A REVIEW OF THE LSS BLOG

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LSS UI Blog address: www.unibadanlss.com

Joining a plethora of other student societies within and outside the University of Ibadan with a blog to their names, the LSS UI blog was officially launched on the 30th of June 2016. This brilliant achievement is the fulfillment of one of the several promises made by the entirety of the last administration. The creation of a downloadable application which eases access to the blog and ensures an immediate update of any activity on the blog is indeed commendable.

Sadly, the first post published on the blog titled “…and the promisetrician flunked: review of the new era agenda ’15” went against the traditional mode of launching a blog. There was no formal introduction for a maiden blog. The blog visitors were not intimated with the purpose of the blog and the caliber of posts that would be published on the blog. In the reviewer’s opinion, this is not the best way to officially launch a new blog which has no prior history or online recognition. Although the blog administrator doled out a lot of other articles on that same day, it would have been more appropriate if the first post on the baby blog was a sort of introductory address or “mission statement” of the blog rather than a review of the promises of a member of the former executive committee.

As dull as the blog appears, this has not discouraged students within and outside the faculty from reading up articles on the blog. With several columns like legal eagle, gist hub, sports, entertainment, the courtroom among others; the blog presents itself as an all-rounder. In the words of a 200 level law student, “the blog is informative, fun and has variety of exciting topics asides law”.

An interesting observation about the blog is the interaction between the blog contributors and their readers in the comment section. This gives the readers an opportunity to give feedbacks and also put faces to the authors of exciting posts. However, there is another side to this coin. This kind of arrangement leaves the contributors to public glare and could impede their judgment or write-ups in certain situations as they might not want to be tagged as the authors of controversial write-ups.

The article with the highest reaction on the blog space is the article tagged “I am a law student, I can’t keep calm” which in a humorous light discusses the challenges faced by law students in exam halls.

One article that really got a couple of people talking outside the blogosphere is the “one faculty, different classes; an insight” dated 10th of August 2016. With the presumed intent to analyse the distinct nature of each class in the faculty, the author begins from the 100 level class to the LL.B ultimate class. The author attempts to point out the “pros” and “cons” of each class. Although there were some discrepancies between what the author wrote and what actually ensues in some classes, it is on the whole said to be nearly accurate as it encapsulates the attitude, appearance and general belief held by most law students about the various classes in the faculty.

So long, there has been no plagiarized content on the blog and this is a laudable feat considering the increasing rate of plagiarism online.

With about 40 posts and the last post published on the 24th of August 2016, it is safe to posit that they try to update at least once in two days. This is quite impressive. Thus in the reviewer’s opinion, the blog has started on the right foot and has been doing pretty well.

However, the poser addressed to the admin(s) of the blog is: how well will they continually run and manage the blog without plagiarism or drifting into oblivion like other student websites and blogs?

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