About
- Who are you?
- Why “The Standard”?
- What’s your political ‘angle’?
- Why don’t you say who you are?
- Who pays for this?
- Are you getting rich from blogging?
- Why don’t you post more often/more regularly etc?
- Where is/was The Standard?
- I have an idea/comment/suggestion, how can I contact you?
- No – you must….
Who are you?
We’re a cooperative who saw a gap in the New Zealand political blogosphere and decided that we should have a go at filling it here at The Standard blog site. We write here in our personal capacities and the opinions that are expressed on the blog are individual unless expressly stated otherwise (see the policy). We do not write on behalf of any organization. Legally this website is owned by The Standard Trust, an entity set up by the authors to own The Standard’s url and handle any advertising revenue.
Why “The Standard”?
The Standard newspaper – from where our masthead comes – was founded by labour movement activists in the 1930s. They used it as a vehicle to share their views with a broader audience – a perspective they felt the mainstream media was representing poorly. We think the same is true today.
What’s your political ‘angle’?
We come from a variety of backgrounds and our political views don’t always match up but it’d be fair to say that all of us share a commitment to the values and principles that underpin the broad labour movement and we hope that perspective will come through strongly as you read the blog.
Why don’t you say who you are?
Some of the authors here use their real names, but others choose to blog under a pseudonym for a variety of reasons. Some of us have professional reasons for doing so, others of us are reluctant to expose ourselves to the kind of personal threats sometimes made online. Those of us using pseudonyms discussed this issue long and hard before we began and came down on the side of anonymity. We hope you can see why. You might also want to contemplate the implications of this link.
If you want to get hold of us, have a look on the Contact Page.
Who pays for this?
We do, but in the spirit of a cooperative endeavour we get help from time to time from a range of people from the labour movement whose technical skills we couldn’t do without. Thanks guys!
The sysop paid for the server as part of his contribution to the site and did so since the site was started in August 2007 on his home server until we started with carrying advertisements. These days we have dropped the costs so far that the site is paid for by small voluntary donations. If you want to contribute towards the costs of running the server any donations are more than welcome.
Are you getting rich from blogging?
Nope. We don’t make any money out of blogging here and we don’t even run ads any more or take money from any organisation or individual who might try to influence the site. We do this purely because we enjoy it and we think the labour movement side of the story is always worth telling. Any revenue beyond server costs will be used to develop the site and further the progressive left principles The Standard was founded on.
Why don’t you post more often/more regularly etc?
None of us are full-time bloggers. We have jobs and families and other interests, one or two of us even have girlfriends/boyfriends. We hope you like reading our blog site but we try not to let it run our lives. If you have an idea for a post we’re happy for you to let us know though.
The number of posts has been steadily increasing as authors get better at writing posts rapidly, we find more authors, and as we accept more guest posts mostly from commentors.
Over time we have had a number of posters join and leave the authoring crew as their circumstances and time commitments allow. If you want to try a post or two as a guest poster then send them to Contribute Post. If they are readable, then they will often get posted. If you are any good, then you might get given a login if enough current moderators don’t disagree.
Where is/was The Standard?
It is on the net somewhere. Exactly where it is physically is often a mystery even to the sysop. It has been hosted over several places in the US and Oceania on a variety of different hosts.
Having an offshore site reduces exposure to legal issues. For instance with the owners of the National parties political spinners Crosby/Textor who have a habit of using defamation suits to stifle discussion of their techniques. This is an unwelcome trend in the NZ political sphere.
More recently in 2012 we have seen calls by both politicians and media to peel back the privacy we have pas part of our policy and bills with that effect put forward in NZ. This will require require a full stealth of the data to prevent the breaking of privacy in violation of the sites policies and of general Internet principles.
However offshore causes latency issues for out NZ readers (usually close to 90% of all readers).
Currently (mid-2015) it primarily lives on a server at the home of the sysop using a fibre connection to the local net. Static portions like graphics and CSS/Javascript are served from caches in content distribution networks worldwide. Encrypted backup systems exist in other countries in case the local environment gets toxic.
But these things change all of the time as the technology changes and there are movements in the often strange ideas of legislators about their abilities to coerce the net.
I have an idea/comment/suggestion, how can I contact you?
Send us an email: We can’t reply to everything and, as above, sometimes have other priorities but we do appreciate hearing from you.
No – you must….
Have you read this page? We must do nothing. The posters post on the topics they want to (with a few limitations from the sysop). If you really absolutely want your ideas to be heard, then start a blog and start learning to write. You can probably find a more compatible blog on our blogroll. Or you can comment on the posts that our posters write and follow our rather lenient rules.
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