Posted by halfiranian on May 14, 2008 at 5:50am
Hello all,
A few of us in the activist community trying to raise the profile of the Palestinian cause decided that we are way overdue a community website.
There are many organisations from Canada to Japan that are doing their thing trying to get more attention on the plight of the Palestinians.
However, all these efforts are completely disjointed and few people really know what's going on where.
So, this planned community hub/portal would do the following:
- connect activists/campaigners/interested people
- provide news (through feeds of useful websites)
- use organic groups extensively to enable people to network effectively
- much much more...
The question is, are there any more Drupalers out there who would like to get involved in this project?
What better way to remember 60 years after the Nakba?..
Cheers,
James (in Khalil)
ps wasn't really sure what groups to post this in
Comments
It can be discussed in more
It can be discussed in more detail, I'm already working on a website for a group dedicated to the cause based in Brazil so I have some background on this.
From what I read I think you want some kind of Directory. Post more information about this, I'd like to be involved.
D
Hi Daglees, It's great
Hi Daglees,
It's great you're interested. The site is to be more than a directory. The aim is to be a one-stop-shop for all those interested in campaigning for Palestinian rights.
I'll outline some of the features here:
News page. Using feeds from www.electronicintifada.net, www.imemc.org and others (I have some meetings with them in Ramallah in the next few days to see if they want to be involved), people can get news direct from Palestine.
Forum. Standard forum where everyone can discuss articles, issues, news, and ask questions of others.
Groups section. Using organic groups (like groups.drupal.org), activists can establish local groups where they can have discussions and post events and provide information on local resources. There can also be organisations which are groups. Regional groups that already have websites can have brief descriptions and links to the other websites.
Events section. Collecting together all the events posted within groups (or not) and displaying them both in a calendar (events module) and on maps (gmap module)
Resources. A series of wiki pages where members can edit and update information relating to issues of Palestinian rights. Everything from maps of settlements, to references statistics that would be of use to journalists, to a comprehensive bibliography of relevant research materials (possibly using biblio module).
Gallery. Really this would be a collection of galleries. Anyone can post a gallery of pictures they have taken either in Palestine or of events relating to Palestine in their local community.
Shop. Sell Palestinian products and promotional materials to help raise money and awareness.
Multilingual. This will be the hardest part, but we need to see how we can make the platform as multi-lingual as possible.
Still interested?
James
James,
James,
EI is undertaking a redesign using Drupal at the moment.
I could definitely get behind aggregated news. A Palestinian Digg would be something interesting. See http://afrigator.com/ for a benchmark. I'd be concerned about finding a balance between social openness and the apparent permissibility of racism against Muslims, Palestinians and other Arabs in the English-speaking world. (See the comment pages on any of the main English-language newspapers' web sites. It's open season.) I could not see myself enjoying a community web site where racist or otherwise hateful comments dominated the discussion.
Forums would be problematic for these same reasons and more. Activists need to be part of existing "real life" social networks and networks of trust in order to be effective, and a forum for Palestinian and international human rights and non-violence activists is a honeypot before it's anything else!
That said, events and locations are ways to let people connect with those existing social networks.
Multilingual is a given. Where are the users?
shopping is a good thing, though managing that on an international level raises issues. i like the idea, but i probably have nothing to contribute to it.
Ben, I see some of your
Ben,
I see some of your concerns, but perhaps I should go through the purpose of the site step by step.
Coordination
As an activist here in Palestine and one of many who have come through here at some point (ISM alone has had 4,500 people come here) I'm not the only one who is acutely aware of the lack of coordination in the broader Palestinian cause.
While there are plenty of well organised communities supporting the denial of Palestinian rights, supporters of the Palestinian cause rely on a huge disconnected mass of Palestinian solidarity organistions worldwide, who organise everything from demonstrations to film festivals, speaking tours to debates. The problem is all these efforts are disconnected and have to re-invent the wheel every time they organise something. Similarly, organising global campaigns is currently a major issue; principally in terms of coordination. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Racism
I totally agree with you on the abusive debate front. But I see that as a reason for setting up the community site. For the first time, you'd have a site that didn't waste all its time arguing to and fro and not going anywhere. The site would be for those supporting the Palestinian cause, if you didn't you wouldn't be allowed to remain (you'd have to be a member to contribute). There would be healthy debate, but about how to move things forward, rather than the standard bickering and racist jibes you get on the bbc, cnn, haaretz and pretty much anywhere else.
The site is not about bringing 'both sides' to debate in a forum. It's about connecting, facilitating and mobilising those who think the Palestinian cause needs to be promoted.
Resources
People I've spoken to here seem most keen on a community maintained resources section. They want to have up-to-date fully-referenced statistics they can plug into news reports or give to journalists. It's simply not possible to have all of that information from a single source, that is updated in any meaningful way. Within a community, however, there are many people who would have the time and effort to do their part. The issue I see here is one of moderation. How do we do it effectively.
Events & Campaigns
This is one of the strongest elements of the site. Those organising events can effectively reach those people in the area to advertise what's happening, but they can also call on help from those around them to promote and support events/campaigns.
An example case is a friend here who wants to take a bunch of schoolkids from Jenin around Europe on a speaking tour. If you've ever organised one of these things you'll know it's a major headache to get contacts in the places where you don't live. A global network could really help us out here.
My Conclusions
I like the idea of a Palestinian digg, but I feel we have to move beyond two-dimensional news sites (I've yet to find a Palestinian site that offers any more), and construct a proper global online community of organisations and individuals prepared to contribute to the Palestinian cause. Forums don't move a website into that category, but groups - with Drupal through Organic Groups - does, and that would be the key (in the form of regional groups/campaigns perhaps) to making this an effective site.
Do you still think you have nothing to contribute to it? I agree 100% that people need to work within existing social networks, but there is no reason why this would replace or do anything to those existing networks.
James
James, To clarify: I have
James,
To clarify: I have nothing to contribute to an online shopping scheme. I know nothing about it. That's all I mean.
All of your ideas are great, but many suffer from the same weakness: how do you maintain openness without inviting nut jobs to disrupt your work? how can you be effective without also presenting an opportunity for infiltration? I didn't assume that you'd intentionally create forums for "both sides," but the bad guys aren't going to let people conduct their work openly without harassment.
I think the strongest aspects of this proposal are related to coordinating campaigns and events in a basic way: who, what, when and where ONLY. More social than that and you're building a honeypot for C a m p u s W a t c h, C A M E R A, and the rest of them unless you have ideas for maintaining openness while also excluding the wrong kind of wing nut.
I admit that I'm diminishing the need to have more "resources" because EI bytopic is going to be re-done in Drupal in the next months, and any work I have to contribute will go into that. I think it's a fine idea, but I am already working on it.
Great that's good to hear
Great that's good to hear you're doing work on bytopic at Electronic Intifada. EI is one of, if not the best, Palestine news site in English out there. Glad to hear you going to be making it even better.
I appreciate your concerns about hijacking, and they are partially valid. We are going to have to be vigilant in making sure that those who want to undermine the project are removed as members and possibly have their IPs blocked. It's not going to be easy, but we're also not prepared to give up on an important project because of intimidation. That would be a disaster.
Good luck with the new EI site, I look forward to seeing it.
Cheers,
James
not a naysayer
james,
i'm not trying to be a naysayer about this proposal, but it would have to be very vigilant in some areas where similar projects don't have to be as vigilant.
Monitoring users is a full time job! A full time, paid salary with benefits job.
I've often thought about a social network application overlaid onto something like Palestine Remembered... that would benefit the world-wide Palestinian community, and I'm sure activists could find a place there too.
Our original idea was to
Our original idea was to make a social network application for Palestinian refugees, but after having lived for a year in Yarmouk in Syria it became glaringly obvious that just not enough people use the internet for the network to be meaningful. It's just too pricey.
Definitely one to come off the shelf in a year or two hopefully.
Willing Volunteer
Hi there,
I constructed a very basic site for our Palestinian organisation here in Falkirk, Central Scotland.
www.antoninefriendshiplink.co.uk
I would be willing to help in anyway I could.
I'm about to integrate a reader block for the RSS from EI.
Thanks
Keith
Hi Keith, cheers for your
Hi Keith, cheers for your interest. My feeling is that we should offer our skills to the BDS campaign, which is a broad Palestinian-led coalition.
http://bdsmovement.net/
which is a pretty basic Drupal site that could be much improved (in my opinion). There are nice ideas like 'country profiles' or 'company profiles' but they're totally undeveloped.
I've tried contacting them a couple of times through the website but to no avail. Let me know if anyone else has any luck..