About the forums

The forum moderator group met for its inaugural meeting on Sunday Sept 21 by Skype.

My goal in setting up the group is to develop a method of self-governance for the oD forums. Why?

oD's mission is to become the open source supplier of global news commentary, debate and analysis. I often describe this as ''doing to the analysis pages of the major newspapers what Wikipedia did to Britannica". The forums are a critical part of the mission. They are the natural place for debate; they are the expression of the free-form openDemocracy community. Everyone has a chance at a voice here. Above all, they are a public space, as broad as can be, where all with a desire to understand can come together to discover, confront, perform and try to change minds.

The goal of the forum moderation group is to keep this community together, nurture its conversations and maintain the quality of its debate.

In our first meeting, we agreed that we needed to develop a broad set of goals and principles for the forums in order to guide our decisions. We will be deciding about all sorts of things -- from technical design issues, to whether to elevate anyone for particular praise to whether anyone should be banned or disciplined to questions of how the forums interact with other parts of the openDemocracy network of sites. Those decisions must be grounded in principles and explainable as deriving from the principles. The statement of principles should not be a set of laws, but more like the pre-amble to a constitution. I hope that over time, precedent will accumulate to determine the specific realisation of the intended spirit of the forums.

If you'd like to add you piece to what those general principles and aims of the forums should be, please do so here or in an email to me (tony dot curzonprice at opendemocracy dot net). We are next meeting on Sunday November 2nd, when we will consider whether we have enough to produce a draft of the forum principles.

My starting point is this: the goal of the oD forums is to create a community of debate and discussion that allows as wide a range of views as consistent with the existence of debate.

Please improve, object, propose ... or let the forum mdoerators group just get on with it.

Tony

The forums upgrade is just about ready - I think we'll be going live --- or trying to --- on Monday afternoon.

This means there will be about 1 hr of downtime and no doubt a few teething problems.

The intended benefits are:
1. a proper spam Captcha
2. more flexible permission settings
3. a newer version of drupal, so some general future-proofing in terms of upgade features and supportability

Fingers crossed,

Tony

A recent ex-ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne has written 2 papers for odRussia. Theyve come out as something we dont usually do - strategy documents (both about 2000 words long). He's on the most liberal end of official thinking. It's an argument for selective cooperation, on the model of West's policy to apartheid S Africa. He knows his Russia very well indeed, and beautifully analyses the way the elite's head and heart are in conflict when it comes to adventures in the postSoviet space.
Its an important contribution for us. Question is what to do with it. My own first instinct is to muck about with them as little as possible, post them on successive weeks, and commission someone more hawkish to respond. I would suggest Marie Mendras as ideal.
Zygmunt and I would really like others' thoughts. But would like to decide this by end of this week. (sorry I attached them in wrong order)

I have asked Inal Khashig from Sukhumi, the editor of the local Chegemskaya Pravda independent newspaper to write for the oD Russia. He is regular writer for the IWPR. I met him recently, just few days before the war in the Abkhazian capital. He represents younger generation, his horizons are much wider than those of the present government leaders who started their careers in the Soviet times. Inal too sees no other solution to the Abkhazian conflict than creation of the independent state, recognised by the international community. I am sure he will able to write an article free of simplified proAbkhazian propaganda. Hope you'd agree with me that ordering article from Inal is not a bad idea...

Peter Lunn descibes the central argument in his new book as : "A revolution has begun in economic thought. For generations economists have assumed that people’s behaviour can, at least approximately, be considered to be independent, selfish and rational. Behavioural economics has now shown, initially through laboratory experiments and increasingly via studies in the real world, that these assumptions are systematically wrong. The evidence is convincing and the implications, while uncertain at present, are likely to be profound. " What are your thoughts on this and how do you think this relates to the 'Credit Crunch' ?

Half the people posting to the threads nowadays seem to be 'Anonymous'. Don't get me wrong! I've nothing against people protecting their anonymity and privacy; in fact, I'm all for it!  But, please, please, use a pseudonym (nom de poste or whatever), otherwise it's almost impossible to follow the line(s) of argument if 'Anonymous' is defending 'Anonymous's' point against 'Anonymous's' attack!

Hi,

We're experimenting with a new forum flow - all posts will be pre-moderated and anonymous users can post.

So you won't see your post appear immediately on the forum.

We're doing this because we're having some trouble with our user sign-up module. Until that's fixed, we'll be using this flow.

If you would like to become a community moderator --- someone who can go into the queue of posts and comments and approve or disapprove posts, please send me an email explaining why you'd like this responsibility and how many hours per week you could put into it.

for what englishman asked also i faced that problem and even i tried many times to change passwords and i was lost , may be also pages are not updated and also i cant find my name down to answer, but only a statement to post new comment without being able to write.

I just posted a reply in a thread and, when it refreshed, all the thread content disappeared. I can see only the first post and the only the titles of each reply. I have logged out and back in to no avail.

All,  We've fixed the avatar functionality now, so if you have attached an image to your profile it should show in all comments and forum posts that you make. If you don't have a picture associated with your account, you can add one in your profile settings.

On two occasions in the last few weeks I have typed a reply in the forums and when hitting the "submit" button found a message come up to say that I was not permitted to post as I was not logged in. Well clearly I was, because if not logged in there is no box in which to type. Not only that but, of course, it throws away all the typed work. The first of these was a substantial piece so I was extremely displeased and did not feel inclined to try to recreate it.

I know it would be best if replies were typed in Word first, or at least copied to a "cut buffer" before submitting, but when it works most of the time such precautions tend to get dropped.

Not sure where else i could post this, but love what you guys are doing! Websites like this are much more informative as well as bipartisan than any of the blogs. I also receive more useful information on here, than i do from the droves of articles at major news sites.

Halliday shows a lack of historical knowledge about how empire's fall. Their decline rarely, if ever, begins with an external challenge but with an erosion of the disciplines and ambitions that drove their success. They crumble from within. The US empire will almost certainly not be defeated by competitors but by the corruption of the ideals and the vision that made it great.

Now... there is turmoil and unrest BUT also some organization in PAKISTAN despite what many may believe!! We must remember Pakistan is wedged between Afghanistan and Iraq and other nearby countries who sponsor terrror and has been no friend at all with INDIA for years!! Yes..President Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and has suspended the constitution for a while but this has probably been well thought out...... The last thing Musharraf needs now is suicide bombers making inroads in Pakistan to promote terrorism!! President Musharraf has greatly assisted the West in the WAR ON TERROR and he and his regime what anyone thinks, has greatly assisted not just the U.S. but other countries targeted for terrorist attacks and their intelligence agencies such as the C.I.A.-F.B.I. British intelligence and even RUSSIAN intelligence to apprehend top

TEN MOST COMMON QUESTIONS ASKED BY CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES AGAINST ISLAM by Dr. Zakir Naik 1. QUR’AN PLAGIARIZED FROM THE BIBLE : Question Is it not true that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) has copied the Qur’an from the Bible? Answer Many critics allege that Prophet Muhummad (pbuh) himself was not the author of the Qur’an but he learnt it and/or plagiarised (copied or adapted) it from other human sources or from previous scriptures or revelations. 1. MUHUMMAD LEARNT THE QUR’AN FROM A ROMAN BLACKSMITH WHO WAS A CHRISTIAN Some Pagans accused the Prophet of learning the Qur’an from a Roman Blacksmith, who was a Christian staying at the outskirts of Makkah. The Prophet very often used to go and watch him do his work. A revelation of the Qur’an was sufficient to dismiss this charge - the Qur’an says in Surah An-Nahl chapter 16 verse 103:

All,

 You should now see a 'track' button at the top of user profiles on the site; clicking on this will show the discussions and comments that user has posted or taken part in. I hope this is a useful feature for forum users.

  I've been told some people are being asked to provide an author for comments, especially when they go back to edit a comment. I'm investigating this problem currently and hope to have a solution within the week.

 Thanks!

 Felix Cohen

Director of Technology - openDemocracy