Sponsored Review: PoliWatch.org
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, TechnologyHey all, this is another review I’m doing via the site ReviewMe.com.
As mentioned in the title, the site I’ll be taking a look at today is PoliWatch.org. It bills itself as being a site that features “Political Watch Blogs” with the goal of “Political Views and Solutions. Our Common Goal: Good Gov’t.”
However, the thing that’s not immediately apparent about the site is it’s built by a group called VOID, which is short for Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy. Their goal is to get people to read PoliWatch.org, become informed about the issues and then become bloggers so they can inform others about how good government should work.
While this is a noble task, I wish the “VOID” part of PoliWatch.org were more transparent on the front page of the site. Keeping this behind a very tiny link on the far right hand side just doesn’t cut it.
In any event, I’m going to go cover some basic features of the site, score each and then provide an overall score at the end.
DESIGN: Idea - B, Execution - D
When you visit the front page you’re greeted by a very non-traditional 4 column structure. One is for Repubs blogs, one for Indies, one for Dems and the last being the Menu.
Here, take a look…
As you can see right off the bat, the design idea is interesting, but not well executed. That was my first gut reaction to the site, and I think it’ll probably be a lot of people’s. And since you don’t really want to look at an unattractive site, I think this could really hurt them in the long run.
So what does it look when you click on one of the posts?
Something like this…
I hope the picture isn’t too small, but the format switches from 4 columns to 3 columns, with the actual post being on the left, the comments in the middle and the rest on the right.
Again, I think this could be an interesting layout, and the comments do have some basic threading (a reply to another comment is indented), but the design just isn’t there yet. I hate to harp on that, but it’s a biggie for me so that’s why it ultimately gets a lower grade.
SUBMITTING CONTENT: C
There are a couple ways to go about this.
The first way is by submitting a “Guest Article.” You have to register first in order to submit anything, but that’s pretty standard nowadays given how devious automated spamming has become.
After you’ve registered and then submitted an article, you have to wait until somebody approves it for it to publish. Then, after a few of your articles have been published, you may become a “Trusted Writer” with your own profile page, etc. The reason I say may is this distinction is seemingly solely determined by a couple top editors of the site.
Then, after you’re a Trusted Writer for a while, you can become a PW Main Page author, which it seems to me is really the only way to have any of your content read. And that’s a big problem, but that’s just how the site is set up currently.
Another way to go about submitting content is to simply apply to become a PW Author. But the site states that have to have a blog of your own with traffic in order to gain this status immediately. If not, you can submit Forum Page articles and the Guest Articles. And then you work your way up the ladder as mentioned.
All in all, this seems like a fair system, but it’s not very social and it leans much too heavily on a few meta-editors determining what’s good and what isn’t. If they instead had some sort of mechanism for readers to score and judge it, I think that would probably be more effective and would help make the community feel as if these were their authors, instead of PoliWatch’s hand selected authors.
USER GENERATED CONTENT: C
Generally I found the content I read to be informed, but not terribly insightful. And this is actually a big problem. Because if the site is supposed to give people access to information so they can vote bad politicians out of office, it seems to me they should be focusing more on specific politicians and the policy proposals they take. Instead we’re treated to a bit of a mish-mash of content that doesn’t really reinforce the purpose of the site. And this isn’t the authors’ fault, it’s the creators’.
In any event, this certainly wasn’t a FactCheck.org, and I kind of think for the site to be successful, it needs to have extremely factual content, not just partisan buckets people can pour content into. However, given the current structure of the site, I doubt that’ll happen.
AUTO GENERATED CONTENT: C
“Auto Generated Content” may sound odd at first, but if you visit their Daily Political News page, you’ll see what I mean. It’s just a page full of links from news sources around the internets. I really like stuff like this because I can pick and choose what I like.
However, I was surprised to find that a similar design didn’t exist for the Repubs, Indies or Dems. Instead it was just a list, and looked much more like a traditional blog format. This is fine, but I wasn’t expecting these aggregation pages to look so conventional. Not awful, but not really keeping with the structure of the rest of the site.
OVERALL: C
I wanted to like this site, but from my first impression of the design to the notion that you can only rise through the ranks based on a couple people’s opinions, it just doesn’t seem like it’ll take off.
Personally, if the ultimate goal of the site is to elect new politicians who will better serve the country, I think the site needs a reboot with much more focus on individual candidates who aren’t doing a good job in Congress.
But check out PoliWatch.org for yourself and tell me what you think in the comments section below. I’m sure the creators will appreciate your reviews as well.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 and is filed under Blogging, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Well, I thank you for the review. Some of it is actually useful.
Much of it reflects your personal preferences and does little to provide an objective evaluation. Additionally, you make a fair number of assumptions, some of which took a wrong turn, which I will address here.
First, most political information sites have sponsors either in the form of advertising or revenue from some interested party. The fact that PoliWatch is sponsored by Vote Out Incumbents Democracy in now way affects the fact that the site is open to writers of all political persuasions and all major parties.
Second, the authors, save one David R. Remer, have no affiliation with Vote Out Incumbents Democracy in any way, shape, or form. As you would have noticed had you read the articles on the site. In other words, your review did not review the content, but, made assumptions based on the open disclosure that the site has a sponsor.
Your review falsely assumes that the content reflects VOID’s agenda, which a reading the articles on the site readily disproves.
I found your prejudice toward multiple column formats to be rather unenlightened. WatchBlog for example has the 3 column layout, each with a different party represented, and 100’s of thousands of visitors each year seem to like that format.
In fact, your review complete fails to take into account how the form follows the function. This is a multi-partisan web site requiring a multi-column format giving equal weight to each partisan column. Your mindset seems to be cemented to a one person blog with one perspective which a single column with sidebar format accommodates quite nicely.
While I have no problem with your indicating whether you personally liked the site or not, your review made no apparent attempt to evaluate the site objectively from the perspective of its intended purpose and whether the design fulfills that purpose or not.
The purpose of the site, which one would think would be obvious from the design, is to give equal voice to writers of differing partisan views in one site, and promote dialogue and debate between them as well as between the authors and visitors to the site. I find it rather humorous that you overlooked the obvious in order to find justification for your personal preferences for your own site.
Anyway, as they say in show biz and politics, any exposure is beneficial, up to a point, and this review caught the attention of one person, at least, myself.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I’m a writer for Poli-Watch because I think the idea has enormous potential and dedicated management. I don’t get paid and I think that this will become a very popular blog over time.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Well, to respond…
I never said anything to the contrary. I, like you, said that PoliWatch is sponsored by VOID, but I wish that was highlighted on the front page.
I’m sorry, but how would have I known that the authors weren’t VOID members? Would they have said that in their posts somehow or be identified as such? Your site said they may or may not be VOID members, “Writer participants at the PoliWatch site are not necessarily associated with the VOID organization, nor do their views or perspectives reflect the mission and purpose of the Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy organization.”
So given that nobody was identified as a VOID member, I never said any of the authors were VOID members.
Also, I did read the content. That’s why I said, “Generally I found the content I read to be informed, but not terribly insightful. And this is actually a big problem.” It’s under the heading “User Generated Content.” Not only that, I also reviewed how to submit content, as well as the auto generated content pages. So I covered the content story quite well I think.
As far as not getting the idea of the site…the idea of the front page is pretty obvious, and I acknowledged that each column is dedicated to its own partian viewpoint. However, your stated goals in the About section were such…
So nowhere in your own description do you talk about it being set up to show each partisan view in its own column. As stated, that’s obvious. So I’m not going to give you points beyond the B I gave you in design idea.
However, on your front page you do say this as the tagline: “Political Views and Solutions. Our Common Goal: Good Gov’t.” And since VOID’s goal is voting folks out of government so you can get good government, you can understand how I’d think that you’re pushing VOID’s agenda as one of the points of the site. Otherwise I never would have said that. And it’s not like that’s a bad goal. So the fact you’re attacking me for saying that is frankly very weird. And then to somehow interpret that as me justifying the design for my own site is even weirder.
But let’s dig into this supposed prejudice against the design. As stated, I don’t like the look, but I liked the idea. And, by the way, WatchBlog would get an A from me. Yes, I can like another site that doesn’t look like mine. It is possible. WatchBlog’s design is crisp and contemporary and the format is solid. So maybe VOID should just buy that site since it’s up for sale instead of building a inferior facsimile of it. Or maybe you should just get a better web designer and state the purpose of the site on the front page (like WatchBlog does) so you don’t have to play this nonsense “gotcha” game with people you PAID to review your site.
In any event, sorry you didn’t like the review, but I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. It was very average, and so I gave it an average grade. But I told people to go and find out about it for themselves. What else do you want?