Poor Ryan Cullen. He slaves, literally, for the good of Lib Dem Bloggers everywhere. He runs the thankless money pit that is Lib Dem Blogs and yesterday created a mailing list for all the bloggers on it with the hope of creating a nice, light space where we could swap tips and help each other out.

He forgot one small teeny problem: it’s a mailing list. What is a mailing list? It’s something you join if you want spamming with lots of emails saying ‘help! Unsubscribe me!’ and other emails telling other people off for all manner of mailing list related sins.

It’s old technolgy – clunky at the best of times and terrifying at worst. But it’s the people factor that seems to doom them: they seem to induce bad tempered flaming and megalomaniacal behaviour in otherwise reasonable people.

It’s not Ryan’s fault mailing lists are usually awful (although if ruled with an iron fist and made up of a largely static membership who all know what they’re doing they can, sometimes, become useful.) The basic idea of having lib dem bloggers help each other with the technical side of things is a good one. I don’t want Ryan ending up a miserable, bitter, twisted old curmudgeon like me – and neither do you – so if you’re on ‘the list’ and thinking about giving him hell, please don’t!