Are we an organization or a diverse group fighting itself?

Just to clarify a few

Just to clarify a few points:

• The aims above are for the membership association, the campaign for global democracy, not for the website. The website is one of the initiatives of the CGD. The idea of structuring it this way was so that the website does not become the domain of one person, but of a group of people who can make decisions in a transparent and democratic way.
• I thought I had transferred the functionality of Mikaels previous website to this one. I have not deleted or modified his website in any way. If Mikael can provide the new link (it will be at a different address) to the website we can see what we'd like to import.
• I agree that categorisation can be improved (this is relatively easy), but my gut feeling is that information is easier to access here than in the previous site. I may well be wrong here.
• Personally, I am against site-wide proposals. I see this website as being a portal/hub for the movement, not another World Parliament Experiment. Decision-making goes on in organisations, not in movements. That's why I created the groups section where groups/organisations (like CGD) can make decisions that represent their organisation, no some nebulous, undefined movement. Let me use an analogy. If you were making a website for the 'green movement', could you have movement-wide resolutions? No, you'd have to join Greenpeace or a similar organisation to be able to pass resolutions that represent Greenpeace, not everyone loosely connected with environmental activism (the green movement).

An example from our experience: in the last website, someone submitted a proposal that there should be no president in a future world parliament. An interesting proposal, but how can we 'pass' it or say it represents the 'global democracy movement' if five of us vote on it? These proposals can exist within organisations/groups, but they can't represent the whole movement. That is my opinion, if the CGD (which everyone is free to join and participate in) thinks the website should have 'movement-wide proposals' then let's implement them. If not, then let them stay in groups, where it's much clearer who/what they represent.

Hello Everyone! I have seen

Hello Everyone! I have seen more and more, that the new globaldemo.org site has developed more and more into an information and networking site, with the group modality as a core. My old site was more like a democratic action place. I think more and more that both sites have a function, and I will concentrate more on developing my old concept, and I suggest that James continue with his. I immediately gave James admin and cpanel access to my site, and he did not give that to me in return. I want a more open process, based on direct democratic principles. On James site, he is the sole admin, and has the right to approve or disapprove submissions. I never did that on my site. Basically, my feeling is that we can give proposals on what to do, but in the end, it will james, and not all the participants who decides if it will be done or not. That has definitely turned me off. This work flow is James proposal, it is nothing that has been developed through a democratic process on the site, with first a proposal that can be commented and amended, and then a final vote.

I also have realized in the later days, that I personally have a very little interest in traditional democracy. I am not very interested in global elections. I think choosing parliamentarians by lottery would be much better, as that would give a much more representative mix of personalities, instead of narcissistic people with good lying and manipulation abilities, as is mostly the case with today's politicians.

I want to concentrate my efforts on global direct democracy, and I am definitely against elections of political executives. I can understand a need for elections of administrative executives, but not for politicians. Therefore, I intend to restart my old site under the name globaldemo.org, that is also because of technical reasons the easiest thing for me, and the name globaldemo.org was found during a democratic process on the old site.

James site has already moved away from the name globaldemo. org to CGD, and I suggest you change that ASAP, and I will redirect Globaldemo.org to my old site tomorrow.

I will remove info about global democracy organisations from my site, and instead give a link to James site, which will be the main networking site.

My site will site for global direct democracy without elected representatives, and can be an organisation supporting, and participating in James site. Regards Mikael

Dear Bruce, you

Dear Bruce,

you say: "Communication and networking? I have asked questions, tried to start discussion and there is no discussion. There is no planning of what is being done. How can GDO expect to develop a Global communication program if nobody is willing to work together to do so? If GDO is unable to develop communication with a half dozen people how will it be done with millions?"

After many years working at solving group communication, I am seriously starting to believe that if we solve the 12 people problem, than the rest would be a piece of cake.

Here's an article trying to solve that problem at the root, which we could take as inspiration: http://publishing.yudu.com/Library/Ar8uo/CollectiveBodhisattv/resources/...

"In the 21st century, there won't be any democracy without global and communications democracy" www.telematicsfreedom.org

Dear all I apologize for my

Dear all I apologize for my late response to James mail, cited below.

I just want to say, that according to what I can remember, I did not make any change to the live site. If I did some thing, it must have been a very minor correction, please tell me what, because I cannot remember this. I think he did quite a lot without ever telling me.... On the old www.unitedindividuals.org site, we had a system with every administrator telling on his blog, what changes he made, so that everyone would be aware of what was happening. I did not see such a function on globaldemo.org yet. My policy is to not make any changes to a live site, unless you have backed up the database first, so that you can restore the old site in case something gets wrong, and James did not want to give me access to the cpanel or phpmyadmin, which is the features i use to use for backing up the database. I am not a security risk to any site, which simply is a false rumour. I am not a website designer, and only used pre-formatted templates in the unitedindividuals site. James knows much more than me in this field, and I am also interested in meeting him in order to learn more. I am though a very experienced person in terms of designing Democratic features and decision making processes on a website, a field where I believe i can contribute a lot, although I previously had employed people doing the final programming. I think we can be an excellent team if we just can leave this misunderstandings behind.

I felt very hurt and insulted when I did not feel like being treated like an equal by James, as he refused to give me the full admin rights to globaldemo.org, that originally was a joint project between us. I felt that I was treated like a child, and not like an adult person. I also spent hundreds of hours building up unitedindividuals.org, and suddenly felt like I was not any more an equal and a co-founder of the Global Demo project. I want to apologize for not expressing this more clearly in due time, and instead overreacting publicly when it was very late. I have a tendency to suppress and avoid unpleasant things, and delay unpleasant confrontations, which in turn leads to late overreactions. I am still though very interested in pursuing globaldemo.org. As I have understood, there is a problem with having more than one person accessing cpanel and phpmyadmin on James server. I therefore suggest that we resolve this situation by moving the website and the globaldemo webadress to a server that will be controlled by CGD. I am willing to donate a separate account on my server for this purpose, and I suggest that James Sadri, Ken Kostyo and me will have full admin rights on that server. The transfer can be done within a couple of minutes, if I can only get a copy of the database and the files on the server. I want to become a member of CGD and continue working for world democracy. Any kind is better that present situation, but I personally prefer digital direct democracy with delegated voting, and the use of randomly selected decision making groups as a complement, until the whole world will have access to the decision making process.

I also want to clearly state that I once had a website called globaldemocracynow.org, which used direct democratic features to organize world democracy. When I found Rasmus Tenberegns site www.tgde.org, who was essentially doing the same thing as my site. I decided to join him in order to avoid competition and join our forces, and was for a while one of the most active members there. I wanted to move all the features used by TGDE with discussion forums, wiki, chat, and decision-making forum into one place. I also thought we could use the same web structures for inviting and assisting other world democracy organisations in order to bring us all more together for a common cause. That was the motive for me to start unitedindividuals.org.This decisions were all the time backed up by official votes on the tgde.org site, and a response from my side. Another reason for this what that tgde.org did not fhave neither the technichal knowledge or the money in order to make changes to the decision making system it is still using- This, very much because the whole system was constructed by one programmer, that now no more has very much interest in the project, with the result of leaving the system "abandoned" with no-one else being able to take over. My old company also went down, very much because all the technical knowledge was in the hands of one person, who suddenly left, with catastrophichal consequences. Therefore I can surely say that I will never more participate in a common endeavour where all the technical knowledge is in the hands of one single person. That was another reason for my strong reaction is this case. Regards Mikael

Dear Friends, Thank you all

Dear Friends,

Thank you all for your continuing willingness to discuss and work through this challenging situation re the WebPortal. Hopefully we are getting closer to good solutions now and that is what I want to focus on. However, first let me say that I was saddened and appalled by a few of the things that have been said by some of us; and I want to caution us all to be careful about how we say things to each other. It is easy to cause resentments and then not always so easy to let them go.

The discussion about what each of us thinks has happened and what we think and feel about it is, I think, good; but the accusations and anger so readily expressed can be quite damaging. Hopefully most of us have now recognized this. I actually think that further apologies are in order from a couple of us. However, on the other hand, I also realize that it is easy to say nasty or unpleasant things when one feels attacked or that they are unjustly undermined, accused, etc.

Now, after reading through many of these messages, I want to comment on a few things. First, I don’t think that all of us are totally aware of the history of the last several years around this. So, for starters, I will say that a good number of us have put quite a bit of work into trying to create some kind of a joint or collaborative effort among disparate world democracy people and groups for quite a few years now, which has also included work and intentions to develop a common website or portal.

Many of us traveled to India and then Brazil several years back to attend the World Social Forums, with this in mind as a primary purpose. This included Ken, Mikael, Didier, myself, Rasmus, and a good number of others that are not involved with the present discussion. Many of us also attended the World Federalist Movement Congress in Geneva last year with the same goal in mind; and we spent a lot of time working on and talking about such things. And we have gotten together in other places as well.

We have also spent countless hours exchanging emails and ideas on how best to do such a thing. Unfortunately, each time the project has gotten derailed for various reasons. Sometimes personality conflicts, inability to agree on the decision making process or key decisions, lack of follow through by many of us, otherwise busy lives, and just the sheer challenge of trying to do such a thing with all of us scattered around the world – none of us getting paid – and too many other things going on.

I was thus happy to see the work that was being done on creating a web portal, but didn’t follow it closely as I have been working on other things and wanted to see what would develop first. As interest again developed however, more people joined in the effort, and it was said that it was being publicly launched, I again joined the conversation and planning effort. Unfortunately however this was just shortly before things began to unravel.

I say all of this primarily just so that the newer people will understand that there is more history to all of this and more invested interests than might be readily apparent on the surface or right away. For example, Ken and a couple of others of us have spent considerable time discussing possible bylaws and statutes, checking out incorporation processes, etc. And then probably because of various frustrations (along with other focuses and personal relationship challenges) nothing was done with this. Thus I was happy to see that Ken did follow through on the incorporation process, had posted the new statutes on the web portal, and had taken steps towards the creation of the Campaign for Global Democracy.

However I was a bit concerned with one of two things that Ken said in doing this. Which I read as saying, “I am going ahead on doing this without consulting much with others, because I just want to get it done and not have hassles about it; and we can thus make any needed changes as a group later.” This did bother me a bit when I read some of the comments however, because I would prefer a more consultative process, but I let it go because I am well aware of our past history and how difficult it has sometimes been for us to come to agreement on things and get them done. I can however understand how others could take offense and think that Ken was doing things in a somewhat undemocratic way.

Similarly, with James’ work on the portal. I have appreciated all of the time and effort that he has put into this and I know that he has repeatedly encouraged others to help him and to get involved with the work. I also have no idea as to the situation between James and Mikael on all of this or what has actually happened.

I do know however that Mikael has put a lot of time and effort into web design and content as well over the past years, along with Bruce trying to get people to use the web portal and to further develop it. So I can easily understand their dismay when they think that others are doing things without fully involving them in important decisions that are being made, work that is being done, access to make changes and improvements, etc.

However I can also understand how James would feel that he has put most of the time in on developing the latest version of the web portal and would thus be reluctant to let others be able to make changes without everyone agreeing on what those changes would be first.

So, all I am really saying is that I can easily understand why the different ones of us have done the things that we have and how the frustrations and resentments have occurred. Now I am just hoping that we will be able to go beyond this and develop cooperative ways of working together again that everyone is happy with. But I also know that hurt feelings are not always too easy to get beyond or mend. So, I hope that we will all do our best to understand and accept each other’s faults and let go of whatever resentment’s remain while still doing whatever is needed to clear the air and to say whatever things still need to be said.

One of the challenges now will be to figure out who has the right or authority to make actual changes or post additional content and structure on the website and what approval they need to have, from who, before doing so. I think that it would probably be best if we have at least 3 people with the ability and authority to actually make such changes to the website and that all 3 should be told of any proposed changes before they are carried out. Thus if anything happens with any one of the 3 not being able to continue, we will still have two more that are able to maintain the website.

However, in addition, if it is the CGD members or leaders OR the web working group that is given the authority for making the decisions about web content and structure, then I think that any more sweeping or broader decisions should be made by the group as a whole. And it will probably take some time to figure out what kinds of things need to be decided by the whole group and which can be decided by the key web masters (working together) instead.

I am not certain however if there is agreement yet as to whether it is the CGD members, leaders or Governing Board, or the web working group that will be making the primary decisions for the website and its overall content and structure, etc. Unless some significant changes are first made to the CGD Statutes I do not think the decisions should be made by the CGD. However, I tend to think that the decisions should be made by a Web Working Group in any case. As they say, too many cooks can spoil the broth; and it should be those that are primarily doing the work and that are deeply involved with cooperatively working out and agreeing on the content that should have the authority to do so. Thus I think that 10 or 15 people would probably be more than enough for such a Working Group.

However, if and when the CGD becomes fully functional and has the support and participation of major world democracy leaders and organizations, then we will need to make sure that we have a structure and procedures in place that enables all of the key leaders and/or organizations to have a say in website development and content – so that will have to be worked out in time.

I will say more about the CGD in a separate email, however let me just mention here that a process that stipulates that decisions are made either by a 7 person governing council or only in physical meetings that involve the entire membership and take place perhaps only once a year, is not likely to be as democratic as needed nor adequate for developing and managing a portal website in a responsible manner. The 7 people elected to run the CGD may not be the best people for making decisions about the website and vice versa; plus it could be a year or more before we are able to responsibly and democratically elect such a governing board.

So, I think that the web decisions should be made by a Web Working Group and that some kind of rules may need to be made about who can join the working group and what will be expected of them as members, etc. In any case, I think that we need to make some formal agreements about such things that I have mentioned above and that it is the Web Working Group that is registered on the website that should be making these decisions and reaching this agreement. And again the discussion should take place just among these people and not on the World Cit list as a whole.

I hope that this is helpful.

Rob Wheeler