>>"We want to help people communicate and campaign more effectively to influence events in the places in which they live, work or play," says the website.
Perrin, with funding from Channel 4's 4iP project and Screen West Midlands, employs two staff and some freelancers who train people at UK Online centres to teach aspiring local bloggers
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Can you use third-party funding so you guys end up getting paid for your work, Hugh, and get some paid people to help HOL growth?
What Will is doing is helping to set up websites in disadvantaged areas. The Talk About Local input is skills to support set-up. He and I work together on a number of things.
My understanding of where things stand at the moment is that any such money would need to come from a commercial or social enterprise set-up. In the longer-term, it's an issue which will impact on site sustainability for all neighbourhood websites.
It's certainly a question begging an answer, but its somewhat of a golden goose at the moment that occupies many gigabytes of chat worldwide with answers beginning to emerge (mainly along commercial lines).
The quality of this detached, third person reply reminds me how well you'd do should you ever attempt leadership of the council, Hugh!
>>answers beginning to emerge
Got any helpful links, Hugh?
We're talking about a salary of, say, £30k for you and £20k for one or two others, aren't we, say £100k per year inc taxes? Surely the community has valuable insights as to how this might be effected?
Having accepted that the work you guys now do for free needs paying for if HOL is to properly evolve, why not go for it now? Presumably, it's a local economy thing, so what could be more appropriate for local people to help resolve?
p.s.
One step I'm curious about - where are you with plans to introduce ratings for posts? I like the http://www.slashdot.org system - posts can be rated 'funny' for instance, which can brighten up topics. Posts below any specified level of value don't even get seen by the reader unless they hunt them out. Elegant way of dealing with spam. Might be an effective measure if applied to moderation too.