Lyn - all really interesting. I’m post-Origin and can’t do your points justice right now. Tomorrow, I hope.

Yes the pseph bloggers brought information to the table, but I think the dynamic that also valued the bog ignorant was important. Commenters were dying to get polled so they could report push polling. Anybody in a marginal electorate was an instant authority. It wasn’t as top heavy as a lot of blogger-centric blogging can be.

So you’ve got experts bickering among themselves trying to devalue one anothers’ expertise, and experts allowing that everybody can be an expert. I’m looking at it through a cultural capital lens though, which probably makes a difference.

Recycling of talking points - I’d argue that Shanahan’s talking points were as important to the whole thing as the new information. Remember? Here’s the figures, here’s Shanahan, and here’s what’s really going on. Read it and armed with that ammunition bolt over to Shanahan’s to let him know you think he’s as stupid this poll as he was last fortnight. It was an important part of the ritual.

What’s important in the stoushing between blogs ritual though? What’s generally at stake? As far as I can see it’s esteem, but I’ll be interested to see what you think. As you say, it’s common and eventually everyone gets involved in one.

LOL I like the “esteem” remark you make.

And I agree with you for the most part - esepcially on this:

From my perspective the pseph blogs/poll wars thing was the blogosphere being its most useful, most broadly relevant, most participatory, most promising and most amazing

But as you hint, the psephs around election time were a very special case.

As I said, I’m working up to posting something longer and more substantial about stoushes - but for now I’ll say that one of the things that has been striking me is how they are a regular, everyday, almost banal feature of blogosphere discussion.

Often enough there is more heat than light, and GW stuff seems to come up again and again, as it has this week. I guess what I’m saying is that I feel like I have to account for this dynamic because it’s so common.

In this connection, one of the salient things about the psephs, IMV, is that they brought new information to the table - there wasn’t a lot of recycling of talking-points.

Anyway, it may turn out to be useful in generating this meta-discussion, which I’m sure a lot of people (including the participants in this episode) could usefully contribute to. I’d be keen to hear any further thoughts you have.

You mentioned Margaret Simons’ altruism thing on the pseph blogs. Last year we saw that altruism generate popular (and therefore legitimate?) esteem. Is it Quiggin who said the blogosphere is an esteem economy? I don’t see any altruism happening in the GW thing but a great deal of esteem in the self-esteem sense.

From my perspective the pseph blogs/poll wars thing was the blogosphere being its most useful, most broadly relevant, most participatory, most promising and most amazing. I do tend to compare everything else with that which is a mistake given its high salience at the time. Still, I’d argue that it’s a worthwhile comparison if you’re interested in either the democratic potential or the cultures of online discussion.