Caracas Chronicles

URL: http://www.pcv-venezuela.org/
or
http://www.tribuna-popular.org/

(PCV shares a website with the party’s daily newspaper, Tribuna Popular.)

Updatedness 20 out of 20:
The decision to roll the Tribuna Popular and PCV websites into one really pays off here. Fresh stuff, lots of it, every day.

Interaction possibilities: 2 out of 20
The site allows you to open an account, which is somewhat mystifying, since you can’t actually do anything with it. Still, they have almost 1400 users signed up.

Meaningful positions: 20 out of 20
Positions don’t come any more explicit than this. (OK, maybe this tops it.) You can fault the commies for a lot of stuff, but being wishy-washy about where they stand is not among them.

Web-Design: 14 out of 20.
I’m of two minds about this. Technically, the site is pretty sophisticated: Joomla-based and comprehensive. There’s a ton of content, and it’s well organized.

On the other hand, it looks awful: dated, over-busy, and just plain ugly.

Contact information: 1 out of 10
A web form lets you write Tribuna Popular’s editors, and that’s about it. But then, the party explicitly says it doesn’t want dilettantes or part-timers, boasting that it should be hard to be accepted as a party member, so outreach is not exactly a priority.

Local Goodness: 4 out of 10.
The site’s dual nature as both party and newspaper website makes this a bit of a hit and miss affair. Local commies are covered often by Tribuna Popular, but if you’re looking for a stable website about your friendly neighborhood Reds, you can’t necessarily find it.

The Verdict: 61 out of 100.
Active, obviously fussed over and tended to, PCV’s is easily the best of the pro-Chávez party sites. It could perfectly well be used as your main source of news, if you’re into a hard-left point of view, and is particularly good at integrating web-video. The rhetoric is time-warpy, yes, but the positioning is very clear.