Frequently asked questions...

What is this site for?
The site is written by and for people who live and work in Kings Cross, London's most fascinating neighbourhood.  It is about efforts by the local community to keep the streets of Kings Cross in London clean and live-able.  We act as a community bulletin board and an online news and campaigning service for people who are interested in their neighbourhood.  This site only shows the tip of the iceberg of a huge range of activism and volunteering in Kings Cross

Who writes it?
There is a small team of volunteers who write drawing on about a dozen people who feed us with information from local campaigns and happening. There is a page on the authors here.  We go on holiday, have lives and stuff so it isn't a 365x24 process.

Where does your material come from?
Most of the articles we write are suggested by neighbours who use the site as a community bulletin board.  We mainly write original material sourced from the streets.  But will on the odd occasion recycle relevant stuff from the news that people may have missed.

What area do you cover?
Kings Cross is at the junction of two boroughs - Camden and Islington.  The railway stations are in Camden but most of the people who identify as Kings Cross live in Islington.  Experience suggests that most of the issues we cover are in either Caledonian Ward, Barnsbury Ward (both Islington) and SomersTown (in Camden).

What are your politics?
This site is not affiliated to any political group - we are interested in making the area a better place, not the Politics.  We work with whoever is committed to helping us.  All three main parties have acknowledged the work of the community around this site. 

There is an active tussle between the Liberal Democrats and Labour in the area with local Islington wards swinging to Labour in the last council election, bucking the national trend.  The Islington South MP Emily Thornberry is Labour, but with a tiny majority of 484 - the seat is known as an ultra-marginal.  The Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson is Labour with a majority of 4,787, sharply down from over 11,000 at the previous general election.

How many people look at this site?
The website receives between 90 and 120 average unique visitors per day according to Sitemeter, depending upon the range of issues posted.  Click to make the chart bigger.  November 2007 was our busiest month so far with 3,700 unique visitors.

In addition over 100 people have signed up for email updates via the excellent Feedburner service.  The sites community videos on YouTube have had over 8,000 views. There are over 440 articles on the site and over 200 comments. The site can be searched with Google from the front page.

The general comparison I make is with community newsletters shoved under doors - a website like this this is far cheaper (indeed nearly free) and much quicker.  There is no way we could reach this many people with a newsletter.  Community email lists are very popular now (Stephan runs a good one for Kings Cross - contact him) but don't act as a public knowledge store as this site does.

How do you handle comments?
We are always delighted when people comment on the issues we raise.  We are realistic about the fact that many open comment sites are, bluntly ruined by nutters.  This site was never intended to be a 'blog' as such, it just uses blogging software.  So comments are moderated before approval.  Well over 95% of comments are approved.  We approve comments that disagree with the overall tone of the site, but not ranters or flamers etc.

How do I set up a site like this?
The site uses Typepad a blogging service at a cost of Stg9 a month.  It is extremely easy to use and Typepad offers a free trial.  If you can use, say Yahoo or Google webmail, you can set up and run a site like this.  The technology is the easy bit - the content is much more important.  Focus on that first and add techno bells and whistles later.

Where do the videos come from?
I tend to make films using my mobile phone or cheap camcorder and edit them on my laptop using Adobe Premiere Elements.  The video is embedded into the site from YouTube, which is free.  We have had over 8,000 views of community videos.

What else is there on the web about Kings Cross?
This site is related to the Facebook Group 'I Love Kings Cross' and KingsCrossTV.org