Here is a summary of the discussions to date, If I've missed something out I apologize.

I have now posted this to Admin as well as to David Cameron directly

Dear David,
Re-energizing Webcameron
I have polled the contributors to this forum and the break-away forum and here summarise my recommendations based on these discussions

Moderators, Censorship and administration of the site.
We are aware that someone needs to fit the moderation of the site in with other duties and draw a salary for his/her efforts.

Nevertheless 2 aspects are losing it immediacy and relevance.

Firstly if a some news item breaks on a Friday afternoon the site will not have any thread possible until Monday morning. As Canvas points out the Internet is a 24/7 phenomenon. Webcameron should not be asleep for 105 of the 168 hours a week.

Secondly the censorship, such as there has been, was pretty heavy handed and no explanations have been offered.

Thirdly the administrators are totally faceless. We, the contributors do not know anything about them.

So we suggest a way out of this:

Firstly, you post a Disclaimer notice on the first page of the Forum section to the effect that what follows is an open forum for anyone to contribute. As such the opinions and threads posted here do not necessarily reflect either your own opinion nor Conservative Party policy.

Secondly you list the rules under which the forum posts should be written.
For example
No Obscene or foul language.
No Libel
No "ad Hominem" attacks
No Commercial activity
and so on.

With those in place and warning that breaking rules will have the thread instantly removed and the poster banned the new topics could be posted as soon as they are listed and the moderation can take place at the convenience of the moderator after the event.

It would be nice if you could insist on individual posts being concise and sticking to the point but that smacks of editing.. which I presume is not what you put Webcameron up for in the first place.

Interaction
We all watch your videos and appreciate the odd reply you do post, but sadly this does not constitute much interaction.

We appreciate that you are extremely time constrained.

So we suggest that you delegate some of the load out to your Shadow or even to some of your Party members (Parliamentary as well as others). An invited topical guest may be appropriate on occasion.

In fact we have recommended that you make a line in the index for each of your Shadow and invite them, either on a rotating basis or by some other means to interact to posters in their area of competence.

Tn specific these were suggested as sub-headings for the "Politics" heading:- "Foreign Affairs, Education, Social Justice, Defense & Security, etc. 'Politics' is far too crowded." and a whole index line on Law and order (maybe Justice as a sub heading of that)

This way the site may become vibrant and interactive once again.

Nice to haves
It would be nice to have a moderator/editor who is known, who is fair and who will channel stray posts into the appropriate forum and try to keep duplications and re-hashes of old topics down.

Two aspects:- that suggestion firstly involves a budget and a fairly time consuming job.
and
secondly the person would have to be very diplomatic not to be heavy handed at times..

However, were you to actually implement a shadow cabinet interacting with posters on an open forum I would suggest you could Re-launch Webcameron as the cutting edge of 21st century interactive politics.

Yes it would need a fair amount more beefing up but here is a way for each of your guys to be constantly engaging, getting ideas and feedback and interacting with people all over Britain and the world (I am currently in Japan).

Plus of course you would almost certainly gain many more regulars.

The Individual Posters.
At the moment anyone can join and post and that I believe should be encouraged. On the old site however each poster had a profile (age, sex, location, political leaning, occupation, education level or anything else that helps us (and you) to know them better.

A suggestion came up about you, or some of your people asking us questions in turn. Of course the press may have a field day but since you have got them on side maybe we could colour that.

A very pertinent point was made that on the old site you were more or less obliged to answer questions according to the votes from participants.. This got badly abused by hijackers but the fact is that that was very revolutionary.

Now you can (and do on occasion) answer any thread you feel like so the controvercy is gone. Well that is a pity and we feel that if a way could be found to prevent your answers being hijacked then the old way really was better.

Feedback to posters.
It has been suggested that you allow posters to "rate" or give positive or negative feedback to other posters.. Maybe similar to ebay or another site (seeding) Each poster gets "seeds" for each post.. and others can give him more or take some away if they dislike/disagree. There are ways to do this but this will give some weight to the serious contributors.

In addition a line up top to say how many other "members" are logged in.

"Buttons" to press and "Prizes" to win was how another put it. Well some of these ideas have merit to some and not to others. But certainly it all depends how far you would like to go.

It is our contention that you have a captive, productive and disparate bunch here, some who are avid supporters and some opponents but are giving a constant flow of info and opinion from the ground.

In Summary
At the very least we believe that if you want this site to continue being pertinent and vibrant then you should re-arrange the moderation administration of the site.

To enhance the relevance and give you more time we believe spreading the load and ensuring true interaction would be very effective.

If you were to "go the whole hog" we believe that a fairly hefty re-design followed by a publicized re-launch would make the whole thing exciting once again.

Well done, jonjii!

I hope they are listening....

Excellent jonjii, I support that 100%. A link to an archive of the "old" Webcameron postings would also be good, we lost a lot of good stuff when they were all summarily deleted!

Good on yer, jonjii.

Except that Foreign Affairs, Defence, Education, etc should not be subheadings under Politics, they are important enough stand alone. Everything is politics, after all.

Well done, much thought obviuously went into it.

I nod my head furiously in agreement - well done jonjii!

The trouble is, short of preventing someone from accessing the internet it is impossible to ban them.

On our company website, i set up a guestbook so people could comment on our products.

In no time at all it filled up with porn ads, spam and inappropriate comments.

If you "ban" someone all they have to do is set up a brand new email & account. If you ban them via ip address ranges then they just use another isp via modem.

If you ban a specific ip they just restart thier router or log back off & on again.

Banning is not as easy as it seems.

What about library pc use?

And are YOU going to pay for someone to work on a sat/sun for webcameron? You have it now for FREE unless you contribute to the conservative party.

Cliff

Chulcoop, People posting inappropriate comments never used to be a big problem as you may remember - Admin always swiftly deleted them. Iain Dale gets them on his weblog but we have the option to ignore them.

Working on Saturday/Sunday is what the mods used to do until about three weeks ago. Why the sudden stop?

they wanted to be paid?

IS THIS IT? What has been "under construction" all this time?!

I was hoping there was going to be a great makeover!

It's strange that even as the Conservatives are going from strength to strength - now the party is at its highest level of support for 20 years, yet Webcameron is being allowed to wither away like this.
Why?

I believe WebCameron has had a profound effect on DC advisors, think-tanks and policy groups, such that this party will reverse this governments strangle-hold on ordinary British lives. As 2007 closes I personally thank the experienced adults who have contributed to discussions here on WebCameron and helped me make some better connections.

I agree with you entirely, scrubs.
As a staunch supporter of David Cameron, though, I just think that the Webcameron team need to find out ways to make the website even more open to these valued contributors. They could make a big start by relaxing the OTT line they adopt towards moderation approval, wouldn't you agree?

Webcameron needs a make-over, the one thing I notice is that the forums seem 'cluttered' up with all sorts of stuff and I feel I honestly don't know where to post/reply anymore. So in my opinion it needs to be tailored to meet its remit, that is in being the official website of the leader of the opposition, and more importantly the website of our future prime minister.

Something I would like to see is a topic-of-the-week set by David Cameron for everyone to discuss. Such a topic could be a burning issue of the day or a vital piece of Conservative policy.