Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Justin Hartman
SA Elections website launched
The Times newspaper has today launched a new initiative – a website dedicated to the upcoming SA Elections. The SA Elections website was developed by Avusa iLab and is by far the best election-related website I’ve seen in a very long time.
While the design is fantastic I have to admit the real value is really in the functionality and features of the site. First up you can vote for your party of choice and the top-ranked parties are displayed near the header area. I love this and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the online community vote in relation to the rest of the country. I’m guessing it will be a lot closer than the actual elections.
The other feature that really stood out is the aggregation of news, not just from The Times, but from all the major news sites in South Africa. While this is a Times powered initiative it’s brilliant to see a site dedicated to the interests of democracy and not just re-purposing existing content from their stable.
There are detailed profiles of each political party as well as the key members of each party and in true Web 2.0 fashion the political profiles have been aggregated from Wikipedia.
This is a great site and really useful but I also have to bring in a few flip-side suggestions. If the guys are reading this then I’d like to suggest the following:
- There needs to be an easier way to comment on stories and commentary. Use the WordPress model and allow everyone to comment without the need to register.
- The comment form is not so lekker. Might need a little sprucing up.
- Finally, I think SA Elections needs to have an Afrigator feed in the “from the blogosphere” box. At the moment it’s only aggregating The Times blogs and I think this blogosphere box needs the same spirit as the news aggregation box.
I think this site is going to be massive for The Times and I wish them all the best with its continued development. Well done guys!
Disclaimer: I used to work for both The Times and Avusa iLab so take this into consideration when reading what I have to say. Despite this I still feel they’ve done a sterling job without me having to be biased.
I am the MD and co-founder of 
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February 17, 2009
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New blog post: SA Elections website launched http://tinyurl.com/c8lzsl
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February 17, 2009
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RT @justinhartman: New blog post: SA Elections website launched http://tinyurl.com/c8lzsl
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February 17, 2009
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Hi Justin
Thanks for the post and your feedback.
“There needs to be an easier way to comment on stories” – we’ve deliberately not included a direct comment facility on the stories. All stories link back to the original source article/website and this we feel this is the best place for readers to comment, and for the sites themselves to manage this feedback in the most appropriate way….
We’re wanting to get more solid “opinion” from readers through the comment form on the site and will be regularly publishing a selection those to highlight what readers views are on the elections and related issues.
Cheers
Helen
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February 17, 2009
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Hi Helen. Thanks for that feedback. It makes perfect sense when you put it that way. I would still make the “share your opinion” box more prominent. It’s relatively hidden away at the bottom of the sidebar and it would be great to have good quality user generated content.
What’s interesting to me is seeing the voting go up on the site. When I took the screenshot above the DA had 7 votes, COPE had 4 and ID had 1.
Now the DA have 33, COPE have 11 and ANC 3. I think I’m coming back to the site every day just to see this ticking over
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February 17, 2009
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I think the site is fantastic and also find the online voting fascinating to watch.
great job Times people.
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February 17, 2009
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@Justin thanks for the feedback. I’m glad to hear that you will keep visiting the site to check on the supporter tally as that’s precisely the idea!!!
I suspect that there were some bugs with the comment form that have been fixed since you last checked and we will definitely look into integrating Afrigator feeds under the blogs section since we know how much that would mean to you
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February 17, 2009
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@Colin pleasure man. Excellent job by you and the team. This is going to be a hugely successful website… I feel it in me bones
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February 17, 2009
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I like! This is an excellent example of what can be achieved when you put knowledgable and experienced people behind the wheel. Good job!