Politics creep in too much
I have a non-technical question about our real world “small town†community website, which we will shift to Drupal/CiviCRM in the near future. We are a non-profit with a regular four member board. We have 150+ local residents following our progress closely, in a community of 6000+ potentially interested individuals.
As a community site -- for the whole community, I have noticed a strong tendency with the three other board members to not recognize how closely they all “represent†in a similar manner the dominant local political milieu, where approximately 65% of the 6000+ population take a very similar political bias. Which bias, it doesn't matter here. Anyway. In subtle ways, they express this dominant viewpoint in their editorial choices on the homepage. Representing the minority view on the board, I find that I spend endless time in conflict over what we put on the homepage. Indeed, I've practically given up sharing my input for the homepage as I feel very demotivated to participate in this context. I stress that we must keep politics out of what we are doing, but it creaps in constantly. I say that all individual contributions of board members should go to a "blog" area in the new Drupal site. I stress that as an organization we should focus only on the functionalites that we provide to the community for local interaction, and leave content entirely to members. But our group seems to return to the magazine model, which requires a "chief editor", where we constantly have to make these tough decisions on what to put on the homepage. It's too time-consuming and stressful for us in my opinion. It totally distracts us from our core purpose of providing communication channels. I want to remove it like a sickness for our work. Is this reasonable of me? Anyway. I’ve informed the group that if we become simply a tool for the dominant social party in our area I will leave the group. I have outlined instead a few legitimate editorial or moderator functions of our board:
1. Remove users who post abusive materials
2. State in ever-increasingly cogent terms our evolving purpose
(important)
3. Occasional 'feature pieces' by the board that support our aims
4. Clear statements of what we offer in terms of site functionality
5. Clear statements of how to get involved and how to learn more
6. Highlight new contributions
I’m looking for a model that I can present to our group to help us see more clearly through this difficult organizational period.
Comments
More about the social and human than the Technology
Aye there's the rub. After you get to a certain level of technology and Drupal certainly has that level, it's more about social community nurturing and gardening then it is about technology.
We don't have a model that can help you out off the shelf and I suspect there isn't one.
We do have experience with Urban Vancouver and that is to clearly state to your community what the norms are and what the policies are and what is acceptable and what is not (your 6 steps is a great start and should be posted on the site for the public to view). And to vigilantly garden nurture when things are unacceptable.
However UV has only had a few problems with people violating our policies and posting blatant spam or pitch attempts. Haven't had the political incidents you are referring to.
The people who might be able to help and who we could all learn from in terms of the social / community aspect are (to name 2 off the top of my head):
1. Lee Lefever http://commoncraft.com
2. Nancy White http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog.htm
This community site is
Sorry to repost on this topic, but writing in a forum is helpful for sorting out exactly what one is thinking. So, again:
This community site is supposed to be for the whole local area community, an online community that compliments the bricks and mortar community. But I've found that it's too easy for the dominant social milieu to craft the site with it's own content contributions to make the site appear like it's only their site. This appearance turns off those who don't share the 'greater' social orientation, so the minority stay away for this site designed "for the others", which creates a vicious cycle where no contributions from the later appear so the imbalance freezes, which turns the community site into a political site, in my opinion. The difficultly I face is that the majority of the site's governing body, 3 of 4, don't recognize that their preferences actually reflect only a certain limited community orientation, not the whole community, and not by a long shot. For a small example, two are corporate ("healed") seniors on the board who make all editorial decisions on the homepage. Top of the page is Senior Services, with no mention anywhere on the site of how to help the 20-to-30-somethings in rural Vermont who face extreme difficulties with finding good jobs and thus are migrating to the cities, out of state, you know, those people who will have to support those retired or retiring baby boomers' with their rising health cost, that is, through tax rates increases.
So, I want to determine how to eliminate this type of editorial influence over the homepage altogether and focus our organization strictly on the community "functionalities" that we offer. As you said, a good start is to put the items I outlined toward the top of the site.
But then maybe I'm dreaming and really there's no way to avoid politics creeping in -- and if things are going to bifurcate, just let it happen, as the minority orientations can emerge later with their own alternative sites.
But this kills me when I think about what is "community", as it's not supposed to be this way... where what I want to do turns out to do the exact opposite, with a site that begins for the whole community resulting in a site that serve to produce a divide in the community.
I've indicated that I'll leave the effort if we can't work this out. And we're at a critical stage now as we shift to a new drupal system, under my guidance.