We Need: A Quality National US Activist Discussion Forum

A group of people needs to launch a quality web forum for US activists!!!!! I've been thinking this for a couple years. It's an example of movement-building online activism than I'm hoping we'll see more of.

(Canadians already have one)

I suspect most people don't appreciate the usefulness of a high quality web forum - simply because, like quality email lists, they are rare. The overwhelming majority of email lists either have too little traffic (they never took off, or due to neglect they are dying), too much traffic (spam), too high of a ratio of off-topic messages to on-topic ones, too many weirdoes, too many posts by the same people, or some other problem. Web forums have similar problems.

My favourite professional forum is WebmasterWorld (I also like Webhostingtalk - on webhosting, and two game forums: AxisAndAllies.org and CivFantics). It is run by a search engine professional for webmasters, and they have a relatively strict set of rules to keep things in order, all while also building a substantial community of experts.

Qualities of a High Quality Activist Forum
1. Threaded conversations. Forums beat email lists in their ability to have threaded conversations. Email lists are all over the place and it hard for people to keep focus. You can subscribe to receive notifications on a forum thread. Forum threads are able to maintain conversations for several times longer than email lists. Also the thread is archived is a friendly accessible format for future reference. By contrast email archives tend to show up poorly in search engines.

2. Experts. I don't want to read people complaining about how Bush sucks. I want intelligent analysis and critique of both Bush and progressive social movements that are working in the opposite direction. Users should be highlighting stories that escaped mainstream media. I would want to build a community of intelligent caring users. Experts can draw people into the debate and try to point them in the right direction, or debunk their argument if it is a myth (ex. the myth about Jews not being in the twin towers on Sept 11 because they had advance warning). These experts can be famous activists or people in their fields, or regular up-and-coming activists whose merit will become obvious through their ability to engage people online.

ZNet is well poised to do this, as they have a list of experts who already contribute to their site and magazine.

3. Integrated with Social Movements. The discussions should be dominated by people who are actively involved in social movement organizations - not armchair activists. So people would be critically discussing things like sharing effective and failed tactics for a local peace group.

4. A mix of staff and volunteers. The site will need one (or more) paid people to keep it running, as well as a league of volunteers. The staff will recruit and train volunteers to take over responsibility for areas of the forum. For instance, you might start off with a forum section on Global Warming that would be moderated by a staff member. Then you could hand it over to a volunteer, who might later decide to spin off a sub-forum on Coal that would be moderated by another volunteer.

5. Multi-issue. Try to tackle the breadth of issues in the progressive movement. You can have forum areas for each issue, each region/state, each political tendency, etc.

6. Politically diverse. Non-sectarian. A site that would welcome the diversity of people on the left.

7. Anti-sexist/anti-oppressive. Men dominate forums and email lists, often to a worse degree than their domination of other means of communication (like in-person meetings and conference calls). Typically when I bother to count several hundred emails, I see men making 80% of the posts on an email list where they are around 50% of the membership. Activists should come up with systems to empower women. For instance, you could have a running tally of what percent of the posts were by men/women/other and the percent of the words. You could have web pages showing who is dominating the list and breakdowns by demographics. You could have colored icons next to each forum area (ex. racism, peace, global warming) that would show to what degree they were being dominated by men (or another group). This domination also occurs by race, class, age, and sexual orientation -- with varying degrees.

8. Supported by donations and ads. I don't think you can support the entire forum by ads, since they don't pay so well on forums. Paying one to several staff people anywhere from $30,000 to $200,000 -- would be a total bargain to setup this institution.

9. Builds community. Both for people/groups in the same state, working on the same issue, and across issue. This will make conferences and large national protests more meaningful, as you could meet-up with people with whom you've been discussing online.

10. Low-tech. Forums are state of the art these days. While there are a couple tricks to the trade, for instance in learning how to manage spam, you can download free software that will do amazing things for you. You could launch this forum on a start-up webhosting plan for $10/month. Of course as it grows you'll probably end up needing a dedicated server ($100-$200/month), but there is no need to be a tech expert to do this. Most of the work is about working with people. Getting people to use it and training people to become moderators and experts.

11. Civil. No personal attacks. Maybe you could have a "free speech" area for people who like to go on long diatribes, to talk at each other rather than listen - but I think that would be a waste of time. My experience with email lists is that you need a really basic set of rules and enforce them.

12. A starting point. Whether you are a new activist or an old-timer, it is nice to have a place where you go first when looking for some information. I'd like a central place where I could look at the debates going on within a specific social movement and get up to speed, or ask a question. If this activist forum is BIG enough, then tens of thousands of people will regularly refer to it.

13. Be BIG. You should be able to get a couple million posts and several hundred thousand users within two years.

14. Discussion oriented. You could have announcements too, but I think forums are better for discussion (including announcements that are discussible - e.g. someone posts a Call to Action or a news article and that generates discussion).

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Hopefully the new ZNet will be able to pull this off. I'm guessing it is part of their goal, though they might be thinking more "community" whereas I'm thinking more "forum".

Otherwise, maybe we could get Riseup to do it. Having an existing large user base is critical to getting it going.