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If you want some links on the Internet and politics, check out my "e-democracy resources" flyer: http://www.publicus.net/articles/edemresources.htm l

You can also join DO-WIRE: http://www.e-democracy.org/do

Here are some recent subject lines from the archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/

[DW] Vox Populi, Online and Downtown - NYTimes Article, Steven Clift

[DW] Die Online-Kampagnen der Parteien Event - Berlin - 19 Oct. 2002, Steven Clift

[DW] Correction - Oct 1 - Re: [DW] Die Online-Kampagnen der Parteien, Steven Clift

[DW] E-Gov Conference - Korea - 6-7 Nov 2002, Steven Clift

[DW] [IP] Student Blogs, School Cracks Down (fwd), Steven Clift

[DW] Carnegie Mellon Team Wins $2.1 Million to Build Online Forum forCitizen Deliberation (fwd), Steven Clift

[DW] Online Campaigning 2002: A Primer - Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, Steven Clift

[DW] Publication - Making a case for local e-government (fwd), Steven Clift

[DW] Paris, Warsaw, Vilnius, Lisbon - Clift Speaking Schedule, Future Requests, Steven Clift

[DW] New Public Sphere: Technology and Politics in Sweden 1969-1999 - Lars Ilshammar PhD Dissertation, Steven Clift

[DW] Parliamentary E-Democracy Inquiry, Key Documents - State of Victoria, Australia, Steven Clift

[DW] US Election 2002 - Senate Campaign E-mail Lists - Wellstone at 25,000, Steven Clift

[DW] GILC Alert - China, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran ... and more, Steven Clift

[DW] Recycling Day - Two Items, Steven Clift

[DW] Voting Technology Glitches in Florida Primary, Steven Clift

[DW] MyBallot.net - New service from E-Democracy - details and press release, Steven Clift

[DW] Netactivism-Oriented Conference Calendar, Steven Clift

[DW] UK Political Participation Online Survey Results - From ERSC, Univof Salford, Steven Clift

It is all about outreach. With E-Democracy we host local community discussions that have a tremendously diverse amount of expression. We don't know who our 800 participants are compared to say the census, but we know that 800 people in any geographic community discussing local issues is very important and empowering. Take a look and judge for yourself.

In terms of gender, age, neighborhood, ethnicity, income, etc. we can alway have more diversity and we are actually working on some grant proposals to hit various community events in-person to recruit for our forums. However, these community forums really only matter to various communities when they themselves think they matter. Right now the "active citizens" of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Winona understand the real world political agenda setting power of online discussions where community leaders/the media participate/lurk, while many of diverse and newer immigrant communities haven't caught on yet. They will as they come to use all forms of media and communication to increase their power in the community ... or they won't if it doesn't appeal to them or relate in someway to their everyday life.

Steven Clift

In the specific area of online discussions in local communities we need your advice. Related discussions on this has occured on the Democracies Online Code Network e-mail list for civic-minded techies.

We use e-mail lists. They work. Our participants love them. They need to work better with the web. We do not need a web-based system that treats e-mail participants as second class citizens. Our thousands of users won't make the transition - and we are not going to sacrifice our sustainable non-profit model that has worked for eight years.

In an ideal world someone would create an e-mail/web system akin to a cleaner, crisper Yahoogroups but something better that you can host on your own domain.

What we have:
Mailman with additional archives using Mail-Archive. (We are moving our last few lists off Yahoogroups.)
Basic web pages with forum information, hundreds of Minnesota-specific political links, and special election/candidate link directories.

What we need in term of priority:

1. Advanced Web Archives and Subject Line Syndication - Improved web access to our e-mail forum archives including the ability to post via the web to -recent- messages by "no e-mail" members, the ability to automatically display via RSS the most recent subject lines from our various lists on our home page/other key web pages to posts in the archives. Hypermail, Mhonarc just don't cut it. They were great in their time, but we need something that takes advantage of MySQL, allows for linear display of posts in the same thread, and other tools. More on this ....

2. Member Preferences Page - A single page like Yahoogroups where someone can control their settings on the all the lists they subscribe to on our server. We'd also like to allow people to recommend new e-mail lists for their local communities and essentially reserve a spot by letting us know that they are interested in a specific city/county/region or statewide public policy issue. We do not open community discussions without at least 100 participants and have an extensive public outreach process that goes with each new lists (i.e. online and in-person recruiting). If we recruit 50,000 "e-citizens" across Minnesota we need to use technology to help shape our forum development priorities.

3. Member Directory with Archive Links - (Again, we are not interested/able to use a web-centric conferencing system) This is where the web can complement our e-mail environment. I'd like each member to have the option to share information about themselves (our rules for posting including signing your real name, we have to use personal accountability in our model for online political discourse or everything would be pure crap). I'd like each e-mail that goes through the list server to insert their member directory page URL. From the member-directory page I'd to present both the information provided by the participants but also links to their recent posts across our various forums. And perhaps ...

4. Participant Ratings - With unmoderated mailing lists, rating each post before it is delivered is impossible. Even if we moderate our lists, a multiple moderater bottle neck among our mostly non-techie audience would cause major delays in discourse. So ... one idea is to allow participants to optionally vote +1 substance, -1 for style for any post after it is distributed. We don't want to create a situation where people simply vote against people of other ideologies (we have a cherished and extremely rare cross-political spectrum audience) so some sort of forumula would have to be developed to give various weight to votes (i.e. repeat votes by one individual against another count less over time) and always bring the rating toward zero over time. Oh - why do this? While our unmoderated lists to have forum managers who have the power to sanction participants who violate our rules and guidelines, we ultimately believe that self-regulation, and group self-governance is our strength. We walk on a tight rope between chaos and control in order to keep and build our participatory civic audience based on our democratic and community purpose.

5. E-Newsletter Distributed Content Management System - We have currently have 4,000+ people on our general announcement list (over next five years we'd like it to raise it to 50,000 or 1% of Minnesotans). We are planning a once or twice monthly e-mail newsletter with various content sections. I'd like to give our volunteer editor the tools to allow other volunteers to submit content (i.e. event lists, Minnesota political history this month, quotes of the month from our forums) on a regular basis into key sections of the newsletter and assuming that some content will be to long for e-mail newsletter format, something that integrates with a longer web section. 6. Mailman Advancements? Or another list packages. As an organization we'd like the ability to send one message to everyone on one of our lists without double posting. For our volunteer list managers we need the ability to quickly delete all the non-member (mostly spam) posts in one or two clicks and not have to click and select every post. What list packages do people recommend?

If you actually read this far, you should join the DO-CODE e-mail list that I mentioned above.

Cheers, Steven Clift

The use of global internet tools in very local communities has tremendous potential. Embrace geography. Love geography. This is not high school anymore, use your technical skills to benefit everyone even those jocks who pushed you around.

However, when you mix the goals of Internet access, local content, and local discussions/information exchange most non-profit/voluntar individual/commercial efforts fail without some level of subsidy. Figure out what you want to do most and do that well.

With Minnesota E-Democracy we have focused on the use of e-mail lists for state and local political/community discussion since 1994. We use e-mail lists with web archives to reach thousands of people on an ongoing basis. We are completely volunteer-based, have a donated web site, and are completing a move to Mailman from Yahoogroups in part because of their marketing/privacy shift.

We have a wealth of experience and articles available on my web site.

Steven Clift

Speaking of Squirrels - this helps answer your question:

A Wired Agora - Minneapolis, Citizen Participation, the Internet and Squirrels - Article, Presentation, Audio

And: Start an Online Commons

The lesson - recruit an audience with influence and power and the content can be greatly improved because it now matters in a political sense. When it comes to political exchange, who you are talking to is more important than what people have to say. What average citizen will NOT waste their time talking politics online if they think no one who can do anything about their concerns is listening. Something I have learned in over 8 years of direct experience in this arena.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
Democracies Online Newswire

Speaking of Squirrels - this helps answer your question:

A Wired Agora - Minneapolis, Citizen Participation, the Internet and Squirrels - Article, Presentation, Audio

And: Start an Online Commons

The lesson - recruit an audience with influence and power and the content can be greatly improved because it now matters in a political sense. When it comes to political exchange, who you are talking to is more important than what people have to say. What average citizen will NOT waste their time talking politics online if they think no one who can do anything about their concerns is listening. Something I have learned in over 8 years of direct experience in this arena.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
Democracies Online Newswire

One way to make online political discussion matter is to stick it into the center of real politics. With Minnesota E-Democracy we have been doing that since 1994.

See our MN-POLITICS and Minneapolis Issues Forum.

Steven Clift