A Cautionary Tale - no comments

Via Newer Labour, and Bloggerheads, here's The Register's coverage of what happened to Keeping The Faith - the Tony Blair-backing site - that appeared early on Thursday morning and quickly ran into trouble. I first noticed it around 8.15 am via Luke, and watched the signers list from when there were just five names, all genuine, to about 200, mostly bogus. Before long, people had worked out how to post HTML, but the system was totally out of control and much worse (than a PR meltdown) could have happened. It has all been cleaned up.

I don't want to get into the personalities involved, or the content of the site itself, but Tim Ireland's investigation should serve as a lesson for:

• Anyone running online petitions without either specialised software, or experience and fancy coding - and especially on controversial themes.
• Anyone launching anonymous attacks on opponents, especially when you purport to be doing Labour's work. Just don't - it stinks.
  
• But also anyone who takes on the mob (by which I mean the anonymous hordes of trolls and hackers) without protecting their own identity.

Here's Tim's guide for online campaigning:

Here's the quick and easy guide:
1. Reveal your name.
2. State your agenda.
3. Reveal your interests
4. Don't try to get around (1), (2) or (3) if you really suck at covering your tracks.

Update: Cllr Gareth questions Bloggerheads' motives (as well one might).