NO2ID

A new item has been added to the front page of mylifemyid.org


It looks like they may be having problems finding people to justify the Home Office's assertions about the need for ID cards.

And next week's update will add
"And if you haven't had a problem could you PLEASE at least make something up"

The "Problems proving" link is here: http://mylifemyid.org/node/421

It is very reassuring to see that the poll on that page "Have you ever had a problem proving your identity?" includes the very important note "N.B. please note that by identity we don't mean just proof of age" so they are responding to the feedback.

BTW Snapshot taken, politeness factor in the script meant it took ages. No answer to the question "for what purpose" but the faq and myth pages preserved for posterity for which the same question and lack of answer may well apply. But better to have and not need than to need and not have.

My thoughts exactly.

Two other points interested me:

1. I saw a comment from one of the moderators (Debbie G, I think), implying that there will be an advertising campaign at some stage to attract new people to the site (sorry, can't find the link now). If that happens, it'll be interesting to see if the tone of any new posts is significantly different from the current posters - because at the moment it's hard to see how they could be more negative about the ID scheme.

2. There's a new thread "Tell us a bit more about yourself" in the "research" section. It's odd that Virtual Surveys should suddenly decide after a week that they need to know more about the respondents. I may be cynical, but I suspect they want to be able to say in their report to the Home Office "We got a lot of very negative comments from the forum members, but it turned out they were all from one tiny demographic, so this doesn't prove anything". On the other hand, admitting that respondents come from a narrow cross-section of the target population would dent the credibility of VS's methodology, so perhaps I am being too cynical. :-)

It's the "This is blatant government propaganda" thread you want
http://www.mylifemyid.org/node/229?page=1 Fri, 11/07/2008 - 14:06

Though I wasn't sure if the advertising campaign was for the site itself or an ID-promotional aimed at that particular age bracket. Reasoning that a 'good response' from the POV of a surveys company is simply 'lots of answers' rather than necessarily the contents of those answers.


I don't see it as odd - one of the threads on there is about sharing your info on facebook, and I think this may be related. Any report would include something about how people who are willing to stick their personals on a website but not trust the government - and this presumably would then be used to bolster the 'you give everyone your details anyway' line of argument.

They are going to be asking different questions from different angles over the lifetime of the site so there's a few more of these still to come.

And I do find myself wondering if VS are going to regret taking on this particular contract - they seem to have been cast as the temporary 'face' of the ID scheme - which may not be a good thing for them if the IPS exerts too much editorial control.

Well, three pro-ID posters have just appeared on the forum. Intriguingly, they have all decided to include photos of themselves instead of the standard avatars that most posters are using. It's fun to watch this unfolding - I very much doubt that IPS are happy at the moment.

Well yes it does look like a very fine site. Every single thread on the front page of the forum bar about two were put there as a kind of protest and the other two seemed neutral when I looked today. It's like a young person's NO2ID site and to think we don't have to pay a penny for it either.

I'm sure, if it hasn't happened already, the mods will privately think these ID cards are bad news. They might have been pretty neutral to start with, as a lot of people tend to be, but they will know more than anyone since they have to read all the comments! Now the Home Office is in a pickle. They can't pull the site and they can't start to ban everyone. I mean I wouldn't mind betting some of the younger journalists in some national papers are also on it. Well I would be if I had to do some ID card research. They have no way out but to grin and bear it.

This bit really amuses me. They're clearly desperate to find a single reason for some gullible young person that they can then use to justify this wreteched scheme.

You know what they are going to do now. They are going to use taxpayer money to advertise it. Now there are two ways of looking at this. The first way is most likely to be the way they think, and is as follows. They will use an expensive PR company to make adverts drawing in and appealing to the totally witless. They can do this using all sort of subliminal suggestion and mixing in the sort of things that will appeal to the audience they wish to attract. For example, say they wanted young worried mothers who are protective of their child's safety, then it would be a simple job to do since they can find the sort of images they would identify with. Now they will most likely appeal to the pro-ID card lobby, or what's left of it. This will then crowd out the 'web warriors', who are some of the most politically clued up and most likely to be against the scheme, the ones currently dominating the site.

The second way of looking at this is that what happens next is the new audience gets converted into being anti-ID cards. You see their problem will be that the ones for the scheme are likely to be the sort of people that don't generally think for themselves, but follow the majority. Although the majority they might associate with would also have pro-ID card views they will find it odd that the new majority are the opposite and so they will naturally be inclined to go with the majority and get converted.

Unfortunately for the government there is a sociological situation where so many people are against something that the follower segment pulls behind them to cause almost 100% being against it. ID cards are rapidly becoming the enemy of the people. My advice would be that the Home Office should pack up and go home, but they have a job to do, don't they.

Further to the aforementioned "blatant government propaganda" a couple of additional comments today - one to say that new people are appearing as a result of advertising released at the end of last week, and one in reply to that asking where one might see some of this advertising.

I'm sure we are all hanging on to the edges of our seats...

You know as a 25 year old i thought of bothering to register when this came to light but then i looked round at the site first and decided not to kick the gov while they are down, their getting enough of it as it is

Take a look here. The traffic rose gradually and has now dropped in just the same way.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traff ... femyid.org

If you do a search on the link you find nothing but ridicule, except for a small youth quango who seemed to have copy and pasted the government spiel directly onto their site. But even that is very low in the search, the highest number of hits go to articles telling of its failure. If they are going to advertise they would do much better if it were not a web advert!

From the latest batch of arrivals, the leading pro argument is for proof of age in bars/clubs with DVD rental a distant second.

Which means the main reason so far for 16-25s wanting ID cards is to make it easier to get alcohol.

Where's those anti binge drinking leaflets when you need them?

The logic steps:
1) Binge drinking is bad
2) ID cards make getting alcohol easier
3) Therefore ID cards exacerbate binge drinking problem
4) Therefore ID cards should be stopped before our society is completely destroyed

Hurrah! We win, my logic is irrefutable...

Hey there,
I am certainly encouraged by how clued up the young people on the site are. So I've decided to create a wiki for them to edit. It's been difficult to get Virtual Surveys on board though, since their technical team are consistently bad at responding to anything.

I've seen wikis being used to draft press releases and other useful political information. It can be used as akind of Lobbying weapon. So perhaps we young people ought to make the report to the Home Office ourselves using the wiki. Needless to say, the press will be informed. If any of you are on mylifemyid, then please contribute to the wiki!

The wiki is here:
http://consensuswiki.org/mylifemyid

Yes this caused me much amusement too. I like the fact they have had to include 'signing up for DVD rentals' as a potential problem area as if there is a mob of youing people at the door demanding quick and easy access to their local block busters.

From the forum : "There have been static ads on sites such as direct.gov.uk as well as links circulated from the original launch. A significant numbers of adverts were placed commercially in places such as Facebook and Bebo."

And another place a link has appeared: http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?p=144
"Mylifemyid.org – or why online consultations aren’t PR"

The bit that really gets me is this:



Pray tell us how one can have any sort of "debate" if any and all critical comment is censored?

I think you missed reading a "not" in their statement, shurely?

But it seems to have a different meaning from "none have been censored", more like "not all have been censored".

Something else that's on there:
from http://www.mylifemyid.org/node/480
Are you suggesting that passports should be changed to become ID cards, rather than introducing a new card?
Sounds like the royal prerogative change that's being suggested which someone posted here recently.

I just like this comment: "Wacky Jacqui and her bruschetta-eating NuLab cabal can take their ID cards, their database, their condescension, their managerialism, and their endless salami-slicing of our hard won civil liberties and stick them where Tom Driberg used to shove his organ. They should be ashamed of what they have turned the once-great Labour Party into. I'd rather go to Parkhurst than sign up to their Stasi state."

Giggle

The DVD rental thing interested me, how many people actually go out and rent DVD's now when you can download anything you want off the internet without needing any ID?

I haven't looked at the mylifemyid website for ages but looks like I aight have to go back and look.

Make sure you also check how they say you "share" your information with websites to get services.
We do not "share" our bank details with website. We provide sufficient information for the specific purpose of making payments.
We do not "share" our information with the government websites to renew our driving licences. We provide information as may be required for the specific purpose.

There is a new "research topic" for "ID when travelling". Expect all the responses to blame the government. It's their fault after all.

I particularly liked the line from AMB on this site:

'Do I have anything to hide? No. However that doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to fight to the death to hide that nothing'

It's a great little NO2ID satellite site. If the posters are genuinely 'young' then the sentiments expressed are a great sign of healthy scepticism of all things surveillance by the very people they thought they could bamboozle.

PS- loved the thread with one of the mods likening the ID register to facebook. Priceless!!

http://www.mylifemyid.org/ was taken down this morning, shortly after 9am.

About a week beforehand, the admins asked for feedback on the running of the site. Here's that request, and two considered replies.

There will apparently be a report from Virtual Surveys back to the Home Office, and it will apparently be published, although I have no idea where or when. It should make interesting reading.

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mylifemyid - feedback
Virtual Surveys...
Role: VS Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: 2007-05-22

We'd really like to know how you think the mylifemyid process could have been improved.

Post a comment below giving us your suggestions.

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deepspacemillar
Role: Member
Posts: 166
Joined: 2008-07-09
Re: mylifemyid - feedback

I feel you could have improved in two fundamental and significant ways:
the first was impartiality and tone...

- especially in the early stages of the site, you tended to refer to the userbase is a slightly condescending manner, pandering to some sort of imaginary stereotype of some 'yoof' who could barely string a coherent sentence together, never mind share reasoned and logical views on the issues at hand. I think however you gradually improved this, partly as you realised that the audience wasn't the bad stereotype you expected, and party because the level of discourse was about a million miles away from some of the more inane questions that were posed.

- throughout, questions and polls have tended to have a slight pro-ID bias, sometimes alarmingly so. I recall some early posts which went along the lines of "OMG ID cards are like so awesome! I can't wait!!!!111!!eleven!!one" which clearly, while paraphrased, was not the 'impartial' tone required

- talking of impartial tone, all the material on the site itself was supplied by the home office, which of course was all the usual pro-id card propoganda. If you had really wanted an impartial look at the issues, you would have hosted the opposing arguments (even at least worded your own way or something). This did not occur, and therefore, your 'impartial' approach was to me, not impartial at all. However, I accept this was pretty inevitable given you were employed by the home office to conduct the research

Secondly, was openness and transparency

- throughout this site's operation, posts (and occasionally entire threads) have gone missing, users have been banned, and posts were edited. To this day, "off topic" posts are moved to the pit of despair known as the miscellaneous posts thread. This is not a responsible and transparent manner of running an adult discussion. There was at times no reason or interaction with the users to inform them of why these things happened, except when someone made a big fuss. I made a post a significant time ago detailing how net forum etiquette works, how you have to be transparent in your activities, explain any actions to the members of the site and generally maintain trust. This is a crucial point. One of the reasons why members have been so hostile to you (forcing you at times to take action, when otherwise you wouldnt have needed to) was because there is a great, deep seated mistrust of virtual surveys, caused by this lack of transparency. I will freely admit things have improved greatly since the sites inception, (things were pretty awful at the start), but they are still miles away from where they should ideally be.

Even in the context of research, your heavy handed approach has at times been totally disproportionate, and unneccesary. Because of all this, we have also not taken you very seriously as users. We actively expect that you are biased, that you will mis-represent us and our views, that you will abuse the system is some way. Again, this is a trust issue, and without it, co-operation and constructive action will be greatly lacking.

I actually think that beause of these issues, the results of your report are potentially undermined. The reactions you may have received and the research data you would have compiled might actually have been slightly different had people actually trusted you, and had you not deleted users, posts and entire topics from the forum!

Fri, 10/10/2008 - 01:46

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mingxing
Role: Member
Posts: 39
Joined: 2008-07-10
Re: mylifemyid - feedback

Please print out DSM's message poster-size and display it on every wall of the Virtual Surveys office.

The idea of having a large scale, open, transparent, internet-based consultation of the views and attitudes of 16 - 25 year olds was absolutely inspired. You had the opportunity to perform a public-relations coup and demonstrate a more free, more representative and more consensual form of democratic policy making, with less skewed results than New Labour's traditional closed focus group.

You blew it.

You claim neutrality, but all information on the site is undiluted propaganda.

You make the classic mistake of assuming that all 16 - 25 year olds are silly, facile creatures able to debate only at the most trivial level. The design of the site and early moderation efforts were patronizing and insulting. Remember that, especially when you get to the 21 - 25 end of the scale, you'll find there are people that are married with job, mortgage, kids and a lot more life experience than your moderators. The site did become usable when you reined in the moderators and let a person who was clearly not 16-25 take over providing the foil for our arguments.

You claim to be trying to conduct research into our views and opinions, but due to heavy-handed moderation you ended up stifling discussion. Topics drift - in doing so they create new ideas. Your role as moderators is to keep a lid on foul language, not to try to force a discussion to run on rails. Far from keeping your research on track, you provoked open hostility and possibly distorted your results more. I say possibly, because we will now never know. You poisoned your own results by bad practice.

I really do hope that the UK Government, whichever party it may be, learns from this experience and conducts policy research using free, open, online mass consultation in the future.

I hope that whichever organisation they choose to operate the research first looks at how good online discussion boards operate (look at, for example, Internet Infidels and Bad Science).

I hope that the next time the UK Government chooses to consult the "youth" they can do so without the condescension and contempt: we are not stupid, we don't deserve to be treated as though we are.

I think that you took a brilliant idea and made it fail. But don't be put off: next time remember that you're here to ask our opinion, not tell us our opinion, listen and moderate with a light touch and you'll get the honest, consensual trends you're paid to gather.

Sun, 12/10/2008 - 08:32

sigh, I can almost see the Home Office summary now, it will be something along the lines of:-

"The online survery showed that ID cards would be generally well received by people in 16-25 age group; there was however a hostile minority of hardcore of anti-id activists, that attempted to distort the results."

My archiving was rudely interrupted by the site being taken offline this morning (forgot and started too late), but only 11 changed threads at most since the previous run, 9.15am on 12th so I hope not a disaster.