Progressive Bloggers - Qualification For Membership

Qualification For Membership

As of 2009, Progressive bloggers includes over 430 members. Membership is open to any Canadian-themed progressive blog anywhere in the world. It is not affiliated with any political parties and attracts people with differing views, including some members of the Conservative Blogging Tories.

Application for membership is gained through the Affiliates section of the Progressive Bloggers website. Moderators review all applicant blogs to ensure that they fit with the political mission statement of Progressive Bloggers. Membership can be rejected or revoked if a blogger acts in bad faith, such as berating readers of his or her blog, or falsifying their comments.

Unlike some prominent sites like Daily Kos, which all self-identified progressives can join, the moderators of Progressive Bloggers on occasion deny membership to certain applicants. This has predictably led a few members to express suspicions about whether this practice serves to favour a particular political orientation, or approach to politics. For example, some feminist bloggers have questioned the practice of rejecting blogs that emphasize personal over formal politics, although this appears to have been based upon a misunderstanding: "the personal is the political" blogs are accepted, but personal blogs—my garden, my cat—are not.

While one or two active members have called for a change in membership criteria, these calls have been of too general a nature to be systematically addressed by the moderators. In fact, most of those who apply are accepted, based upon very loose criteria indeed (the blogroll is an explicitly political one, with a Canadian focus; new bloggers may have to wait for a period to establish that they have staying power). The diversity of Progressive Bloggers' political affiliations itself shows that there is no narrow ideological screening on the part of the moderators.