Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Electrolite reviewed a bunch of the new group blogs and Open Source Politics came up, in his opinion, as the worst design-wise though he says the content is pretty good.

Some of my co-authors responded in his comments. Being lazy (and frankly, more concerned for my readers than anyone else's) I figure the trackback will let him respond or not to my opinion here.It's pretty obvious, though the writers are bloggers and we've hooked into the blogging infrastructure, that OSP isn't your father's blog.

I'll let you in on a secret. I think there's too much bullshit in the political air. I think the warbloggers and LGFers and fill-in-the-blank-pundits have established the default values for the debate and we wind up proving and re-proving the same points over and over again. OSP is intended, in part, to establish a critical mass of progressive information, something easy to find that's weighty enough that it can't be dismissed with an "Indeed."

But we're not Slate or Salon either because we're doing this more for reasons of passion than profit (which I personally would not turn away but hasn't even been raised…and wouldn't be here but that I felt the need for an alliteration). Truthfully, one of the reasons I think we have a shot at injecting some liberality into the debate is that we are all bloggers, talking to other bloggers through the mechanisms and linkages of the blogosphere. We want to take advantage of the relationships our blogs have developed (this is strictly my interpretation, but it is as much our blogs as our human selves that have the relationships).

Anyway, all this is reflected in the design, and is part of the reason Mr. Hayden is less than pleased with it. The design elements aren't a problem. Okay, I was never thrilled with it myself—I don't like all the curlicues and such, plus you'll note I'm an achromatic kind of guy—but I can overlook it. The problem is, it's just not bloggy. More accurately, it's bloggy enough to make you expect further blogness that's not really forthcoming. It's kind of like smelling barbecued ribs, walking up your driveway and finding they just used the same sauce on the steak. You're not going to go hungry…you'll probably enjoy the hell out of it. But when you got your mouth set for ribs, you can't help feeling a little disappointed.

I understand, yea verily I feel your pain. But we're not letting folks go hungry.