SDMB Unite! Fight Ignorance, Save Lives

About This Message Board
1

One of the the most painful effects of events like last week’s tragedies and the ongoing crisis is the sense of one’s own helplessness and inability to take useful action. Here on the SDMB, we have some of the smartest, best informed, most truth-loving people in the world, in a distributed network of communication that can reach, directly and indirectly, at least tens of thousands of people. Here’s something we can do.

Our motto on this board is “Fighting Ignorance”, which frequently translates into mere irritable bickering about comparatively trivial details (and I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and more than many). But we have recently seen how dangerous ignorance, and complacency about ignorance, can really be. They helped make it possible to kill thousands of people; they are helping to harm (and perhaps already have helped kill) innocent Arab-Americans and others.

Let’s fight that ignorance. Let’s take some of the energy we put into our posting and channel it into sharing information and taking actions that will be genuinely useful in this time of crisis.

I propose the formation of a new SDMB forum, to be called something like “Information and Activism on Opposing Terrorism”, that will be similar to a mix of GQ and GD, with the following ground rules:

  1. Every OP must combine either factual information about one of the relevant issues, or a request for factual information from better-informed posters, with a specific proposal for action. Such proposals will typically consist of a sample letter to be sent to elected representatives or a government agency, a URL or address for collecting petition signatures, information about efforts underway to organize volunteers for blood donation and other assistance, rallies and marches, etc.

  2. Responses should be focused on amplifying facts, updating information, and presenting a completer picture of issues, with the emphasis always on ignorance-fighting. Prolonged arguing, philosophical disagreements, and mere hostility should be taken to their usual places in other forums.

  3. To reduce the burden on moderators, supporters of the proposed new forum should pledge significant reductions in their average posting in existing forums.

Suitable topics for the proposed forum include:

  • Civil Defense. Information and calls to action about policies for preventing or coping with different types of possible attacks.

  • Issues Education. Where to get and how to disseminate information about relevant historical, political, and cultural issues.

  • Civil Liberties. How to focus public vigilance on the importance of protecting the rights of all Americans, and how to protest their infringement by government tyranny or mob aggression.

  • Foreign and Domestic Policies. Specific calls to action concerning specific governmental policies from the perspective of reducing or eradicating terrorism.

I’m posting this here on GD to garner comments, criticisms, and suggestions for changes, which can be debated here as usual. But I’m also submitting it as a suggestion to the board administration. If you support the idea of the proposed new forum, please send email to board admins referencing this thread, and please post here your pledge of post reduction in other forums.

Kimstu: Typical post accumulation 75–100 posts per month, mostly in Great Debates and the Pit. Pledge to reduce that number to 20 or fewer.

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Good ideas, but I believe this belongs in the About This Mesg Board forum.

3

Kimstu, I hope your proposed forum gets off the ground. I would contribute, and I’ll pledge a reduction from about 70 posts per month to no more than 30 (but they’ll be loooong posts :wink: ).

4

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t think you could ever separate facts from emotion, however, particularly in the ‘Foreign and Domestic Policies’ section. Could you see a time when people can discuss WTC, the Taliban, terrorism in Northern Ireland (causes and solutions), terrorists v freedom fighters or issues such as that without opinion?

That sub-topic is pretty much GD (and I imagine a great deal of ‘Issues Education’ and ‘Civil Liberties’ would be too – I doubt people can discuss historical facts or the scope of rights without interpreting their causes or their impact).

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What you seem to be calling for is a special forum built like GQ but only about issues dealing with anti-terrorism. That description meets the “only facts or request for more facts” guideline. Is this what you mean?

I wonder how active such a forum would continue to be over the long term. Also, it seems that those questions could be addressed by posting in GQ - which is supposed to prevent debate. Given how these topics are loaded with opinion, I don’t know that setting a separate forum would be any better than posting in GQ, except it has the possible advantage of putting all the anti-terrorism activism in one place. Is that an advantage?

Also, I wonder about the pledge to significantly reduce posting in other fora. First, that seems decidedly anti-straight dope. Isn’t the point of the site to participate in everything that interests you (that you have the time for)? Second, there would be a natural decline in posts in other fora simply because the participants would be spending their time on the new topics. Third, would there not be a potential increase in number of members because of people checking the one forum (and getting linked to it via other online discussion groups and web pages), thus offsetting any pledges of reduced activity?

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[Moderator Hat: ON]

As curious george indicated, this really belongs in ATMB. It’s also a lot more likely to get noticed there. So that’s where it’s goin’.

David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator

[Moderator Hat: OFF]

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Thanks for the responses all (and thanks for doing the necessary housekeeping on the thread David B., I guess GD was not the best place).

Irishman: I wonder how active such a forum would continue to be over the long term.

Well, I was thinking of it more as a limited-term mechanism for giving a quick shot in the arm to awareness and activism on these issues: I agree that a board called “Information and Activism for Opposing Terrorism” would be too limited in scope to sustain itself indefinitely—at least I sure as hell hope it would be.

Also, it seems that those questions could be addressed by posting in GQ - which is supposed to prevent debate. Given how these topics are loaded with opinion, I don’t know that setting a separate forum would be any better than posting in GQ, except it has the possible advantage of putting all the anti-terrorism activism in one place. Is that an advantage?

I hope it would be, as it would provide a way to focus the energies of people who are primarily looking to take some kind of action in terms of public education and/or public protest, without getting bogged down in the usual GQ minutiae or GD quarrels.

Also, I wonder about the pledge to significantly reduce posting in other fora. First, that seems decidedly anti-straight dope. Isn’t the point of the site to participate in everything that interests you (that you have the time for)?

Absolutely, but sometimes we have to triage the topics to devote our limited amount of attention to, and this seemed like a sufficiently important issue to warrant that.

Second, there would be a natural decline in posts in other fora simply because the participants would be spending their time on the new topics. Third, would there not be a potential increase in number of members because of people checking the one forum (and getting linked to it via other online discussion groups and web pages), thus offsetting any pledges of reduced activity?

There well might, but it seemed to me that pledges of significant post reduction (that is, most pledged posters would likely not post enough in the new forum to make up for their reduced posting elsewhere) would help absorb some of the excess from new or non-pledged posters.

In any case, the idea is in the hands of the board now, and if it doesn’t catch on I’ll take it elsewhere. Thanks to all respondents for their interest.

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What do you mean by “calls for action?” There are far too many different and opposing views of what appropriate action might entail, many of those actions could possibly negate or dilute others. How do you propose to resolve this when we cannot form a united front?

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Is that really a problem? Surely it’s better to have large numbers of concerned and well-informed people actively promoting what they believe is the right thing to do, even if some of their opposing influences cancel each other out, than for them simply to remain inactive because they’re not convinced they’ll make enough of a difference?

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I think those who even bother to log on to a message board are (for the most part) already helping to fight ignorance. The ones that cause problems for everyone else are the ones who don’t.

So if Kimstu is truly dedicated to fighting ignorance, he/she probably needs to channel his or her efforts elsewhere.

I sometimes wonder, do the SDMB posters even notice that most of the messages they are sending are the exact same message that is sent by other SDMB posters, just suggesting a different approach.

I suppose nope… because they are too busy nitpicking about lack of cites and commas.

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One Cell said:

I do hope that comment was meant playfully and not mean-spiritedly. I didn’t see a smiley, but will take it on faith that One Cell wasn’t aiming for the Pit.

As for duplicate postings of similar comments, chock it up to a very busy place. When great minds think alike (as is bound to happen around here with so many great minds rubbing shoulders, to mangle some cliches), they come to post. Maybe they take a brief look around, but maybe the other threads on the topic are on page two, or maybe they’re in another forum. So we get redundant posts of essentially the same comment. It’s like hundreds of people walking through a party. People mill about and cluster in small groups for conversations, then move on and find a new group to talk to someone else. Sometimes groups will repeat previous discussions. Sometimes a new person will walk into an existing conversation and repeat what was said 5 minutes before because they weren’t there to hear it. Welcome to the dynamics of social interaction. The board just plays that out in a way that makes it easier to see what the other groups are doing.