[Air-L] Invitation - US Issues Forum - Deliberative Experiment

[Steven Clift]

The results thus far - online political discussions among people with
diverse views is are a vast waste of time.

Why? Political blog comments are mostly echo chambers that separate people
into reaffirming silos and online news comments are full of anonymous
diatribe.

E-Democracy.Org would like to engage interested academics and students in an
experiment to see if a few key rules/technologies can improve the quality of
discussions. We use real names, require civility (supported by facilitation,
rules, and possible member suspensions), and unique limited the frequency
one can post to once every 12 hours (on our local Issues Forums it is 2
every 24 hours). We created the world's first election information website
in 1994 and since then have focused our civic mission around hosting online
dialogue as a trusted neutral host.

For more information visit:

     http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/us

Also, as we build our participatory audience, we are interested in having
public policy schools and individual academics share their work. Think of
our members as a roving book club looking to discuss the substance of
national policy issues not just punditry.

Feel free to pass this invitation on to others.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org