Hi everyone. I think there are probably a variety of things any of us could do that might help in small (or not-so-small) ways to boost the profile of moderate/centrist politics.
We're not currently organized here to do active things. I was wondering, though, if anyone's interested and/or willing to help with projects where we actually attempt to *do* things -- and if we might establish a thread here dedicated to activism and to coordinating our efforts.
I have a couple little projects in mind as a starting place. These are things I've already begun trying to accomplish. Both involve a small but basic boost to the profile of moderate politics on the web.
Example #1:
I was looking at the various political discussions that occur every day in the usenet newsgroups. These are things that have been around since the advent of the web -- a relatively crude venue for discussing issues. But they are used by a large number of people every day.
What I noticed is that the political sections are divided into an *enormous* number of subcategories -- including newsgroups for liberals, conservatives, socialists, libertarians, greens, and even fascists.
An obvious missing piece is -- us -- the moderates. We're vastly larger in terms of numbers in the overall population, and it's probably fair to say we're the only large segment of the political landscape without our own newsgroup.
I think we should propose a new alt.politics.centrist group.
Such a group doesn't represent a *big* advantage for us. But it does mean that thousands of people who make their way through the alt.politics hierarchy will suddenly have reason to notice us -- the fact that centrists exist and that we have our own movement.
Some will wander into that group and take a peek, and included in that group would presumably be some who already have sympathies for moderate politics.
It's kind of like putting up a flagpost in a somewhat prominent place announcing our presence.
Anyway, I've done some research on petitioning to add a newsgroup, and even put together a proposal. I haven't gone forward with it because certain parts of the proposal aren't as strong as they could be, and because I've realized that it's a bit challenging to get the relevant people to agree to a new group.
I'm pretty sure it could be accomplished, though, if we decided to do it.
Example #2:
This is similar to example #1.
A good number of the biggest web portals use directories to organize their websites -- most prominently Yahoo, and all the hundreds of sites that use the Open Directory.
In both cases, politics has it's own category, and includes subcategories for liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, etc.
And, as with the usenet groups, there's no "moderate" or "centrist" category.
A similar logic to that situation applies. If the thousands of people who went surfing through the Politics section happened to see a Centrist category -- they would, at least, think to themselves "hey, there's a centrist movement" -- and, if they're actually interested, they have immediate access to a list of moderate and centrist websites.
A definite boost for us as an overall movement.
I've tried a few strategies for having categories added to the Open Directory. I submitted it as a suggestion at the Open Directory site (www.dmoz.org), and I also emailed the editor of the Politics section.
I haven't received any feedback from either effort. I have begun to take a different tack, though.
A couple weeks ago, I petitioned to become an editor for one of the politics subcategories (the one that lists political discussion sites). They added me as an editor pretty quickly, and since that time I've done some reorganizing and adding of listings in that category.
I now have access to the message board where editors discuss what sites they will add and how to organize categories. At some point, I will open a discussion on adding a category for moderates or centrists to the Politics section.
I figure it's best to wait a little while and get a feel for how it all works. I also may request additional categories within the Politics section to edit -- which would kind of raise my profile a little.
Anyway, these are two ideas for modest boosts to the centrist movement. There's a whole bunch more we could try to do -- some likely meeting with success, others not. But we really should have a thread here for people who want to *try* -- so we can share ideas and organize our efforts.
What do you think?
~Bill
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