ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

ToryDiary has moved...

...HERE because of the new comments system.

This page will remain live as an archive but will no longer be updated.

"Comment overwritten"

Tim Montgomerie writes:

You may see those two words repeated a little more regularly within comment threads over coming days as I launch a clean up.

There has been a resurgence of personal attacks within the threads and I'm determined to stamp the worst of it out.  I'm also bored with the accusation that people who disagree with mainstream Conservative views are inevitably trolls.  I'd prefer to see more people addressing arguments.

If you can't behave in a civilised way to other comment-ers please don't bother leaving comments at all.  ConHome's comments policy is here.

One of the reasons for the recent decline in civility is that Jonathan Isaby still hasn't joined the team.  I don't therefore have time to monitor every thread closely.  Please help me to maintain quality by emailing me whenever you see a dodgy comment.  I won't promise to overwrite everything that upsets but with your help I hope to more actively get rid of the worst.

In case you are interested...

Over the last seven days the leading sections of ConHome have accounted for the following percentages of traffic:

1. Frontpage 43.0%
2. CentreRight 20.6%
3. ToryDiary 18.1%
4. Seats and candidates 7.7%
5. Local Govt 5.1%
6. Platform 3.5%
7. Parliament 1.1%

The percentages don't quite add up to 100% because pages such as the 'About' and 'International' pages also account for very small proportions of hits.

ConHome admin

Tim Montgomerie writes:

Contractural obligations mean that Jonathan Isaby probably won't be joining ConHome until after the Tory Party Conference but his contributions will be well worth waiting for. I am really looking forward to working with him.

In the meantime I hope that ConHome will continue to offer the most comprehensive and independently-minded coverage of Tory politics. August is usually something of a slow month but I was delighted that the website won 200,000 more hits in August 2008 than August 2007 (660,905 hits compared to 462,302). CentreRight.com - the project that Sam and I launched in January - is now the second most popular page of ConservativeHome.  Earlier this month it overtook the ToryDiary and has stayed ahead.  Only the gateway page to the rest of the site - the frontpage - receives more visitors.

The two big casualties of the extended interregnum between Samuel Coates' departure and Jonathan's arrival are two new projects; the Wiki pages and conservativeinternational.com. But they'll take off once Jonathan is on board.  I'm optimistic that they'll both succeed.

Peter Franklin will soon be writing an extra Friday feature and sometime next week I'll be telling you more about this.  I'll also be able to introduce our new local government editor. Watch this space!