If you build it, they may or may not come.
I just rediscovered my admin login, so I was able to clean up the spam the board has been collecting. It wasn't that bad actually. A small number of people left meaningful comments, but this board is still a ghost town. And I even tried to promote it. I'll have to go to MySpace or something.
Because of the spam, no more unregistered reply.
By the way, the Chinese government kills people for their organs. Have a nice frickin day.
http://investigation.go.saveinter.net/re...070131.pdf
Peter: I am sure that there is a niche for a place where rational debate on DU can be held.
But it doesn't help if, when someone registers, they are not notified of the success of their registration. You can't just leave the Board, you have got to look at it every day, monitor discussions, post -- or make sure others are posting -- the latest information about DU, etc.
You may wish to get some help in doing this -- I would be willing to help, for example. But, of course, you must keep total control of the Board. Consult with others, but keep the decision-making power in your hands. Otherwise, you are guaranteed to run into needless squabbles.
There is large mass of information on DU out there, which needs to be collected, categorized, etc. Then this site will become a required reference point for people doing articles or papers on it.
We should have a discussion about how to publicize the site, once it gets enough usefully-organized information on it to attract and hold serious visitors.
There are well-known techniques for getting your site high on the search-engine lists. There are many sites, some dealing directly with DU, others not but attracting people who might be interested in this site, which need to be approached with an eye to publicizing the site.
In my opinion, the best thing that could happen for this site, eventually, would be if it could host some high-level debates between pro- and anti-DU people.
Yes, it was definitely a poor lapse on my part to let the board fizzle for too long. I sort of got discouraged, though I shouldn't have. Several key people who are active in the DU debate have expressed interest in the site. That is people from both sides too.
I've gotten some positive and some negative feedback, again from both sides. (I must be doing something right.)
The biggest problem, in my opinion, has been people's unwillingness to give the BBS format a try. As for the anti-DU people, they seem convinced that their various email lists do a fine job already. I agree that listservers are a great tool for activists, but they aren't so great for newcomers to glean useful knowledge off of, and they aren't very amenable to multi-faceted debates or investigations.
So the BBS part of the site, which is the main feature in my opinion, has been somewhat ignored by the visitors I am courting. Everyone seems much more concerned with my browsing library of links, a site component I feel merely duplicates what others have done before. Besides, it would be impossible for me to ever make the links library comprehensive. I just wanted to make it for my own use (I do use it a lot) and to make the topic of DU more inviting to newcomers.
But I want people to use the forum more than anything else.
Doug,
Thanks for the feedback. It means a lot to me.
I am in the process of reworking the links library to try and keep the site in everybody's good books. I would appreciate any specific feedback you can give me. I'm sure there are some key studies and reports missing from my various categories.
I also want to try a sort of "launch" to get traffic coming, but I believe I should keep working on it a little more first.
And thanks for participating!
-Peter