Slashdot in Politics?

Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel asks: "I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on how to turn all that passionate talk on Slashdot (how I love it) into a political force that people will pay attention to. Like a lobby group or something similar. It seems that people tolerate the DMCA and spam enough to complain about it but not really do anything about. I think we could change that with some organization and a cohesive front. I'm not suggesting that Slashdot itself be responsible, only that the community take part. Like a micro-payment system to hire lawyers for topics we are interested in or some sort of petitioning system. I know I'd pay a buck to overturn the DMCA, free Dimitri, outlaw spam, protest license problems, protect the GPL etc."

Comments

One way /. could help...

[CptnHarlock]

... is by allowing the EFF to have free banners on the site. If lets say every 50th banner is a free banner for the EFF then /. and Andover would really put their money where their mouth is. I mean there's anyway a decline in banner sells worldwide, that gap could easily be filled with "goodwill" banners... How'bout that Taco & Co?

Re:One way /. could help...

[orn]

Actually, I think a Slashbox would be better. Split it into two fields. The first would be "Top Issues", the second would be "Recent News." Let them control it and let the articles link directly to their site.

Rudy

Re:Because no one here exerts any effort..

[cascadefx]

Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone

If you don't have a manual typwriter, bring out that old impact printer that is gathering dust in your closet. A simple Perl script could change the letters you send enough to make them seem less formulaic.

Then send them to all of your:

1. Representatives in Washington
   
2. state Reps
   
3. local Reps
   
4. heads of the Political Parties at the national and state level
   
5. governors
   
6. state attorney generals
   
7. attorney general of the United States
   
8. president
   
9. vice president
   
10. speaker of the house
    
11. Heads of pertinent committees
    
12. Heads of pertinent agencies
    
13. Editors of influential Magazines and Newspapers
    
    
    

    Then you just have to sign them by hand OR get a plotter to do it.
    
    

    I think we are framing the idea of "lazy" wrong. Sure computer people are lazy. They hate expending effort that will just have to be done over and over again. It is better to spend a couple of days hacking together a solution that could be applied when needed instead of taking the few minutes it will take to solve the problem once.
    
    

    Doesn't Larry Wall say that the three great virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris? Well, let's put that crap to work.
    
    

    If you don't have an impact printer, fake it by choosing a crappy fixed width font like IMPACT or something. Sure, it is not the same, but it does tend to throw people used to recieving nicely formatted text. Also throw in some spelling errors and leave out some words (then go back and correct them with whiteout... though this goes against the virtues
    
    

    If you start to analyze the problem, you could probably figure out what makes a personal letter sound personal and a form letter sound like a form letter. Capitalize on that! Keep a couple of flat files with appropriate phrases in them for a particular subject. Combine them in interesting ways with a program and only include a couple of new sentences here and there of original content (which should be put into files for later use).
    
    

    I think this could work. Anybody have any concrete ideas or recipes?