AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE A GOVERNMENT "BY THE PEOPLE"

The United States of America is not, in fact, a democracy. In a democracy, the people are the government. Today, we elect people to run the government for us. The people we elect do not, for the most part, run the country in the interest of the people, they run it in the interest of themselves. We are led to believe that we must put our trust in these people. We, the people, do not have the power to create laws in our interest. This leads to an extreme imbalance of power in the government versus the people.

To solve these problems and create a true balance of power, The Democracy Foundation has created a plan named the National Initiative for Democracy.

The powerful elites who control our government will self-servingly argue that the People are not qualified or do not know enough to be trusted to make laws. To counter those opposed to empowering the People, one needs only look to the record of the last 100 years in the 24 states where the People make laws by initiative. In those states the People have legislated responsibly, and many times more so than their elected representatives. Civil service, campaign finance reform, and women's right to vote are but a few examples of the progressive legislation initiated by the People.

The experience of Switzerland is even more instructive. Switzerland, a poor, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, hardscrabble country without natural resources, decided, 140 years ago, to adopt a constitution that brought the People into the operation of government as lawmakers. Even the acclaimed Alexis de Tocqueville had serious doubts that this Swiss experiment in direct democracy would work. The result is without precedent in human history; Switzerland has evolved into the most successfully governed and wealthiest nation in the world.

The National Initiative has been developed and refined over the past decade by former Senator Mike Gravel (D. Alaska, 1969 - 1981) and his colleagues. The Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c 3 organization, is sponsoring the National Initiative. Philadelphia II, a separate nonprofit organization, is conducting an election on National Initiative at votep2.us, giving the people the opportunity to vote for and enact the National Initiative into law. Both are organizations are led by Senator Gravel.

The National Initiative is a legislative proposal that includes an amendment to the Constitution, the Democracy Amendment and a proposed federal statute, the Democracy Act. The Amendment 1) asserts the constituent sovereignty of the People to make laws, 2) outlaws monies in initiative elections not from natural persons, and 3) legalizes the self-enactment process of the Philadelphia II election.

The Act establishes deliberative legislative procedures for the People and creates an administrative agency (the Electoral Trust) to implement those procedures on behalf of the People, independent of representative governments.

With the National Initiative's enactment, the American People will experience the responsibility of legislating and governing themselves directly, the benefits of which will bring about greater civic maturity. The National Initiative does not alter the existing structure of representative governments; however, it does add an additional check, the People, to our system of Checks and Balances. Bringing the People into the legislative operations of government sets up a working partnership with the People and their elected legislative representatives.
http://www.nationalinitiative.org/learnmore.htm

Good thing the PTB will have the media around to keep us all retarded and deliberating under the capitalist premise...

https://votep2.us/images/logo.jpg

Welcome To The National Initiative Election
Any American Citizen can vote for or against the National Initiative For Democracy.
In order to vote, you will need a Voter ID and Password assigned by Philadelphia II.

Learn More About...
This Election | Philadelphia II | The Democracy Amendment | The Democracy Act
The Parrish Report: An Analysis of the Amendment and Act in Plain Language
The Democracy Foundation and The National Initiative
https://votep2.us/

TAKING A DOSE OF OUR OWN MEDICINE

By Ned Crosby

The field of deliberative democracy is flourishing, as anyone who has looked at the NCDD Website (www.thataway.org (http://www.thataway.org)) knows. Faced with such a wide range of choices, how should some mayor or group of citizens choose between them? Are some of them best for certain purposes? So far as I know, no consensus has arisen over this.

Take, for example, the large town meetings of American Speaks and the Study Circles of the Study Circle Resource Center and compare them to the Deliberative Poll and the Citizens Jury process. If a mayor or governor were to want to use some deliberative method, which should be chosen and why? The first two use volunteers in events lasting no more than a day, with the number of participants ranging from a few hundred to thousands. The latter two rely upon randomly selected participants who meet from one to five days, with the number of participants ranging from 18 to a few hundred. Is there any clarity as to when one is more appropriate than the other?

We deliberative practitioners should not expect it to be easy to agree upon best practice. The debate over the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been going on for many decades and, according to an article in the New York Times (August 9, 2004 Science Times), is more contentious now than ever. This is happening in a field which prides itself on a wide variety of sophisticated research tools. If the value of “talking therapy” is this difficult to resolve, why should it be any easier for objective assessments to be made on the various ways used to help people to deliberate with one another?

The simplest approach to resolving differences would be to bring practitioners of different methods together to see if they can agree on the strengths and weaknesses of their methods and which is best adapted for what purpose. This may work. If so, it would show that we in the deliberative field can manage our differences more effectively than those arguing over different approaches to psychotherapy. But we should not be surprised if something more than a conference of practitioners is needed if significant clarity is to be achieved.

For starters, we should acknowledge what we are up against. The ego involvement of inventive people is well-known. We deliberative practitioners may not be as flamboyant as composers or painters, but we are certainly as ego-involved in our creations. Add to this the effects of cognitive dissonance on those who staff the different processes. It is well known that the harder one works on something, the more convinced one is of the value of the product. Studies in psychology on cognitive dissonance show how blind people can be to the objective value of their work if they have labored long and hard to bring it to fruition. Most humbling, why should we think we are any less prone to the dangers of groupthink than the CIA? The Congressional investigation of intelligence failures pointed out how many intelligence analysts apparently were victims of groupthink, along the lines of what Irving Janis spelled out in his classic work. The more convinced we become of the value of the deliberative field as a whole, the more alert we should become to the need for us to be as disciplined as possible in our claims and open to review by outsiders.

One obvious way for us to submit our work to review by those outside our field is to allow the participants in our methods to evaluate what we do. Every Citizens Jury conducted by the Jefferson Center since 1981 requested the jurors to evaluate the project in which they had participated. But this is not enough. People should be given the chance to compare methods after they have experienced them. For example, one could convene some study circles and a Citizens Jury on the same issue. At the end of each project ask the participants to choose half a dozen representatives to meet and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. This discussion should be facilitated in a neutral way by a couple of people not committed to a single deliberative process. This should provide some interesting insights into the two methods and possibly include suggestions for ways to improve both methods.

A different approach would be to require that proponents of different methods be as disciplined as possible in discussing the pros and cons of their methods. One way to do this that is relatively inexpensive is to use a method called an “extended policy discussion”, the purpose of which is to clarify agreements and disagreements between experts. Take proponents of any two deliberative methods and bring them together with a neutral facilitator and a tape recorder for a series of meetings. The goal would be to get the two to be clear on where they agree and disagree on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective methods. Where they disagree, is there any objective way to resolve the disagreement? Would any further research resolve their disagreements? Might they see some kind of panel that would be a fair way to resolve a question about best use?

Each session of the extended policy discussion lasts about two hours, after which the facilitator uses the recording to summarize the key areas of agreement and disagreement. Often it takes several meetings for experts to be clear about where they agree and disagree. It is not uncommon for experts to change position once they see their stands written up clearly. This is a discipline that many people are reluctant to submit themselves to, since it can force them to acknowledge where their positions are weak. Clever advocates who can maintain a position quite effectively in public debate can find the extended policy discussion unnerving when they discover they cannot use clever tactics and subtle shifts in argument to maintain a position that does not stand up under close scrutiny. The goal of a debate is to win an argument; the goal of an extended policy discussion is to clarify a dispute and point out directions for resolving it.

There is a widespread feeling among deliberative democracy advocates that American democracy is at risk and something significant needs to be done to make it healthy again. Under these circumstances, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards. We should give the American public the opportunity to evaluate different methods in a rigorous way and we should force ourselves to be as clear and disciplined in our discussions as possible. Suggestions on how this could be done beyond the two approaches mentioned above would be welcomed.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_ ... racy/1.htm (http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/poli_sci/journal_public_deliberation/healthydemocracy/1.htm)

TAKING A DOSE OF OUR OWN MEDICINE

By Ned Crosby

The field of deliberative democracy is flourishing, as anyone who has looked at the NCDD Website (www.thataway.org (http://www.thataway.org)) knows. Faced with such a wide range of choices, how should some mayor or group of citizens choose between them? Are some of them best for certain purposes? So far as I know, no consensus has arisen over this.

Take, for example, the large town meetings of American Speaks and the Study Circles of the Study Circle Resource Center and compare them to the Deliberative Poll and the Citizens Jury process. If a mayor or governor were to want to use some deliberative method, which should be chosen and why? The first two use volunteers in events lasting no more than a day, with the number of participants ranging from a few hundred to thousands. The latter two rely upon randomly selected participants who meet from one to five days, with the number of participants ranging from 18 to a few hundred. Is there any clarity as to when one is more appropriate than the other?

We deliberative practitioners should not expect it to be easy to agree upon best practice. The debate over the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been going on for many decades and, according to an article in the New York Times (August 9, 2004 Science Times), is more contentious now than ever. This is happening in a field which prides itself on a wide variety of sophisticated research tools. If the value of “talking therapy” is this difficult to resolve, why should it be any easier for objective assessments to be made on the various ways used to help people to deliberate with one another?

The simplest approach to resolving differences would be to bring practitioners of different methods together to see if they can agree on the strengths and weaknesses of their methods and which is best adapted for what purpose. This may work. If so, it would show that we in the deliberative field can manage our differences more effectively than those arguing over different approaches to psychotherapy. But we should not be surprised if something more than a conference of practitioners is needed if significant clarity is to be achieved.

For starters, we should acknowledge what we are up against. The ego involvement of inventive people is well-known. We deliberative practitioners may not be as flamboyant as composers or painters, but we are certainly as ego-involved in our creations. Add to this the effects of cognitive dissonance on those who staff the different processes. It is well known that the harder one works on something, the more convinced one is of the value of the product. Studies in psychology on cognitive dissonance show how blind people can be to the objective value of their work if they have labored long and hard to bring it to fruition. Most humbling, why should we think we are any less prone to the dangers of groupthink than the CIA? The Congressional investigation of intelligence failures pointed out how many intelligence analysts apparently were victims of groupthink, along the lines of what Irving Janis spelled out in his classic work. The more convinced we become of the value of the deliberative field as a whole, the more alert we should become to the need for us to be as disciplined as possible in our claims and open to review by outsiders.

One obvious way for us to submit our work to review by those outside our field is to allow the participants in our methods to evaluate what we do. Every Citizens Jury conducted by the Jefferson Center since 1981 requested the jurors to evaluate the project in which they had participated. But this is not enough. People should be given the chance to compare methods after they have experienced them. For example, one could convene some study circles and a Citizens Jury on the same issue. At the end of each project ask the participants to choose half a dozen representatives to meet and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. This discussion should be facilitated in a neutral way by a couple of people not committed to a single deliberative process. This should provide some interesting insights into the two methods and possibly include suggestions for ways to improve both methods.

A different approach would be to require that proponents of different methods be as disciplined as possible in discussing the pros and cons of their methods. One way to do this that is relatively inexpensive is to use a method called an “extended policy discussion”, the purpose of which is to clarify agreements and disagreements between experts. Take proponents of any two deliberative methods and bring them together with a neutral facilitator and a tape recorder for a series of meetings. The goal would be to get the two to be clear on where they agree and disagree on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective methods. Where they disagree, is there any objective way to resolve the disagreement? Would any further research resolve their disagreements? Might they see some kind of panel that would be a fair way to resolve a question about best use?

Each session of the extended policy discussion lasts about two hours, after which the facilitator uses the recording to summarize the key areas of agreement and disagreement. Often it takes several meetings for experts to be clear about where they agree and disagree. It is not uncommon for experts to change position once they see their stands written up clearly. This is a discipline that many people are reluctant to submit themselves to, since it can force them to acknowledge where their positions are weak. Clever advocates who can maintain a position quite effectively in public debate can find the extended policy discussion unnerving when they discover they cannot use clever tactics and subtle shifts in argument to maintain a position that does not stand up under close scrutiny. The goal of a debate is to win an argument; the goal of an extended policy discussion is to clarify a dispute and point out directions for resolving it.

There is a widespread feeling among deliberative democracy advocates that American democracy is at risk and something significant needs to be done to make it healthy again. Under these circumstances, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards. We should give the American public the opportunity to evaluate different methods in a rigorous way and we should force ourselves to be as clear and disciplined in our discussions as possible. Suggestions on how this could be done beyond the two approaches mentioned above would be welcomed.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_ ... racy/1.htm (http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/poli_sci/journal_public_deliberation/healthydemocracy/1.htm)

Okey dokey, here I can see where what you've been presenting has direct relevance to our situation. So how might we adapt this methodology to the difficulties inherent to internet discussion boards? And where the hell are we going to find a neutral facilitator?

Okey dokey, here I can see where what you've been presenting has direct relevance to our situation. So how might we adapt this methodology to the difficulties inherent to internet discussion boards? And where the hell are we going to find a neutral facilitator?

Hey, it's a big step to me just to imagine for a moment that someone else maybe starting to see what I have been whining about for weeks.

Tha facilitator thing can be a rotating small group effort, I would think. Although I have not thought at length on it. I'm just learning about this stuff myself....

TAKING A DOSE OF OUR OWN MEDICINE

By Ned Crosby

The field of deliberative democracy is flourishing, as anyone who has looked at the NCDD Website (www.thataway.org (http://www.thataway.org)) knows. Faced with such a wide range of choices, how should some mayor or group of citizens choose between them? Are some of them best for certain purposes? So far as I know, no consensus has arisen over this.

Take, for example, the large town meetings of American Speaks and the Study Circles of the Study Circle Resource Center and compare them to the Deliberative Poll and the Citizens Jury process. If a mayor or governor were to want to use some deliberative method, which should be chosen and why? The first two use volunteers in events lasting no more than a day, with the number of participants ranging from a few hundred to thousands. The latter two rely upon randomly selected participants who meet from one to five days, with the number of participants ranging from 18 to a few hundred. Is there any clarity as to when one is more appropriate than the other?

We deliberative practitioners should not expect it to be easy to agree upon best practice. The debate over the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been going on for many decades and, according to an article in the New York Times (August 9, 2004 Science Times), is more contentious now than ever. This is happening in a field which prides itself on a wide variety of sophisticated research tools. If the value of “talking therapy” is this difficult to resolve, why should it be any easier for objective assessments to be made on the various ways used to help people to deliberate with one another?

The simplest approach to resolving differences would be to bring practitioners of different methods together to see if they can agree on the strengths and weaknesses of their methods and which is best adapted for what purpose. This may work. If so, it would show that we in the deliberative field can manage our differences more effectively than those arguing over different approaches to psychotherapy. But we should not be surprised if something more than a conference of practitioners is needed if significant clarity is to be achieved.

For starters, we should acknowledge what we are up against. The ego involvement of inventive people is well-known. We deliberative practitioners may not be as flamboyant as composers or painters, but we are certainly as ego-involved in our creations. Add to this the effects of cognitive dissonance on those who staff the different processes. It is well known that the harder one works on something, the more convinced one is of the value of the product. Studies in psychology on cognitive dissonance show how blind people can be to the objective value of their work if they have labored long and hard to bring it to fruition. Most humbling, why should we think we are any less prone to the dangers of groupthink than the CIA? The Congressional investigation of intelligence failures pointed out how many intelligence analysts apparently were victims of groupthink, along the lines of what Irving Janis spelled out in his classic work. The more convinced we become of the value of the deliberative field as a whole, the more alert we should become to the need for us to be as disciplined as possible in our claims and open to review by outsiders.

One obvious way for us to submit our work to review by those outside our field is to allow the participants in our methods to evaluate what we do. Every Citizens Jury conducted by the Jefferson Center since 1981 requested the jurors to evaluate the project in which they had participated. But this is not enough. People should be given the chance to compare methods after they have experienced them. For example, one could convene some study circles and a Citizens Jury on the same issue. At the end of each project ask the participants to choose half a dozen representatives to meet and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. This discussion should be facilitated in a neutral way by a couple of people not committed to a single deliberative process. This should provide some interesting insights into the two methods and possibly include suggestions for ways to improve both methods.

A different approach would be to require that proponents of different methods be as disciplined as possible in discussing the pros and cons of their methods. One way to do this that is relatively inexpensive is to use a method called an “extended policy discussion”, the purpose of which is to clarify agreements and disagreements between experts. Take proponents of any two deliberative methods and bring them together with a neutral facilitator and a tape recorder for a series of meetings. The goal would be to get the two to be clear on where they agree and disagree on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective methods. Where they disagree, is there any objective way to resolve the disagreement? Would any further research resolve their disagreements? Might they see some kind of panel that would be a fair way to resolve a question about best use?

Each session of the extended policy discussion lasts about two hours, after which the facilitator uses the recording to summarize the key areas of agreement and disagreement. Often it takes several meetings for experts to be clear about where they agree and disagree. It is not uncommon for experts to change position once they see their stands written up clearly. This is a discipline that many people are reluctant to submit themselves to, since it can force them to acknowledge where their positions are weak. Clever advocates who can maintain a position quite effectively in public debate can find the extended policy discussion unnerving when they discover they cannot use clever tactics and subtle shifts in argument to maintain a position that does not stand up under close scrutiny. The goal of a debate is to win an argument; the goal of an extended policy discussion is to clarify a dispute and point out directions for resolving it.

There is a widespread feeling among deliberative democracy advocates that American democracy is at risk and something significant needs to be done to make it healthy again. Under these circumstances, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards. We should give the American public the opportunity to evaluate different methods in a rigorous way and we should force ourselves to be as clear and disciplined in our discussions as possible. Suggestions on how this could be done beyond the two approaches mentioned above would be welcomed.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_ ... racy/1.htm (http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/poli_sci/journal_public_deliberation/healthydemocracy/1.htm)

Okey dokey, here I can see where what you've been presenting has direct relevance to our situation. So how might we adapt this methodology to the difficulties inherent to internet discussion boards? And where the hell are we going to find a neutral facilitator?

I am bumping this back up because it is this question BlindPig asks that would drive some rational discussion about how to set up the site for participatory and transparent administration.

Of course that is not as titillating and passionately arguable as the other bullshit that instead been the preferred conversation about running this place...

http://www.evworld.com/images/mike_gravel.jpg
PHOTO CAPTION: Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (D. Alaska) is most famous for having released the Pentagon Papers, which earned him the ire of the Nixon White House who pursued him to the Supreme Court with lawsuits. Now he's on a new mission, promoting National Initiative for Democracy (see http://www.nationalinitiative.org/) to give citizens the right to participate directly in the lawmaking process. He's also running for the US presidency in 2008.

MP3 audio of speech delivered at the 2007 Democrat Winter conference in Washington, D.C., February 3, 2007.
http://www.evworld.com/evworld_audio/cs ... gravel.mp3 (http://www.evworld.com/evworld_audio/cspan_mikegravel.mp3)

Open Access Article Originally Published: February 04, 2007

"I plan to speak... to power, today," began former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel to the leadership of the Democrat Party at their annual winter conference. He was one of four presidential hopefuls invited to speak on February 3, 2007 at the Washington, D.C. event that included Senator Joe Biden (Del) and Governors Bill Richardson (New Mexico) and Tom Vilsack (Iowa).

While all of the speakers enumerated common themes of a bungled war in Iraq and the need to rebuild America's tarnished reputation abroad, while paying more attention to national issues like healthcare and the shrinking fortunes of the middle class, Senator Gravel spoke with such refreshing candor that we decided to make the MP3 audio of his 24-minute speech available to our readers.

"History teaches us that nations fail when leaders fail their people," Gravel said referring not just to the Bush Administration but also to the then-Democrat controlled Senate in 2002 who "provided political cover for George Bush to invade Iraq."

"The Senate leadership could have refused to even take up the resolution and many Senators who opposed it could have mounted a filibuster, but the fear of opposing a popular warrior president on the eve of the mid-term election prevailed. Political calculations trumped morality and the Middle East was set ablaze. The Democrats lost that election anyway, but more so the American people. It was politics as usual.

"Given the extreme importance of any decision to go to war," he continued, "and I am anguished to make this statement, that anyone who voted for the war on October 11th based upon what president Bush presented to them is not qualified to hold the office of the president of the United States."

Gravel's comment met with enthusiastic applause but he was only warming up because what he says subsequently clearly left many in the audience squirming in their seats, but it's long past time -- in our view -- that someone stood up and cut through the militaristic jingoism and patriotic claptrap and talked honestly about America, the good, the bad and the ugly.

It's our opinion at EV World that only by acknowledging our flaws -- as Senator Gravel points out -- that America can finally abandon its counterproductive policy of "exceptionalism" and finally be willing to work in cooperation with the other peoples of the planet to tackle the immense challenges confronting us all, beginning with an appreciation that terrorism is just a symptom of far larger problems stemming from over-population, environmental degradation and economic exploitation that breeds despair, fear and hatred, which then finds expression in religious and political extremism.

You can listen to Gravel's remarkable address in its entirety, which C-Span -- to its credit -- carried twice over the weekend, by using the MP3 players above or by downloading it to your computer for transfer to your favorite MP3 device. This file will also be available on the Apple iTunes podcast service.
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?page=ar ... oryid=1185 (http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?page=article&storyid=1185)

I moved this down thread and deleted a couple of my other posts here that were rendered irrelevant by further discovery about the rule making process here in the states, one we really don't get to -participate- in after all...

The essay I quoted below is thorough in its analysis and raises issues that are so transparent that it is shocking that they elude the intellects of the vast majority of Americans. The Constitution of the United States is not an expression of human dignity and freedom. It is a carefully disguised series of mechanisms to diffuse the power of the people and provide safeguards to prevent popular insurgencies that could displace the privileged positions of elites in society.

American lacks any kind of Habermasian Public Sphere where the ordinary citizen can find publicity to argue his perspective regarding socio-politics, during the formative processes of public policy construction. There is a think tank that has taken an active role in attempting to produced an alternative model to erect in the United States a civil society where all people affected by policies adopted by polity are provided an opportunity - not just to cast a single vote for a representative that might hold a marginal degree of the citizens values and priorities - but to actively engage in the discourse the foments in policy proposals:
http://extremedemocracy.com/

I am a strong supporter of this group which gained most of its insights from the open source practices of programmers; additionally, the Populist Party of America has adopted many of the same agenda.

All the Best, and thanks for a mind provoking article,
Russell Cole




AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE A GOVERNMENT "BY THE PEOPLE"

The United States of America is not, in fact, a democracy. In a democracy, the people are the government. Today, we elect people to run the government for us. The people we elect do not, for the most part, run the country in the interest of the people, they run it in the interest of themselves. We are led to believe that we must put our trust in these people. We, the people, do not have the power to create laws in our interest. This leads to an extreme imbalance of power in the government versus the people.

To solve these problems and create a true balance of power, The Democracy Foundation has created a plan named the National Initiative for Democracy.

The powerful elites who control our government will self-servingly argue that the People are not qualified or do not know enough to be trusted to make laws. To counter those opposed to empowering the People, one needs only look to the record of the last 100 years in the 24 states where the People make laws by initiative. In those states the People have legislated responsibly, and many times more so than their elected representatives. Civil service, campaign finance reform, and women's right to vote are but a few examples of the progressive legislation initiated by the People.

The experience of Switzerland is even more instructive. Switzerland, a poor, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, hardscrabble country without natural resources, decided, 140 years ago, to adopt a constitution that brought the People into the operation of government as lawmakers. Even the acclaimed Alexis de Tocqueville had serious doubts that this Swiss experiment in direct democracy would work. The result is without precedent in human history; Switzerland has evolved into the most successfully governed and wealthiest nation in the world.

The National Initiative has been developed and refined over the past decade by former Senator Mike Gravel (D. Alaska, 1969 - 1981) and his colleagues. The Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c 3 organization, is sponsoring the National Initiative. Philadelphia II, a separate nonprofit organization, is conducting an election on National Initiative at votep2.us, giving the people the opportunity to vote for and enact the National Initiative into law. Both are organizations are led by Senator Gravel.

The National Initiative is a legislative proposal that includes an amendment to the Constitution, the Democracy Amendment and a proposed federal statute, the Democracy Act. The Amendment 1) asserts the constituent sovereignty of the People to make laws, 2) outlaws monies in initiative elections not from natural persons, and 3) legalizes the self-enactment process of the Philadelphia II election.

The Act establishes deliberative legislative procedures for the People and creates an administrative agency (the Electoral Trust) to implement those procedures on behalf of the People, independent of representative governments.

With the National Initiative's enactment, the American People will experience the responsibility of legislating and governing themselves directly, the benefits of which will bring about greater civic maturity. The National Initiative does not alter the existing structure of representative governments; however, it does add an additional check, the People, to our system of Checks and Balances. Bringing the People into the legislative operations of government sets up a working partnership with the People and their elected legislative representatives.
http://www.nationalinitiative.org/learnmore.htm

Good thing the PTB will have the media around to keep us all retarded and deliberating under the capitalist premise...

May I ask a couple of questions for the sake of clarity?

Are we discussing how to run the society, how to run the board, or how to decide how to run the board?

I aver that every organization needs a government. In the absence of a government consciously and intentionally decided upon, a shadow government or tyranny is certain to arise.

The point of a government, including here, is to protect individual rights and to secure the general welfare.

I say we need a charter and we need a mechanism for reaching consensus, for handling grievances, and for protecting individuals.

I propose the equivalent of a Constitutional convention as the first step, to take suggestions and write a charter.

I say that we need an interim agreement as to what is going to happen in the meantime - how the board is going to be managed, and what we can and can't expect while the process of writing the charter is going on.

I say that the charter then goes to a general vote - we may or may not want a consensus on that rather than majority rule, or 2/3 majority, as two possible examples for ratification.

If a discussion is required to establish the terms and conditions for the writing of the charter, then let's have that discussion.

Now, if all of that is too much bother, than let's just have a benevolent dictatorship, but at least know who the dictator is.

There is a reason why organizations adopt rules and structure. The alternative is that someone will move into the vacuum and you will have a structure and rules imposed, but they most likely won't be understood, and won't be democratic.

Now it could be that the board is not vulnerable to infiltrators. It could be that everyone here can be trusted. It could be that no one is looking to take autocratic power. It could be that all is sweetness and light. It could be that we can all be admins, moving topics around, deciding who the good guys and bad guys are, and moderating disputes, and that we will all somehow get in synch and be on the same wavelength. But we have no way to know any of that as things stand now, and I ain't the only one paranoid about this - if it is paranoia.

Running the board by free flowing consensus and mind meld is fine, but that sure ain't happening. I am far from consensed myself, and being told that I am an asshole and need to get on the right democratic program is contradictory to gaining consensus. Is consensus to be redefined on the fly, as agreement by those who are being nice and we like and the Hell with the complainers?

May I ask a couple of questions for the sake of clarity?

Are we discussing how to run the society, how to run the board, or how to decide how to run the board?

I aver that every organization needs a government. In the absence of a government consciously and intentionally decided upon, a shadow government or tyranny is certain to arise.

The point of a government, including here, is to protect individual rights and to secure the general welfare.

I say we need a charter and we need a mechanism for reaching consensus, for handling grievances, and for protecting individuals.

I propose the equivalent of a Constitutional convention as the first step, to take suggestions and write a charter.

I say that we need an interim agreement as to what is going to happen in the meantime - how the board is going to be managed, and what we can and can't expect while the process of writing the charter is going on.

I say that the charter then goes to a general vote - we may or may not want a consensus on that rather than majority rule, or 2/3 majority, as two possible examples for ratification.

If a discussion is required to establish the terms and conditions for the writing of the charter, then let's have that discussion.


<Rusty scratches his head, wonders then what we have been in disagreement about, other than communication styles, and contemplates trying to fall asleep while wondering this. Dammit, only a nap tonite.>

<Rusty scratches his head, wonders then what we have been in disagreement about, other than communication styles, and contemplates trying to fall asleep while wondering this. Dammit, only a nap tonite.>

I predict that the answer will come to you in a dream tonight.

It will go something like this:

A small but key false assumption, probably originating from a third party, caused a shift in the context within which you were analyzing everything and relating to me. Your analysis was correct, but the unexamined assumption was skewed, and not through any overt act of your own. In this new context based on the "revelation" or "insight" helpfully provided to you by another, all of the evidence you saw seemed now to support an opposite thesis from the one you held previously.

I once had an employee who successfully convinced everyone I knew - customers, family, neighbors, friends - that she was having a romantic affair with me, which was not the case. Everyone began operating on that false (why would you doubt it?) assumption, and in the light of that new context all of my behavior and communications seemed quite strange to them. As I then reacted to their weird reactions to me.... well, you can imagine.

It will go something like that.

It will go something like that.

So, would it be difficult for you to grasp that my desire to put in place the drupal page was to have a place to park a proposed 'constitution,' etc. etc., linking those docs back to threads on phpbb?

That's what I have had in mind all along...

So, would it be difficult for you to grasp that my desire to put in place the drupal page was to have a place to park a proposed 'constitution,' etc. etc., linking those docs back to threads on phpbb?

That's what I have had in mind all along...

Yeah, I am too STOOPID to grasp that. LOL.

Yeah. I think we should be able to blog here, too, for example and tie that in. Here's the problem - I am worried - after several years of bitter experience - that in the absence of a stable and reliable organization and structure, that the rug will be pulled out from under contributors. So I am reluctant to contribute - what is the image from that Peanuts cartoon of Lucy pulling the ball away just as Charley Brown is about to kick it? Of course that doesn't happen too often - it only happens whenever a sacred cow is challenged. We can have a board that is all nicey-nice and we can all avoid offending anyone so that a mob doesn't form and call for our execution. We could congratulate ourselves and each other that we were practicing true egalitarian democracy, too.

Call that "authoritarian" if you like. But as I see it, in lieu of clearly spelled out rules and ownership and authority, bullies muscle their way in and run the show or authority is arbitrarily used against contributors. I think that is the number one reason that many, many people don't participate at all or for stay for very long. We wind up with a small self-selecting group of people - the most obnoxious and aggressive, with a few very tough skinned and persistent people thrown in battling the bullies.

It just occurred to me that the whole cultural battle in the country is between the delicate polite people and the rugged crude people. Democrats and liberals want a "nice" society I think. Orderly, predictable, nice white porcelain toilets scrubbed clean clean clean, safe, secure, refined. The image that comes to mind for me in many of these discussions is passionate involved young boys and girls intently engaged in doing somewhat risky things and no doubt messy and maybe even dirty things, and hissing outraged scolding nannies demanding order and decorum.

It is high society tea versus the cowboys and cowgirls. Chlamor's "crime" is that he flaunted etiquette standards of oh so polite society, uttered unmentionable things, and disturbed people's beautiful minds with rough and tumble words and ideas. They were shocked! Just shocked that anyone could SAY such things!! How rude! How indelicate! How cruel and unfeeling!

So, would it be difficult for you to grasp that my desire to put in place the drupal page was to have a place to park a proposed 'constitution,' etc. etc., linking those docs back to threads on phpbb?

That's what I have had in mind all along...

Yeah, I am too STOOPID to grasp that. LOL.

Yeah. I think we should be able to blog here, too, for example and tie that in. Here's the problem - I am worried - after several years of bitter experience - that in the absence of a stable and reliable organization and structure, that the rug will be pulled out from under contributors. So I am reluctant to contribute - what is the image from that Peanuts cartoon of Lucy pulling the ball away just as Charley Brown is about to kick it? Of course that doesn't happen too often - it only happens whenever a sacred cow is challenged. We can have a board that is all nicey-nice and we can all avoid offending anyone so that a mob doesn't form and call for our execution. We could congratulate ourselves and each other that we were practicing true egalitarian democracy, too.

Call that "authoritarian" if you like. But as I see it, in lieu of clearly spelled out rules and ownership and authority, bullies muscle their way in and run the show or authority is arbitrarily used against contributors. I think that is the number one reason that many, many people don't participate at all or for stay for very long. We wind up with a small self-selecting group of people - the most obnoxious and aggressive, with a few very tough skinned and persistent people thrown in battling the bullies.

It just occurred to me that the whole cultural battle in the country is between the delicate polite people and the rugged crude people. Democrats and liberals want a "nice" society I think. Orderly, predictable, nice white porcelain toilets scrubbed clean clean clean, safe, secure, refined. The image that comes to mind for me in many of these discussions is passionate involved young boys and girls intently engaged in doing somewhat risky things and no doubt messy and maybe even dirty things, and hissing outraged scolding nannies demanding order and decorum.

It is high society tea versus the cowboys and cowgirls. Chlamor's "crime" is that he flaunted etiquette standards of oh so polite society, uttered unmentionable things, and disturbed people's beautiful minds with rough and tumble words and ideas. They were shocked! Just shocked that anyone could SAY such things!! How rude! How indelicate! How cruel and unfeeling!

Hey, stop calling me Lucy! :D

We have so little traffic now, it seems to me we could get a long way down the road building protective mechanisms that we, despite the umm... diversity of our opinions and styles, could have in place as a foundation before too many folks came along.

We need a sarcasm icon. I cannot tell what you mean, stealing my famous STOOOOPID game. Natch, I could much more readily call you an asshole than I could even imagine you're stupid. So, Shirley, you obviously did know what I had in mind? Inquiring Lucy's are getting confused now.

... diversity of our opinions and styles.

Diversity of intentions and motives is the problem.

Differences of opinions can be absorbed. But you can't build anything when..... what? Anyone?

Do you really think that the unbelievable and highly unlikely uproars and destruction and disruption that happens on these boards is a result of differing opinions and styles?

Fuck, it is as though the house keeps catching on fire every few minutes, and everyone says oh well I guess things do catch on fire, what can we do?

How are we supposed to sit and get any work done in a burning house?

The house is not that damned inflammable, and spontaneous combustion is quite rare.

As for traffic, I have a big list of people I wanted to invite here. But I am not going to lure good people into yet another poisonous trap. They all ask the same thing - has the problem of infltrators, disruptors and gate-keepers been solved so we can actually have a normal human conversation and get something accomplished? If not, they aren't interested. They have been burned too many times. We can always just say that they are all paranoid and imagining things and go along la ti da and suffer through yet another round of the same old shit I suppose. Then we can wring our hands and wrack our brains trying to figure out just what we can do to change things.

I have watched the same pattern for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for the same thing to happen again and again and again merely by accident, or as the inevitable outcome of putting more than two people in the same room.

... diversity of our opinions and styles.

Diversity of intentions and motives is the problem.

Differences of opinions can be absorbed. But you can't build anything when..... what? Anyone?

Do you really think that the unbelievable and highly unlikely uproars and destruction and disruption that happens on these boards is a result of differing opinions and styles?

Fuck, it is as though the house keeps catching on fire every few minutes, and everyone says oh well I guess things do catch on fire, what can we do?

How are we supposed to sit and get any work done in a burning house?

The house is not that damned inflammable, and spontaneous combustion is quite rare.

As for traffic, I have a big list of people I wanted to invite here. But I am not going to lure good people into yet another poisonous trap. They all ask the same thing - has the problem of infltrators, disruptors and gate-keepers been solved so we can actually have a normal human conversation and get something accomplished? If not, they aren't interested. They have been burned too many times. We can always just say that they are all paranoid and imagining things and go along la ti da and suffer through yet another round of the same old shit I suppose. Then we can wring our hands and wrack our brains trying to figure out just what we can do to change things.

I have watched the same pattern for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for the same thing to happen again and again and again merely by accident, or as the inevitable outcome of putting more than two people in the same room.

I still say that is an artifact of the medium, the forum. If your suggested bylaws, et al were a drupal page that required consent - derived here, but in a more deliberative manner - before they could be changed, or before a change could be made part of the document, there would be a measure of control.

We can either try it or try authoritarianism. Why not, if only because it is new and ~possibly less authoritarian, do we not take what's behind curtain number 1?

Diversity of intentions and motives... I guess there is a fair bit of that. But one man's troll is another man's sage. Not to mention those mercurial weirdos like Mairead and me :)

Whacha gonna do, be a US style torturer and killer or a Cuban style educator who caught and released the same CIA troll over and over in '61? I'll take the latter.

The moral authority of a regime rests with its transparency and its justice. Neither seem to be held in the highest regard here so far. That's not to say I am fingering you or anyone else. I just say that it seems the easy ideas are the ones with the most appeal. They'll also be the ones with the least effect.

Just sayin'

... diversity of our opinions and styles.

Diversity of intentions and motives is the problem.

Differences of opinions can be absorbed. But you can't build anything when..... what? Anyone?

Do you really think that the unbelievable and highly unlikely uproars and destruction and disruption that happens on these boards is a result of differing opinions and styles?

Fuck, it is as though the house keeps catching on fire every few minutes, and everyone says oh well I guess things do catch on fire, what can we do?

How are we supposed to sit and get any work done in a burning house?

The house is not that damned inflammable, and spontaneous combustion is quite rare.

As for traffic, I have a big list of people I wanted to invite here. But I am not going to lure good people into yet another poisonous trap. They all ask the same thing - has the problem of infltrators, disruptors and gate-keepers been solved so we can actually have a normal human conversation and get something accomplished? If not, they aren't interested. They have been burned too many times. We can always just say that they are all paranoid and imagining things and go along la ti da and suffer through yet another round of the same old shit I suppose. Then we can wring our hands and wrack our brains trying to figure out just what we can do to change things.

I have watched the same pattern for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for the same thing to happen again and again and again merely by accident, or as the inevitable outcome of putting more than two people in the same room.

I still say that is an artifact of the medium, the forum. If your suggested bylaws, et al were a drupal page that required consent - derived here, but in a more deliberative manner - before they could be changed, or before a change could be made part of the document, there would be a measure of control.

We can either try it or try authoritarianism. Why not, if only because it is new and ~possibly less authoritarian, do we not take what's behind curtain number 1?

Diversity of intentions and motives... I guess there is a fair bit of that. But one man's troll is another man's sage. Not to mention those mercurial weirdos like Mairead and me :)

Whacha gonna do, be a US style torturer and killer or a Cuban style educator who caught and released the same CIA troll over and over in '61? I'll take the latter.

The moral authority of a regime rests with its transparency and its justice. Neither seem to be held in the highest regard here so far. That's not to say I am fingering you or anyone else. I just say that it seems the easy ideas are the ones with the most appeal. They'll also be the ones with the least effect.

Just sayin'

Mike has a point. Even if the issue is not intentional disruption, the unbelievably large egos and the stridency with which the "Me-kids" from the burbs push their shit is real and a problem on every site.

Is the difference simply that someone else makes the decision?

Yup. Nothing wrong with that...

Rusty, we take on many things but an immediate change in the laws of physics is not among them.

Just sayin'.

.

... diversity of our opinions and styles.

Diversity of intentions and motives is the problem.

Differences of opinions can be absorbed. But you can't build anything when..... what? Anyone?

Do you really think that the unbelievable and highly unlikely uproars and destruction and disruption that happens on these boards is a result of differing opinions and styles?

Fuck, it is as though the house keeps catching on fire every few minutes, and everyone says oh well I guess things do catch on fire, what can we do?

How are we supposed to sit and get any work done in a burning house?

The house is not that damned inflammable, and spontaneous combustion is quite rare.

As for traffic, I have a big list of people I wanted to invite here. But I am not going to lure good people into yet another poisonous trap. They all ask the same thing - has the problem of infltrators, disruptors and gate-keepers been solved so we can actually have a normal human conversation and get something accomplished? If not, they aren't interested. They have been burned too many times. We can always just say that they are all paranoid and imagining things and go along la ti da and suffer through yet another round of the same old shit I suppose. Then we can wring our hands and wrack our brains trying to figure out just what we can do to change things.

I have watched the same pattern for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for the same thing to happen again and again and again merely by accident, or as the inevitable outcome of putting more than two people in the same room.

I still say that is an artifact of the medium, the forum. If your suggested bylaws, et al were a drupal page that required consent - derived here, but in a more deliberative manner - before they could be changed, or before a change could be made part of the document, there would be a measure of control.

We can either try it or try authoritarianism. Why not, if only because it is new and ~possibly less authoritarian, do we not take what's behind curtain number 1?

Diversity of intentions and motives... I guess there is a fair bit of that. But one man's troll is another man's sage. Not to mention those mercurial weirdos like Mairead and me :)

Whacha gonna do, be a US style torturer and killer or a Cuban style educator who caught and released the same CIA troll over and over in '61? I'll take the latter.

The moral authority of a regime rests with its transparency and its justice. Neither seem to be held in the highest regard here so far. That's not to say I am fingering you or anyone else. I just say that it seems the easy ideas are the ones with the most appeal. They'll also be the ones with the least effect.

Just sayin'

Question for you Rusty.

Is your primary focus on this site content-related (eg populist/socialist/worker's movement) or method-related (tranparency, open management, etc)?

Or both?

... diversity of our opinions and styles.

Diversity of intentions and motives is the problem.

Differences of opinions can be absorbed. But you can't build anything when..... what? Anyone?

Do you really think that the unbelievable and highly unlikely uproars and destruction and disruption that happens on these boards is a result of differing opinions and styles?

Fuck, it is as though the house keeps catching on fire every few minutes, and everyone says oh well I guess things do catch on fire, what can we do?

How are we supposed to sit and get any work done in a burning house?

The house is not that damned inflammable, and spontaneous combustion is quite rare.

As for traffic, I have a big list of people I wanted to invite here. But I am not going to lure good people into yet another poisonous trap. They all ask the same thing - has the problem of infltrators, disruptors and gate-keepers been solved so we can actually have a normal human conversation and get something accomplished? If not, they aren't interested. They have been burned too many times. We can always just say that they are all paranoid and imagining things and go along la ti da and suffer through yet another round of the same old shit I suppose. Then we can wring our hands and wrack our brains trying to figure out just what we can do to change things.

I have watched the same pattern for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible for the same thing to happen again and again and again merely by accident, or as the inevitable outcome of putting more than two people in the same room.

I still say that is an artifact of the medium, the forum. If your suggested bylaws, et al were a drupal page that required consent - derived here, but in a more deliberative manner - before they could be changed, or before a change could be made part of the document, there would be a measure of control.

We can either try it or try authoritarianism. Why not, if only because it is new and ~possibly less authoritarian, do we not take what's behind curtain number 1?

Diversity of intentions and motives... I guess there is a fair bit of that. But one man's troll is another man's sage. Not to mention those mercurial weirdos like Mairead and me :)

Whacha gonna do, be a US style torturer and killer or a Cuban style educator who caught and released the same CIA troll over and over in '61? I'll take the latter.

The moral authority of a regime rests with its transparency and its justice. Neither seem to be held in the highest regard here so far. That's not to say I am fingering you or anyone else. I just say that it seems the easy ideas are the ones with the most appeal. They'll also be the ones with the least effect.

Just sayin'

Question for you Rusty.

Is your primary focus on this site content-related (eg populist/socialist/worker's movement) or method-related (tranparency, open management, etc)?

Or both?

Um, yet to be determined?

In my mind it is absolutely the former that should take precedence. But the latter, an idea I actually got from (obviously misunderstanding) Mike, seems a worthy project to me at least in the absence of some imposed dictatorship. And since the guy holding the keys seldom even logs on, the likelihood of a dictatorship is low, as is the influx of people. This gives us an opportunity to experiment with transparency and participatory management by the workers/writers/owners.

...since the guy holding the keys seldom even logs on, the likelihood of a dictatorship is low...


Quite to the contrary. When no one is minding the store that leads to abuse with absolute certainty.

This is akin to saying "since the owner of the car just leaves the keys in it, wanders off and pays no attention to it, nothing bad is likely to happen."

What you are describing is similar to how the Republicans are running the government. The guy with the keys isn't paying much attention, and all sorts of petty fiefdoms have arisen with tyranny and corruption everywhere you look.

...since the guy holding the keys seldom even logs on, the likelihood of a dictatorship is low...


Quite to the contrary. When no one is minding the store that leads to abuse with absolute certainty.

This is akin to saying "since the owner of the car just leaves the keys in it, wanders off and pays no attention to it, nothing bad is likely to happen."

What you are describing is similar to how the Republicans are running the government. The guy with the keys isn't paying much attention, and all sorts of petty fiefdoms have arisen with tyranny and corruption everywhere you look.

I see no evidence for that here, lest of course it is my actions of a couple of months ago you have in mind.

No one here can just take over without there being an outcry. We have an opportunity, not a threat.

Um, yet to be determined?

In my mind it is absolutely the former that should take precedence. But the latter, an idea I actually got from (obviously misunderstanding) Mike, seems a worthy project to me at least in the absence of some imposed dictatorship. And since the guy holding the keys seldom even logs on, the likelihood of a dictatorship is low, as is the influx of people. This gives us an opportunity to experiment with transparency and participatory management by the workers/writers/owners.

Okay, I am gonna do a quick rant here with my thoughts about this based on my own experience running a board.

You guys seem to have enough *ideas* of what kind of board you want, as far as content and management. And as for now you are under the radar and don't have many people stumbling upon the site. Now is the time to get this stuff figured out or it will never happen. Set the stage, adopt good habits.

Before you can seriously attempt a true open and democratic style of running this board you need to set some rules. Does that sound totally counterintuitive? Meh. In my experience running another board I can tell you that no matter what the mission statement says, it is going to be defined by the membership as a whole. And no matter the intentions, almost everyone in this realm ends up talking about what's going on at other boards, what the assholes in congress are doing, the latest bushie scandal, what the fucking TV news people are saying, and all the other unproductive - no, counterproductive bullshit. While very few of the members here fall into that trap, if your membership increases it will happen.


It may be as simple as setting agreed-upon content guidelines and practicing some self-discipline.

As far as content guidelines - what are the main things that need to be discussed here? I appreciate the fact that there are so few forums in the discussion board part of the site, but you may need to break it down a little more. Have something like "SOCIALIST THEORY", "ANALYSIS OF CURRENT EVENTS", "HOW TO REACH THE WORKING CLASS", "EFFECTIVE ACTIVISM", whatever it is you want to focus on. Keep these oriented around specific and definable topics. Keep these to a minimum. Create outlines for research threads within those categories.

And then practice self-discipline - keep the discussions on topic. Keep the personal banter and chit-chat to a minimum (maybe have a forum set aside for less fundamental stuff). Check yourselves on every post you make and make sure you aren't straying too far from the discussion. Keep the goddamn egos out of it. Keep anecdotes to a minimum - they are not evidence and while they may help *you* find truth they will seldom convince others. At the beginning, call people out when they get off-course.

No matter how determined you are to create a place for productive, in-depth discussion, it is so much easier to blather about bullshit and bicker with each other. It's a dangerous trap.

These are just some thoughts. I don't know if any of them are relevant, or if they would ever work. And you've probably already had a lot of these thoughts too. But I think there has to be a baseline, agreed-upon format just to get started, before you can even get into the nitty-gritty of moderating and archiving and stuff.

Okay, I am gonna do a quick rant here with my thoughts about this based on my own experience running a board.

You guys seem to have enough *ideas* of what kind of board you want, as far as content and management. And as for now you are under the radar and don't have many people stumbling upon the site. Now is the time to get this stuff figured out or it will never happen. Set the stage, adopt good habits.

Agreed.


Before you can seriously attempt a true open and democratic style of running this board you need to set some rules. Does that sound totally counterintuitive? Meh. In my experience running another board I can tell you that no matter what the mission statement says, it is going to be defined by the membership as a whole. And no matter the intentions, almost everyone in this realm ends up talking about what's going on at other boards, what the assholes in congress are doing, the latest bushie scandal, what the fucking TV news people are saying, and all the other unproductive - no, counterproductive bullshit. While very few of the members here fall into that trap, if your membership increases it will happen.

It may be as simple as setting agreed-upon content guidelines and practicing some self-discipline.

I don't have a problem with that kinda discussion. Not everything here need inform the serious content I hope to develop on the main page, nor need it all pertain to the bylaws and admin areas, which I would hope will be productive and serious as well.

We can let there be DU-CU-PI etc etc ad nauseum discussion. It just won't be the main focus. Hopefully, the mainstream sorta dicussion like that will drive traffic that would otherwise not be exposed to, and hopefully schooled by, the serious discussions and the content that they generate which we can put up on the drupal site.


As far as content guidelines - what are the main things that need to be discussed here? I appreciate the fact that there are so few forums in the discussion board part of the site, but you may need to break it down a little more. Have something like "SOCIALIST THEORY", "ANALYSIS OF CURRENT EVENTS", "HOW TO REACH THE WORKING CLASS", "EFFECTIVE ACTIVISM", whatever it is you want to focus on. Keep these oriented around specific and definable topics. Keep these to a minimum. Create outlines for research threads within those categories.

You're right ,and those are some great suggested names for other forums or forum indexes. I am personally just not in any hurry to put that stuff up yet because I want to get the more fundamental needs addressed first. I am pleased to see Mike talking about this matter again and feel that, especially with your participation, we can get somewhere.


And then practice self-discipline - keep the discussions on topic. Keep the personal banter and chit-chat to a minimum (maybe have a forum set aside for less fundamental stuff). Check yourselves on every post you make and make sure you aren't straying too far from the discussion. Keep the goddamn egos out of it. Keep anecdotes to a minimum - they are not evidence and while they may help *you* find truth they will seldom convince others. At the beginning, call people out when they get off-course.

No matter how determined you are to create a place for productive, in-depth discussion, it is so much easier to blather about bullshit and bicker with each other. It's a dangerous trap.

Well, the idea I have is that we can weed through the egos and banter, etc. to grab what is good stuff that we don't want to 'sink to the bottom' and can then use it to build pages in drupal that are topical.

<edit for egregious comma faults...>

Mike has a point. Even if the issue is not intentional disruption, the unbelievably large egos and the stridency with which the "Me-kids" from the burbs push their shit is real and a problem on every site.

Is the difference simply that someone else makes the decision?

Yup. Nothing wrong with that...

Rusty, we take on many things but an immediate change in the laws of physics is not among them.

Just sayin'.

.

Well, we could make it so that peeps don't get mod powers until after brazillion posts or sumpin'

Then, however strident they are, they are tamped down by a legion of mods...

Again, my idea is not to see that we have some über scholarly board with only the kindest and calmest discourse allowed. Rather, it is my hope that when you bitch slap them, I can (we can) come along and get the facts outta that for posting to lasting, teaching content on the drupal pages.

Do we need to discuss a way to sanction participants who want to fuck the system up? Sure. I am up for suggestions as I have none of my own. That simply has not been the focus of my thinking...

I see no evidence for that here, lest of course it is my actions of a couple of months ago you have in mind.

No one here can just take over without there being an outcry. We have an opportunity, not a threat.

That is exactly backwards.

Consider my posts "an outcry."

I see no evidence for that here, lest of course it is my actions of a couple of months ago you have in mind.

No one here can just take over without there being an outcry. We have an opportunity, not a threat.

That is exactly backwards.

Consider my posts "an outcry."

Against whom/what? Me for the vile creation of a drupal portion of the site? That is -all- I have done, and as I have said before, it was to make your work, and that of others, better able to be KEPT and used over and over.

Well, we could make it so that peeps don't get mod powers until after brazillion posts or sumpin'

Then, however strident they are, they are tamped down by a legion of mods...

Again, my idea is not to see that we have some über scholarly board with only the kindest and calmest discourse allowed. Rather, it is my hope that when you bitch slap them, I can (we can) come along and get the facts outta that for posting to lasting, teaching content on the drupal pages.

Do we need to discuss a way to sanction participants who want to fuck the system up? Sure. I am up for suggestions as I have none of my own. That simply has not been the focus of my thinking...

The national stolen election situation is a good analogy to this.

"Show us some evidence!!" is a bogus argument. What that really means is "prove it!" If every crime must be proved and solved before it can be investigated, no crime would ever be stopped.

Saying "there is not much of an outcry so what is your problem?" is not a legitimate argument either, as it diverts attention away from the irregularities and places it on the whistle blower.

When people lose confidence in elections, demanding that they prove something or telling them to get over it misses the point. The loss of confidence itself is the problem, and cannot be dismissed.

People start out with confidence in the integrity of elections. It takes a lot of abuse before we beggin hearing any outcry. The likelihood that people are over-stating the risk or the problems is remote when compared to the likelihood that they are under-stating it, that they are slow to become alarmed, that only a fraction of those with suspicions are voicing them.

People have lost confidence in the boards. That is not because they had expectations that were too high, nor because they are being hyper-critical or perfectionsists. There has been massive abuse, and people are very slow to react to it, not quick. They want to assume the best, give the benefit of the doubt to others and be fair, they wonder if it is their inagination, or if it is something wrong with them, they donlt want to be alarmists, or they don't want to get depressed by thinking "bad things."

The task is to pro-actively establish confidence, not to muddle along dismissing the critics and wondering why everything always goes down the toilet in strange and mysterious ways. The lack of confidence is the evidence. It is the problem. The presumption has to be that we will only hear a small part of that, not an over-stated case.

When you put a smoke detector in your home, it is an acknowledgement that there is a very real possibility - however small - of a fire. If you have open flames, worn and sloppy wiring, and someone in the house expresses worry, you donlt tellthem to get over it. You don't wait until the house is on fire before you take precautions. You don't ask people to prove that the house could burn.

When the smoke detector alarm goes off, you don't assume that it probably doesn't know what it is talking about because you don't see any evidence. The alarm is the evidence.

Well, we could make it so that peeps don't get mod powers until after brazillion posts or sumpin'

Then, however strident they are, they are tamped down by a legion of mods...

Again, my idea is not to see that we have some über scholarly board with only the kindest and calmest discourse allowed. Rather, it is my hope that when you bitch slap them, I can (we can) come along and get the facts outta that for posting to lasting, teaching content on the drupal pages.

Do we need to discuss a way to sanction participants who want to fuck the system up? Sure. I am up for suggestions as I have none of my own. That simply has not been the focus of my thinking...

The national stolen election situation is a good analogy to this.

"Show us some evidence!!" is a bogus argument. What that really means is "prove it!" If every crime must be proved and solved before it can be investigated, no crime would ever be stopped.

Saying "there is not much of an outcry so what is your problem?" is not a legitimate argument either, as it diverts attention away from the irregularities and places it on the whistle blower.

When people lose confidence in elections, demanding that they prove something or telling them to get over it misses the point. The loss of confidence itself is the problem, and cannot be dismissed.

People start out with confidence in the integrity of elections. It takes a lot of abuse before we begin hearing any outcry. The likelihood that people are over-stating the risk or the problems is remote when compared to the likelihood that they are under-stating it, that they are slow to become alarmed, that only a fraction of those with suspicions are voicing them.

People have lost confidence in the boards. That is not because they had expectations that were too high, nor because they are being hyper-critical or perfectionists. There has been massive abuse, and people are very slow to react to it, not quick. They want to assume the best, give the benefit of the doubt to others and be fair, they wonder if it is their imagination, or if it is something wrong with them, they don't want to be alarmists, or they don't want to get depressed by thinking "bad things."

The task is to pro-actively establish confidence, not to muddle along dismissing the critics and wondering why everything always goes down the toilet in strange and mysterious ways. The lack of confidence is the evidence. It is the problem. The presumption has to be that we will only hear a small part of that, not an over-stated case.

When you put a smoke detector in your home, it is an acknowledgment that there is a very real possibility - however small - of a fire. If you have open flames, worn and sloppy wiring, and someone in the house expresses worry, you don't tell them to get over it. You don't wait until the house is on fire before you take precautions. You don't ask people to prove that the house could burn.

When the smoke detector alarm goes off, you don't assume that it probably doesn't know what it is talking about because you don't see any evidence. The alarm is the evidence.

Frankly, I don't follow. What are you suggesting?

Now is the time to get this stuff figured out or it will never happen. Set the stage, adopt good habits.

Amen.


Before you can seriously attempt a true open and democratic style of running this board you need to set some rules.

Absolutely.


...everyone in this realm ends up talking about what's going on at other boards, what the assholes in congress are doing, the latest bushie scandal, what the fucking TV news people are saying, and all the other unproductive - no, counterproductive bullshit. While very few of the members here fall into that trap, if your membership increases it will happen

Maybe. I wonder. If there are - as I think there are - 100 people out there who are not interested in that stuff for every one person who is, and if it is true- and I think it is - that the latter dominate the boards and run the others off, then this isn't necessarily inevitable.


Keep the goddamn egos out of it. Keep anecdotes to a minimum - they are not evidence and while they may help *you* find truth they will seldom convince others. At the beginning, call people out when they get off-course.

Not sure. That is what people say. That is how it seems to be. "People just need the whip cracked on them and made to behave nicely." Not sure megan not sure, Are we willing to consider the idea that we may have been seeing this wrong? Accusing the little people - the participants - of being responsible for the uproars - "if only you weren't egotistical, if only you weren't going off topic, if only you would stop shilly-shallying around and would get serious" - reminds me too much of the modern idea of individualism that always blames the little people for all of the problems and gives those in authority a free pass. We are constantly bombarded with the idea that there is something wrong with people - human nature is the problem - and we are being treated like grade schoolers - “now boys and girls, we need to sit quietly and learn to share.”

I think the problem is with the leaders, not with the little people. I think the problems are caused by bullying, power plays, control freaks, and infiltrators, not with people going off topic, joking around, or being on ego trips. The authoritarian behavior is not a product of human nature, it is a product of who actually has the power – to ban people for instance – and how they wield that power, and all of the little hints we are all watching for in order to predict how they will wield it. You don't need to ban very many people – or leave too many people to beat back the attacks of an infiltrator on them - to intimidate and control the entire group.


No matter how determined you are to create a place for productive, in-depth discussion, it is so much easier to blather about bullshit and bicker with each other. It's a dangerous trap.

Again not sure. This is how it seems to be, and how I always thought it was. But I am not so sure anymore. In a more authoritarian and corrupted environment, I thought chlamor was my enemy - I thought he was going off topic, was on ego trips, etc. I though that runswithscissors was not being serious enough. I was wrong. What I thought to be the people themselves was actually the climate we were operating in, and I think we are being steered to blame each other.



on edit - a coupla caveats:

I posted a lot of words that seem critical of your post, and only two that sound complimentary. That doesn't reflect the value of your post.

I am not certain about what I am saying here, and don't have it all figured out yet. I am questioning the common wisdom about what goes on at boards, though, and feeling my way.

I think there may be a gender gap on these issues of organization, etc. Raph hinted at it, Wolf tackled it and made many good points. It warrants more thought and discussion. All through that thread that anax, wolf, chlamor and I were posting, I kept thinking that we needed input from raph, you and scissors. It didn't occur to me that it was gender related then, just that something was missing.

...everyone in this realm ends up talking about what's going on at other boards, what the assholes in congress are doing, the latest bushie scandal, what the fucking TV news people are saying, and all the other unproductive - no, counterproductive bullshit. While very few of the members here fall into that trap, if your membership increases it will happen

Maybe. I wonder. If there are - as I think there are - 100 people out there who are not interested in that stuff for every one person who is, and if it is true- and I think it is - that the latter dominate the boards and run the others off, then this isn't necessarily inevitable.

I think this will come down to who finds this site and decides to sign up. I have learned over the last couple years that many of the people who currently participate in political discussion boards will glom on to whatever site they find, as long as it appears to be 'leftist', regardless of how it is defined. eg 'I am a leftist and this is a leftist site so I belong here'. And then there is a snowball effect - as more people recognize more names they will start signing up. And once you get 10 or 20 people just looking for somewhere to post (in some cases because they've been booted off all the other sites), and who are used to a faster pace, one-liners, party cheerleading and gatekeeping, etc, it becomes harder and harder to keep it in check.

Maybe there are 100 folks 'out there' who aren't interested in that stuff for every one person who is, but they certainly don't frequent the political discussion boards I've seen. I guess I am curious where 'out there' is. If you mean out in the 'real world' you probably have a point. If you mean people who are online a lot I am afraid I disagree.



Keep the goddamn egos out of it. Keep anecdotes to a minimum - they are not evidence and while they may help *you* find truth they will seldom convince others. At the beginning, call people out when they get off-course.

Not sure. That is what people say. That is how it seems to be. "People just need the whip cracked on them and made to behave nicely." Not sure megan not sure, Are we willing to consider the idea that we may have been seeing this wrong? Accusing the little people - the participants - of being responsible for the uproars - "if only you weren't egotistical, if only you weren't going off topic, if only you would stop shilly-shallying around and would get serious" - reminds me too much of the modern idea of individualism that always blames the little people for all of the problems and gives those in authority a free pass. We are constantly bombarded with the idea that there is something wrong with people - human nature is the problem - and we are being treated like grade schoolers - “now boys and girls, we need to sit quietly and learn to share.”

I think the problem is with the leaders, not with the little people. I think the problems are caused by bullying, power plays, control freaks, and infiltrators, not with people going off topic, joking around, or being on ego trips. The authoritarian behavior is not a product of human nature, it is a product of who actually has the power – to ban people for instance – and how they wield that power, and all of the little hints we are all watching for in order to predict how they will wield it. You don't need to ban very many people – or leave too many people to beat back the attacks of an infiltrator on them - to intimidate and control the entire group.

To clarify - I am still talking about setting the stage here. I am talking about the 'leaders', the ones who are already here. Because, as you say, the problem is with us. We have been doing this for awhile and we are conditioned to certain things. I am saying we need to crack the whip on *ourselves*. If this board is going to be different than other boards than our behavior has to reflect that from the get-go. So we are in relative agreement there.

I would think that the "bullying, power plays, control freaks, and infiltrators" who do tend to cause the problems are driven by ego and selfishness rather than a desire to find common ground or truth. I think you and I are at least somewhat in agreement on this point as well.

As for the chit-chat stuff, well, I guess that's a matter of what the people of PopIndy want it to be. I am not sure I grasp that yet, so I may be offbase on several of the things I have said. I have the impression that the goal is to get some serious shit worked out, to be a somewhat serious place in general. Maybe that's not the case. But if people aren't conscientious about having real productive conversation it won't happen. Based on the membership so far, that may not be a problem. But I do think you have to be aware of it.







No matter how determined you are to create a place for productive, in-depth discussion, it is so much easier to blather about bullshit and bicker with each other. It's a dangerous trap.

Again not sure. This is how it seems to be, and how I always thought it was. But I am not so sure anymore. In a more authoritarian and corrupted environment, I thought chlamor was my enemy - I thought he was going off topic, was on ego trips, etc. I though that runswithscissors was not being serious enough. I was wrong. What I thought to be the people themselves was actually the climate we were operating in, and I think we are being steered to blame each other.

I do heartily agree with what you are saying here. The environment in which we encounter one another frames the impressions we have, the way we communicate, and the relationships we form. But I stand by my above words - we really need to be careful about bringing old patterns and habits here, if PopIndy is going to be substantially different from any other site.




on edit - a coupla caveats:

I posted a lot of words that seem critical of your post, and only two that sound complimentary. That doesn't reflect the value of your post.

Mike, please don't worry about that. I didn't come here for cookies or gold stars, LOL. I came here for good conversation and hopefully some good debate too.




I am not certain about what I am saying here, and don't have it all figured out yet. I am questioning the common wisdom about what goes on at boards, though, and feeling my way.

I think there may be a gender gap on these issues of organization, etc. Raph hinted at it, Wolf tackled it and made many good points. It warrants more thought and discussion. All through that thread that anax, wolf, chlamor and I were posting, I kept thinking that we needed input from raph, you and scissors. It didn't occur to me that it was gender related then, just that something was missing.

I am at a similar place. This is really the first time I have reflected on my experience as a site administrator. So I am going through a process here myself.

Maybe gender has something to do with it, although I seldom look at things that way so I would need you to elaborate a little, and maybe point me in the direction of the thread you are talking about.

I hadn't really expected to get into the "how-to" side of PopIndy, I came here to hone up on social and political theory. This may be interesting.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Somewhere in there I started to say 'we' instead of 'you'. I also seem to have figured out the quoting thing for real now. Looks like I got sucked in to yet another board....

All through that thread that anax, wolf, chlamor and I were posting, I kept thinking that we needed input from raph, you and scissors. It didn't occur to me that it was gender related then, just that something was missing.

How did I wind up thinking Raph is a male?

Whadayamean? Do I have to read this entire thread?
Probably some gender issues. I'm not very interested in guns, but I understand my best friend from childhood has been spotted armed. Not very interested in cars either. Though, I am interested in vintage tube stereo components, and that seems to be a male thing. Just got a Fisher console off of Craigslist for 35 bucks. The men tend to steer clear of the girly furniture things, although they do strip the components out.

I'm against all rules and banning anyone of course, and nothing personal Megan, I'm glad you wondered over, but I do find some irony in you advising a membership that was shown the door at the site you run. What can I say? I welcome you here.

I'm against all rules and banning anyone of course, and nothing personal Megan, I'm glad you wondered over, but I do find some irony in you advising a membership that was shown the door at the site you run. What can I say? I welcome you here.

Indeed, the irony is so glaring it kinda hurts my eyes. I only hope I can be taken at face value here. Thanks for the welcome.

Whadayamean?

I'd swear I learnt somewherz that you are a librarian or similar, male or similar (! - that's my own weirdness speaking :) ), and in the vicinity of Philly.

Did I dream it?

not male though.

Maybe there are 100 folks 'out there' who aren't interested in that stuff for every one person who is, but they certainly don't frequent the political discussion boards I've seen. I guess I am curious where 'out there' is. If you mean out in the 'real world' you probably have a point. If you mean people who are online a lot I am afraid I disagree.

I base this on a curious thing that keeps happening to me at every board. I don't know if it happens to anyone else. I always get a lot of email and pms from lurkers. Mostly complaining about the domineering and the arrogance and the racism (not racism so much here or at PI but elsewhere) .There are often 20-100 people lurking for every one person logged in at the various boards. They always describe the same thing – that you can't be “real” or just a “normal” person on the boards without getting your head taken off, that everyone is out of touch with reality and lost in dueling theories and ideologies, that there is a white and upper class bias and arrogance, and that everyday people and their concerns are quickly elbowed out of the way and trampled.

Since those people are calm, relaxed, multi-dimensional and believable and are just freely speaking their minds, their reports seem credible to me. By contrast, the dominant people on the boards always come across as rigid and doctrinaire and cold and distant - as though they were playing a role rather than just being themselves.

There are far more "normal" everyday people out there - online and off - then there are hyped up political junkies with an agenda, by a factor of a thousand to one.

I think that the usual crowd of "leftists" who dominate all of the boards is not a very good representation of what the board membership could and should look like. There is no leftist board, really.

We get so wrapped up in the game of participating on an online board, and how the game is played - as strongly and continually enforced by a few pushy loudmouths, that we can't imagine what these places look like from the "outside" - lunatic asylums full of really hostile and crazy people that can't speak plain English and will destroy anyone who tries to break into the inner circle.


I think this will come down to who finds this site and decides to sign up.

I talk to many who have a very clear idea as to what they want to see, and who think that we desperately need a board to participate on.


I would think that the "bullying, power plays, control freaks, and infiltrators" who do tend to cause the problems are driven by ego and selfishness rather than a desire to find common ground or truth. I think you and I are at least somewhat in agreement on this point as well.

I think most of it is intentional disruption, and the rest of it comes from poor leadership.


As for the chit-chat stuff, well, I guess that's a matter of what the people of PopIndy want it to be.

There is a difference between people drifting off topic and people intentionally and aggressively driving threads off topic. The problems are caused by the second.

There is a difference between chit-chating and joking around as though we were human beings, and obsessing over trivial and distracting issues. The problems are caused by the second.


But if people aren't conscientious about having real productive conversation it won't happen.

I think people are desperate for that, and it is being suppressed. I don't think people need to be prodded or goaded.


I didn't come here for cookies or gold stars, LOL.

Shit. As soon as you signed up I ordered a case of each. Now what am I going to do?


Maybe gender has something to do with it, although I seldom look at things that way so I would need you to elaborate a little, and maybe point me in the direction of the thread you are talking about.

Here: In response to Raphaelle (and toward rapprochement) (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2843&highlight=#2843)

TAKING A DOSE OF OUR OWN MEDICINE

By Ned Crosby

The field of deliberative democracy is flourishing, as anyone who has looked at the NCDD Website (www.thataway.org (http://www.thataway.org)) knows. Faced with such a wide range of choices, how should some mayor or group of citizens choose between them? Are some of them best for certain purposes? So far as I know, no consensus has arisen over this.

Take, for example, the large town meetings of American Speaks and the Study Circles of the Study Circle Resource Center and compare them to the Deliberative Poll and the Citizens Jury process. If a mayor or governor were to want to use some deliberative method, which should be chosen and why? The first two use volunteers in events lasting no more than a day, with the number of participants ranging from a few hundred to thousands. The latter two rely upon randomly selected participants who meet from one to five days, with the number of participants ranging from 18 to a few hundred. Is there any clarity as to when one is more appropriate than the other?

We deliberative practitioners should not expect it to be easy to agree upon best practice. The debate over the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been going on for many decades and, according to an article in the New York Times (August 9, 2004 Science Times), is more contentious now than ever. This is happening in a field which prides itself on a wide variety of sophisticated research tools. If the value of “talking therapy” is this difficult to resolve, why should it be any easier for objective assessments to be made on the various ways used to help people to deliberate with one another?

The simplest approach to resolving differences would be to bring practitioners of different methods together to see if they can agree on the strengths and weaknesses of their methods and which is best adapted for what purpose. This may work. If so, it would show that we in the deliberative field can manage our differences more effectively than those arguing over different approaches to psychotherapy. But we should not be surprised if something more than a conference of practitioners is needed if significant clarity is to be achieved.

For starters, we should acknowledge what we are up against. The ego involvement of inventive people is well-known. We deliberative practitioners may not be as flamboyant as composers or painters, but we are certainly as ego-involved in our creations. Add to this the effects of cognitive dissonance on those who staff the different processes. It is well known that the harder one works on something, the more convinced one is of the value of the product. Studies in psychology on cognitive dissonance show how blind people can be to the objective value of their work if they have labored long and hard to bring it to fruition. Most humbling, why should we think we are any less prone to the dangers of groupthink than the CIA? The Congressional investigation of intelligence failures pointed out how many intelligence analysts apparently were victims of groupthink, along the lines of what Irving Janis spelled out in his classic work. The more convinced we become of the value of the deliberative field as a whole, the more alert we should become to the need for us to be as disciplined as possible in our claims and open to review by outsiders.

One obvious way for us to submit our work to review by those outside our field is to allow the participants in our methods to evaluate what we do. Every Citizens Jury conducted by the Jefferson Center since 1981 requested the jurors to evaluate the project in which they had participated. But this is not enough. People should be given the chance to compare methods after they have experienced them. For example, one could convene some study circles and a Citizens Jury on the same issue. At the end of each project ask the participants to choose half a dozen representatives to meet and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. This discussion should be facilitated in a neutral way by a couple of people not committed to a single deliberative process. This should provide some interesting insights into the two methods and possibly include suggestions for ways to improve both methods.

A different approach would be to require that proponents of different methods be as disciplined as possible in discussing the pros and cons of their methods. One way to do this that is relatively inexpensive is to use a method called an “extended policy discussion”, the purpose of which is to clarify agreements and disagreements between experts. Take proponents of any two deliberative methods and bring them together with a neutral facilitator and a tape recorder for a series of meetings. The goal would be to get the two to be clear on where they agree and disagree on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective methods. Where they disagree, is there any objective way to resolve the disagreement? Would any further research resolve their disagreements? Might they see some kind of panel that would be a fair way to resolve a question about best use?

Each session of the extended policy discussion lasts about two hours, after which the facilitator uses the recording to summarize the key areas of agreement and disagreement. Often it takes several meetings for experts to be clear about where they agree and disagree. It is not uncommon for experts to change position once they see their stands written up clearly. This is a discipline that many people are reluctant to submit themselves to, since it can force them to acknowledge where their positions are weak. Clever advocates who can maintain a position quite effectively in public debate can find the extended policy discussion unnerving when they discover they cannot use clever tactics and subtle shifts in argument to maintain a position that does not stand up under close scrutiny. The goal of a debate is to win an argument; the goal of an extended policy discussion is to clarify a dispute and point out directions for resolving it.

There is a widespread feeling among deliberative democracy advocates that American democracy is at risk and something significant needs to be done to make it healthy again. Under these circumstances, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards. We should give the American public the opportunity to evaluate different methods in a rigorous way and we should force ourselves to be as clear and disciplined in our discussions as possible. Suggestions on how this could be done beyond the two approaches mentioned above would be welcomed.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_ ... racy/1.htm (http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/poli_sci/journal_public_deliberation/healthydemocracy/1.htm)

Okey dokey, here I can see where what you've been presenting has direct relevance to our situation. So how might we adapt this methodology to the difficulties inherent to internet discussion boards? And where the hell are we going to find a neutral facilitator?

Mike has suggested that we add some new forums. I think that is a good idea. How, if at all, would the stuff above inform what we might use some new forums for? Any ideas?

Mike has suggested that we add some new forums. I think that is a good idea. How, if at all, would the stuff above inform what we might use some new forums for? Any ideas?

I don't know, is that putting the cart before the horse? I mean, do we want to use those type procedures to decide what the new forums shall be? Or do we want a forum to discuss implementing said procedures? Or do we want to set up a test forum in which said procedures are applied on an expermental basis?

Am I confused or what?

Am I confused or what?

Not confused, just what.

Additional forums (and categories possibly) - could help focus things a little; more threads are kept "at the top" when there are more forums - and therefore more "tops."