The "group" in "group-blog"

It should be pointed out that the group assembled in late June 2006 did not consist of people who are strangers to each other in some unqualified way. Indeed, most of us--scattered across four continents--have never met each other prior to that time. Yet there is also an important sense in which most of us were already well acquainted with each other--the sorts of thing we post on our blogs, the manner in which we engage with discussion and criticism, our screen personality, if you will.

Some of the people invited were hardly "unknowns" in the context of the Singapore Blogosphere. For instance, KTM was then a regular writer for STOMP (he has since left)--which made him hot stuff. But more importantly, in many cases, many of us have already enjoyed fairly extensive and lengthy interactions with each other prior to that time: in blog posts responding to each others' arguments, in the discussions in comments threads, in private emails. For instance, I have never met the TVD trio before. In fact, I still do not know their true identities. But if memory serves, I have had some contact with them (by email) almost ever since I first started blogging at "From a Singapore Angle".

What the above implies is that the initial invitation was sent to people of whom I have come to expect a certain quality and style of work. I would also hazard the conjecture that in almost every case, these invitations were received by people for whom I was a 'known quality'. Each person invited thus presents to me an individuality (treating the TVD-trinividuality as one so as not to overly complicate matters) and with it, an individual voice behind which is a unique set of experiences, commitments, motivations.

From early on, the intention was to bring together a loosely knit group unburdened by anything like a substantive common agenda, and even to leverage on precisely the loose-knit nature of the group. As I wrote in the original invitation email:

The ideal is that the individuality of the voices is not compromised. Every 'full-time' contributor should speak with his own voice, in the style that he is comfortable with. (In fact, rather than just a small "posted by ..." underneath the title of the post, there should be a scaled down portrait or icon associated with the author, etc.)

That is: even though we are all comfortable with each other's style and attitude towards discussion, in all likelihood, we do not all have the same substantive views on various issues (the same political orientation, for instance). The only thing is that we need to work out a set of operating procedures by means of which we can come to make group decisions, to conduct some small group procedural democracy, if you will.

Some of the earliest group decisions were also the most obvious (all representing consensus arrived at via email exchanges): the preference that the articles should be substantial and argued, that there should be no pressure to pile up content, no quotas, that new content is preferred (hence some elementary rules on cross posting), that there should be no obscenities, profanities, potentially seditious, libelous allegations, racist remarks and the like (but Singlish is fine as long as it is plausibly comprehensible by most Singaporeans), and so on. Six months and some ninety over posts later, these earlier decisions no longer feel like decisions as opposed to just aspects of what we (and in all likelihood, many readers) have come to expect of Singapore Angle.

Somewhat less obvious, but not the less important, are the procedures governing guest contributions.

Guest Contributions

It was agree from very early on that we will be posting guest contributions, and informal invitations were circulated on the grapevine even as the blog was just started. The first submission (11 July, 2006) came two weeks after the site was up and running and was published two days later, the official invitation still two weeks in the future.

In the meantime, discussions were on-going concerning two things: the wording of the invitation itself (posted 25 July, 2006; and here), and the procedure for generating group editorial decisions. These discussions was much facilitated by the diligence of ringisei who, at one point, collated the diverse strands of our email conversations from respondents scattered across four continents into one compact set of rules. These rules--though further refined as we go along--lie at the heart of what became our "Editorial SOP" (appended to the "Open Invitation, 31 August, 2006; now also here).

The rules exist to help resolve a specific problem in decision making: how does a small group of people (who trust each other, no doubt, but do not agree on all issues necessarily) come to make group decisions on whether or not to publish a guest contribution? The underlying mandate is a broad one ("could you live with such an article published on your own blog?"). This means that--as befitting the loosely organized nature of the group--the reviewers don't all look for the same thing and are not asked to do that.

For instance, BL said something about how he works on his own blog recently, emphasizing in particular (though obliquely) that the article should be well researched. In an email exchange, Heavenly Sword pointed out that he tends to look for creativity ("approaching the same old stuff from a new angle"), for whether it is boring, for reasoning but not necessarily a "moderate" writing style. I'm sure the others will have distinct even if related perspectives.

The issue for TVD and myself--the coordinating "editors"--is to find a way to "sum up" the comments and verdicts of the team members, and this is where the Editorial SOP comes in. Looking back, the SOP served us surprisingly well from almost day one. The most important modification, introduced early August, was the "double blind"--the reviewers do not know who the contributor is and the contributor does not know who gave which of the comments he received, and the editors, who know, don't get to vote until everyone else has already done so. The point is to force the team to vote on the basis of the perceived merits of the piece alone.

On the average of once a week or so, a guest contribution arrives in the editor's mailbox. The "editor on duty"--TVD and myself basically take turns at it--blanks out the sender's name and forwards it to the team members, who are asked to each give a verdict using the following template:

1. Veto.
2. Nay.
3. Indifferent. (Also = "abstain")
4. There are redeeming features (must attach suggestions).
5. Some editing needed (only brief comments)
6. Yeah (comments optional)

(Options 1, 2 and 4 are negatives, while 5 and 6 are positives. An article is rejected if a veto shows up, or if there is a significant minority of negatives. It is accepted only if there is a strong majority of positives. In all other cases--which are rather rare--the editors will have to make a judgment call. The average turn around time has been about 2-3 days.)

From experience, the submissions fall into three groups of roughly equal proportions. There are those clearly unsuitable for Singapore Angle. These are not necessarily badly written, but perhaps they don''t fit in with expectations about tone or style or level of research or reasoning that have already been set by the group and by past guest contributors. A majority of negative votes shows up and the editor has the (unenviable) task of writing the "I am sorry but..." email, with all of the reviewers' comments (no names attached) appended.

Then there are also those that are clearly impressive and a majority of positive votes shows up (with or without some suggestions for editing, additions and so on). If necessary, the article is first returned to the author for cleaning up with the comments and suggestions attached, and soon published.

It's the remaining 1/3 of the cases that require a bit more work. Usually, this is an article that is neither already largely publishable nor simply unsuitable ("has redeemable features"). These are the cases in which team members end up spending time thinking about how to encourage the writer to develop some line of argument or otherwise improve the article for a possible resubmit, and gave substantial comments and suggestions.

I should also mention option 1, the "nuclear option". It basically says: if Singapore Angle publishes this, I am out of here. (There is a long story behind why it exists but trust me, it is there for a reason.) So far, it has only been exercised once to reject an article--the person explained and the other team members--including those who have already voted "yes"--respected that choice and explicitly said so. Since a veto always kills the article, it is expected to be use only in extreme cases.

Since voting is (internally) open, it sometimes make for lively discussions as reviewers justify their decisions and seek to present their reasoning on why they vote the way they do. But such discussions aside, the editor's job is to generate the group's verdict using the rules laid out in the SOP.

It bears emphasizing that we do not see ourselves as providing some sort of collective stamp of approval upon published articles beyond the minimal sense of "here is something we would be willing to post as if it were by one of our own". The review process is in place so that we can cultivate and protect a certain tone and style of discussion within the modest space afforded by Singapore Angle, itself but one drop in the sea that is the Singapore Blogosphere.

Technical matters

Right from the beginning, I wanted the blog to be published on its own host with its own domain name. By then, I have already purchased the www.singaporeangle.com domain for my old blog, "From a Singapore Angle". It was thus a matter of signing up with a reasonably priced local hosting service (unmetered bandwidth rules!) and transferring the domain name, both of which were settled in a matter of days. Having our own web host allows for levels of control, customization and expansion possibilities not available to free blogging services, and if we are going to do things, we might as well do them well. Though I would not have thought much about paying out of my own pocket (it was less than what an annual subscription plan with Straits Times Interactive costs), various team members generously insisted on chipping in.

The choice of Blogger.com as the platform (publishing by FTP), however, was more of a compromise in the interest of start up time. Almost all of the individuals who accepted the original invitation already have Blogger accounts and many use the service for personal blogs. Getting the project rapidly off the ground was just a matter of creating a new blog on my Blogger account, sprucing up the template, and sending out invites. As mentioned earlier, the inaugural post (26 June, 2006) was out less than a week after the first invites were sent out (21 June, 2006).

But it was apparent to at least some of us even at that early stage that Blogger would not be the permanent solution: in all honesty, you can only do do much with a free service. Additional functionality had to be integrated from third party providers (primarily Haloscan and Blogrolling) and hacks (e.g., for dividing posts into a segment that shows on the main page and one that only shows in the item page). And so discussions were on and off from early on between myself and those among the team members who are more into this sort of things--especially TVD (BZH) and BL--concerning the longer term possibility of eventually migrating to a more full featured platform--probably either Word Press or Movable Type, though NucleusCMS was also mentioned at one stage.

"If this things survives for at least 6 months, we will consider doing so," was the not always voiced consensus. What you now see is the outcome of that consensus and the fact that, somehow, we did survive for six months.

I suppose NucleusCMS was never a viable option given my level of technical expertise, judging from what reviewers say about this otherwise powerful platform. The choice of Movable Type over Word Press, on the other hand, was largely accidental. While BL voiced concerns with stability issues for some versions of Word Press, I believe that they could be resolved--both ringisei and The Legal Janitor blog using Word Press. But more importantly, I used Typepad for most of the fall semester of 2006 as that was what my colleague chose in setting up the blog for a course we were teaching in NUS. This gave me exposure to how the Movable Type engine (which is what underlies Typepad) works and I liked what I saw.

So in mid-December, after receiving no objections from the group, I went ahead and installed MT 3.33 on our host. It turned out to be a much less harrying process than originally imagined, though not without adventures (and misadventures) along the way. I had more requests, queries, calls for help for tech support in the past two weeks than the last six months put together. But as far as I can tell, things have worked out.

Could we have begun with either Movable Type or Word Press from day one? Possibly. I would have enjoyed the added functionality and we probably wouldn't be as badly hit by the recent internet downtime cause by the disrupted undersea cables near Taiwan (though we have our own host, displaying the page still required some access to Blogger.com, a US based server itself; not so with our own native installation of MT). Would it have made it better for us? Not necessarily: having a firmer grasp of what works and what doesn't, what we want and what we don't in the last six months (for instance, how to handle guest contributions and categories) makes it that much easier now when setting up the blog using MT. Though I am sure there will be incremental modifications as we go along, at least we have a good base--I believe--to work from.

Where do we go from here?

The most recent development is the setting up of a brand new section to the blog entitled "Singapore Angle: Perspectives". (Technically, it is managed as a separate weblog under Movable Type.) The section will cater to shorter (500 words or less) and less extensively argued posts as compared to the main section, and is also open to input from guest writers, though without the more elaborate review process. Sze Meng and Bernard are heading up the new section as managing editors and will make executive decisions concerning letters and guest pieces. I see that they have put out the "Open Invitation".

Much as it was the case with the main section, Singapore Angle: Perspectives will take a while to build up a set of procedures and expectations, and find its niche. The agreement among the group members is that we will try it out and review in a month's time to see if the experiment is worth continuing.

In all honesty, the future is not ours to see, even though it seems strange to simply say que será será, since the future, in large measure, is up to us to create. Like everything else of human make, this blog will continue to change over time. But the specific instability of the blog springs from its nature as a joint effort: it is a function of the fact that each Singapore Angle writer (including future possible writers) brings to the table an unique individuality and casts his lot with the project from a variety of motivations, and from the fact that the blog stays in being and has the content and shape that it has through the informal consensus arrived at after discussion.

In important ways, this blog thus not only does not but cannot have a substantive agenda worthy of that appellation, the way individual bloggers or more tightly organized groups might have. Despite the inevitable misperception, we are in no position here on Singapore Angle to "make the world a better place" in some way "worth writing home about", as one might say. As detailed above, what we have arrived at (and will continue to make up as we go along) is at best an informal procedures for working out differences and arriving at group decisions (the guest article review process being the best example).

In any case, it would be both presumptuous to think of what we do as "effecting change" in Singapore or "make the world a better place". That is not the purpose of the group blog, nor do we have any such illusions. (All this remains even as individual team members are deeply concerned about how we might, each in our own limited way, contribute to building a better future for the country we call our home and the people we call our neighbors.)

To emphasize again: the writers here are drawn together by the possibility of reasoned discourse and civil discussion in the Singapore Blogosphere, the possibility of such interactions in spite of continuing disagreements over many important and substantive issues. It is an ongoing attempt at "proof of concept" (Sze Meng was the one who introduced me to that term). As I said in the inaugural post and I will say it again:

If by our meager examples others may come to appreciate the profit from an orderly exchange of ideas, and yet others of better heart and mind may deign to come forward with superior reason and more eloquent speech, then this site would have done its modest part in contributing to the ongoing cultivation of a thoughtful democratic citizenry in Singapore.

On behalf of the Singapore Angle team, I wish all netizens of Singapore a fruitful new year in 2007.

Update: I see that Bernard has posted his own reflections about Singapore Angle on his personal blog.

Update 2: Made a few minor typographical edits.