Reply #4: wrong forum structure [View All]

itzamirakul wrote: I sounds like a great idea but why does DU have to become the THINK TANK? I mean, couldn't we just use one of the special interest forums to get this started and see where it goes from there without a lot of fanfare?"

A couple of thoughts... in theory you are correct. But in practice it would not work.

As I wrote in my proposal "The current forum structure tends to encourages discussion along traditional lines while ignoring the issues that REALLY shape our lives: constitutional reform, federalism, property rights, corporate rights, wealth distribution, taxation, markets, democracy, morality, US role in the world, etc. These are issues too important for the Democratic Party to ignore.... yet it does. Most other issues are merely subsets of the above."

The existing forum structure reflects the ideological limitations of the Democratic Party. The intent of the project is to break though these ideological barriers, not to be limited by them. That's why I parted company with the people at CGCS.

Any discussion on these issues would be relegated to the General Discussion forums which means they'd be buried. For the project to have any focus there has to be a structure conducive to that end. I believe dedicated forums for each topic with a corresponding wiki area is the only way to go. While I made some suggestions in the proposal, that topic list does not yet exist.

The current rules for forum creation are just not adequate for a project like this. What if some key topics never get forums? This is another reason why the bottom up approach would have failed. The Admins have to be behind this project and provide the flexibility to let it grow in unpredictable ways.