the weekend, the promise to "moderate all posts [that is, comments - ed.] within 24 hours of receipt" obviously wasn't met.

In short, the PM's blog is a waste of time for anyone wanting to engage in discussion; if Mr Rudd sincerely wants to be a blogger he's needs to make some major changes to the way he operates.