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Validity of Web-Forms-Based Advocacy Questioned
RobotRunAmok writes "We've all heard that, to better gain a legislator's attention, one should write a letter or send a fax, rather than click off an e-mail. Made sense, no? Well, PC World is reporting that the US Forestry Service is considering taking that truism to it's logical, or perhaps extreme, extension. The Tree People seek a regulation that would allow them to "ignore any public comments on the rule-making process sent to it through Web-based forms." The knickers of the EFF are in the predictable twist. The Issue: Sure, we all know Web-based petitions and advocacy campaigns are bogus, but they made us feel good, almost like we were participating in The Process, so is it really polite to rub our noses in our own ineffectuality this way?"
That the forestry service, who's mission is conservation, advocates wasting tons of paper each year mailing letters that could have been sent electronically.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
However, the fact is that these people shouldn't be entrusted with the power to simply block opinions that they've heard before. The most relevant passage to me was the following:
"A bunch of e-mails that say the same thing with no specific comments don't tell us anything," Walsh says. "We'll take e-mails by the millions" if the correspondence becomes more specific, he adds.
"If you're going to take the time to respond and you care, then put some effort into it," Walsh advises correspondents.
Why should an individual have to formulate their own personal argument when their position is clearly stated in a form letter? Are we all supposed to quit our jobs and become full-time environmental researchers and activists? It seems to me that this would lock out petitions as well - after all, the petition is going to have one statement but will be signed as being the position of many people. Should each of those people have ignored the petition and instead written an individual letter?
The best course, in my opinion, is for the USDA to require a verified (automatically verified via a "go to this page" e-mail as message boards do) e-mail address on each web-based form letter they receive. This would allow them to weed out e-mail flooding by groups that are pretending to have thousands of people involved where it might in fact be just their staff filling in forms.
Alternatively, they could provide polls on their own website (provided to environmental action groups for linking) asking for opinions on each policy decision requiring public comments. Again, they could have an e-mail verification sent out that would have to be received and read (with a click verification) in an attempt to ensure that each vote is from a specific person.
Even simpler would be a "you've already given your vote/opinion" cookie, though this would be even easier to get around than a click-verify e-mail.
All of these would take a bit more work and there are still possibilities for abuse, but the solution they're proposing seems to be the most lazy and intellectually dishonest way possible - something too many bureaucrats love.