[Campaigns-l] neutrality - humanity - int. structure and concept

[Janet Hawtin]

Hello Ingmar and folks.

> 1. int. basis structure, concept and methods
>
> First, I think, we need a foundation and a structure. That means also a structure between the single language Campaigns Wikia, so that we can contact and work with special people from the en, fr and other language Campaign Wika's.

Yes you are not the first person to suggest this.
People have been asking for ways to distinguish between sources
eg. something in English on Germany could be an english translation of
a German perspective, or an English perspective on a German issue.
There could be many of each and it would be good to be able to see
which ideas are local to an issue and which ideas are comments from
elsewhere. Perhaps we could do this by signing a comment with its
source language eg. DE>EN for the first kind and EN>DE for the second
kind if it was translated back into german.

I think given the volume of EN speakers online it will be important to
be able to
find and recognise opinions from other places and languages/cultures.

> This is important for the future, because it would make not sense, if the different Campaign Wikia's would have other concepts and methods and thoughts, what Campaigns Wikia is and what not. We need a conjointly base between the language Campaign Wikias.

Yes this is a challenge. Especially as this is a very new thing and
everyone wants it to be great, but great leads in different directions
for different people.

> 2. to the structure...
>
> We on the german language Campaigns Wikia see at this time no good structure - also not on the english Campaigns Wikia and we dont want to copy this. There are many more or less senseful contributions, but unfortunately no structure to work effective on good campaigns. "Every politician would smile" wrotes NPbdV in the german CW chapter. Yes. :)

Yes I am one of the people here who is concerned that structuring
around existing political parties and their opinions is just
reflecting status quo. I think it would be good to have a way to hook
into the politicians/parties own websites but I do not expect any
discourse or dialogue arising out of the pages which map the political
landscape as it stands. If politicians contributed to open dialogue
pages that would be a different matter and a new experience for both
them and us.

For my own part I value the pages on campaign.wikia where dialogue is
encouraged and facilitated. There are some pages like this. (America
in the middle east is diverse and alive) There are some issue pages
which are locked and do not facilitate dialogue or discourse. I am
also concerned about those.(Digital rights is locked on the existing
POV and is dead)

> We think, that we dont need a second "campaigns Wikipedia" and political discussions or political flame wars, because in the Wikipedia we found the most themes in great contributions and many of this have very warm discussions.

What structures and ideas have you tried?
Perhaps at this early stage the best solution is to try things which
work and perhaps eventually we will be able to adopt some structures
from different wikias when we see them work well? Perhaps there should
be demonstrations of different dialogue structures and ideas when JW
tours?

> 3. neutrality, humanity - good people, bad people
> I think we should also think about a new definition about neutrality for Campaigns Wikia, because neutrality is not all. I can not be neutral if anybody say that a dictator is a good guy and people try to make campaigns for deep dark ideologies.

It has to be a mix of perspectives to be effective. This is the challenge yes?
Doing something to move different perspectives towards each other to
create hopefully new ideas or understanding is the goal?
Perhaps we need to be able to respond with better content when we
think something is factually incorrect?
This is going to be the hardest thing to do - if we shut down ideas
that someone thinks are dark or wrong we will break the potential of
campaign.wikia, everyone thinks someone elses perspective is dark at
some point.
How to keep the wikia effective and also hopefully a voice for 'good'
is going to be a real challenge.

Actually, thinking about it, how does locking the Digital Rights page
fit into this scenario?

> Every news in a newspaper about Campaigns Wikia which campaigns from such people, would bring this people more attention and more such people to Campaigns Wikia and simultaneously the dead of Campaigns Wikia. The most people would never support a project which is a help for ideologies to get more attention. Also I'm not.

There is a risk. I am hoping that like with wikipedia the community of
people who want to make something valuable has a greater momentum.

> This is why we need for Campaigns Wikia good people. Friendly, humane people, which want to make this world better - and not bader. Also we can not divide humanity in parties. Humanity is humanity. The modell of parties is a old modell. Humanity is a timeless knowledge. It is also known as wisdom.

I agree to this I think the issues need to lead the structure and that
the parties are an artefact of a different model of working. They
might be valid longterm, they might not, but for this forum they are
surely not the *purpose*.

> This is why every campaign on Campaigns Wikia should answer a question like this: "Is my campaign good for all people in the sense of the humankind, for every child - or helps my campaign to make this world more from bad to worse? Or helps my campaign single people or groups of people to get more power or more money to realize ideologies and/or to exploit other people?"

It would be nice to use this as a starting point for all
conversations, but it is probably not fair? Perhaps if we do have a
way of looking at the charters which exist in the world, those for the
UN and human rights, rights of the child, environmental concenrs which
might not always be the same as humanist ones etc. and
people can use those to respond to a perspective?

 I have not a sure formula for this, but I think we could together
find such a rule for Campaigns Wikia so that we all have to do with
good and friendly people.
>
> Its like free knowledge vs. commercial knowledge. Its like free water (as a human right) vs. commercial water. In such questions we should never be neutral. If we would neutral, we would support bad things. A neutral voice over a dictator helps a dictator like a good voice. That is the basic problem with neutrality in political affairs. Neutrality helps always the bad side.

You might prove to be right that it may be impossible to build things
which value community, environment and collaboration when we are
trying to allow open flow of ideas. But so far I think that our
existing political processes and media provide us only with what they
think is good and we are looking for alternatives which show us other
perspectives?

> This is why we should be neutral and non-party, but we should also find together a rule with a humane aspect, so that we never support and give a place with Campaigns Wikia for campaigns against other people or the human rights or campaigns for power, money or ideological interests to get more attention in the world.

It is possible as a process of watching discussions flow that this may happen?
People might as a result of these issues dialogues come to some ideas.
It would be nice tho if people new to the process could explore their
ideas fully too and not just arrive at our endpoint(s).

I guess it depends if we are trying to build an artefact like a wikipedia or a
place for discourse which is mutable and where things are in flux.
Probably part way between them.

> This is what I have to say at this time :-) and I hope we found together a good way for good and friendly people to realize good campaigns over Campaigns Wikia - and besides a foundation a international structure for the different language Wikias so that we can work together, so that we are strong, flexible, fast and convincing.

It is very good to hear from DE wikia. =)

> Now I'm very interested on your ideas and thoughts to this themes, so that we come together to a int. structure and concept.
> And if I'm wrong with my thoughts, I will ever learn from better thoughts. I'm adaptive ;-)

I think the answer is that there are a range of ideas about structure
and some folks are having a go at different aspects. Some sections are
locked which is not a good sign. Structures developed from DE and
other language wikias would be interesting to see as I think we are
all experimenting at this point.

Janet