We certainly began in a flurry and though that has now slowed due to summer commitments and holidays, it is still ticking over. Some things have come through quite strongly from members:

1. We want no truck with any sort of personal confrontation politics. We could hardly be described as a genteel society and yet we are interacting on the finally streamlined site in quite a nice way. People are visiting one another, commenting and linking and we are in the process of building a character distinctly Bloghounds.

2. The key seems to be that we make almost no rules. For example, how many times should one member link to another? It's not stipulated. How many times should one do this or that? It's not stipulated. Whether this more freewheeling approach can continue remains to be seen but it has served us well to this point.

Why would you wish to join this group when there are other groups to join as well? It's the atmosphere inside mainly, the feeling of being part of something nice, the absence of rancour and a spirit of fun. I myself am probably the least laid back of all of us and yet there is a good-natured tolerance of most of my missals from the centre [at least I hope so].

In time you'll see more posts from other members, as and when people learn the ropes and see that the site is by members, for members. Remember, if you would like to be part of Bloghounds, there is a two stage process - applying for a user account in the sidebar and sending an email to the bloghounds group [address in sidebar] with your url.

Hello and a very warm welcome to bloghounds.

We are a group of bloggers who wish to support one another in simple but effective ways: by visiting each other’s blogs, linking to each other whenever we can and, above all, through mutual encouragement. You will find us a friendly and positive bunch from many different walks of life.

Bloghounds would like to offer membership to authors of quality blogs everywhere. For more information on how to join us, please click the link at the top of the sidebar.

Welshcakes Limoncello, of Sicily Scene

[This badge is only a mock up and is being reviewed by the steering committee, along with the tag line. If there are copyright issues with the pic, it will be changed.]

If you happen to have read the original Blogpower post, you’ll see that it mentions a smallish group of mutually supportive bloggers and a number of the 2006 members have at times referred to the friendly atmosphere which used to prevail.

In the same spirit:

1. Bloghounds has been born and uses a steering committee to set up the group and to do the early admin.

2. The steering committee initially assesses membership requests according to these guidelines:

a. The blog would need to be of at least one month’s standing and be of an acceptable standard, with clear navigation.

b. The blogger needs to be identifiable, whether using an avatar or real name and be clearly active in the sense in which the committee understands the term.

c. He or she needs to accept and see the necessity for replying to comments, participating as a group member, carrying the banner in the sidebar, carrying at least one form of the blogroll, agreeing to be part of the mailing list and most importantly would make a genuine attempt to link to fellow members at least once a week.

d. The blogger would further need to accept that the group homepage and mailing list are semi-public and not appropriate fora to air personal issues which are not of interest to the group as a whole and he or she should not have a previous history of divisiveness, troublemaking or harassment of fellow bloggers.

3. The steering committee, having looked at the request for membership and if having decided against, is honour bound to e-mail the blogger concerned with both the vote and the reason why. That blogger is welcome to try again after two months.

On the matter of the vote, one dissension would necessitate a more thorough steering committee review of the proposed blogger, two dissensions would need to be taken seriously, three would fairly well end the current bid. Abstentions would be advisable in a conflict of interest situation.

4. The main thrust of these guidelines is not to tie anyone up in red tape but to enable enjoyable membership of the group without petty disputes, recrimination, drawn out issues and other things which often tend to sour what should be a fun activity.

5. Once a group of around twenty bloggers is in operation [and this could take some considerable time, approaching the dead season for blogging], members are asked to nominate and vote for the ongoing admins. When the admins are in place, the steering committee retires.

We're now inviting members and the address to ask at is:

bloghounds@email.com