2020 Options?

["Doug Jones" <credenda@moscow.com>]

Visionaries,

 

I sympathize with Bill London’s concerns about the list and have complained about the redundancies myself, but when he says “there are plenty of new topics to discuss” (Hwy 95, Alturas, new subdivisions, etc.), I’m afraid that wouldn’t solve the problem. I think we would quickly find that those disagreements, too, would return to a discussion of core values and worldviews (i.e., the nature of property, theft, coercion, Gaia, political power, neutrality, etc.). I don’t think that debate is a bad thing. In fact, I think that John Danahy’s comment that the dialogue may be “redefining the community” – a process that is “both aggravating and painful, and in the end, hopefully useful” is pretty insightful.

 

Here are some options, though by no means exhaustive.

 

1. I like Kenton Bird’s suggestion about one post per day, leaving it open to content, whether deeper issues or lap lane counts or plastic bags. But this would have to be posted on the subscription instructions somewhere.

 

OR

 

2. Subdivide the list by subject line. This could mean that anything other than local announcements would have a subject line that opened with “Dialogue:” or “Announcement:” followed by the subtopic. This could be joined with (1) above to reduce flow. This might help those who just want announcements.

 

OR

 

3. Start a new list parallel to the current one; it could be archived and advertised the same way. But call it “Moscow Dialogue” or “Moscow Paradigm Visions” or something else. It would require a separate subscription, and the current Vision 2020 list could be reserved for announcements, and as soon as something turned into an ongoing dialogue, it could be asked to switch over to the Moscow Paradigms list. This would probably involve some cost somewhere for FirstStep’s work.

 

Other options?

 

Doug Jones