I might have already noted this morning that traffic is down on this site at present, but I also think I might have identified many of the reasons, and that this is common across the whole of the political-economic commentsphere right now. What is likely to be a long, hot summer has distracted attention, but once it is over, I expect people to return.

In that context, we have had conversations here on how to improve the blog.

Discussions about a redesign are on hold because we are not sure that changing something that already works is of great advantage.

That said, we do think that we should try to highlight the categories into which blogs are posted more by making some changes to their presentation, because it seems that very few people understand that the categories box on the right-hand side of this post (or below it on mobile devices) does analyse every single post into relevant categories, so that others of similar type to it can also be readily found.

However, the biggest idea we are playing with at present is adding audio to most posts, so you can listen to a narration of what is written. We would obviously not need to do this for the videos, but we are aware that many people prefer to listen to content rather than read it, and that it is now technically feasible.

The question is not, though, technical viability, but whether this is useful, and whether the cost involved would be a worthwhile use of our resources. The content would be AI-generated, possibly using a voice clone of me, but alternatively in another voice with a similar style. We currently think it will cost at least £100, and maybe more, a month to do this, so we are wondering whether there is much interest before we commit to something at that level of cost.

Comments would be appreciated. I've also added a poll below. Thank you if you can assist.

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