Just a few questions/comments from your "part-time" webmaster:
1. Do you want me to delete completely some of the "masturbation prattles"
pages from the Wiki? Which ones?
2. There may actually be more recent activity than it is currently visible on
"Recent" and "Comments" pages. Because "blog" and "forum" are add-ons to the
Wiki, the new submissions to them do not appear on the "Recent" page (top Wiki
menu). I'll try to correct this.
3. What Bruce is doing (local referenda) is very valuable. But can a single
person organize something like that in a community with one million
inhabitants? That would be impossible with putting at first some DD structure
in place, and securing the means (financing) for a referendum in a
million-people city.
Therefore other activities (such as Georges' simulations in smaller groups)
are also important to prepare for the acceptance of DD.
In this context, I would return to my earlier post about WDDM mission. It
was probably not well understood. I was not doubting that our goal (principle
mission) is the promotion and achievement of DD. I was suggesting to try to
come up with what we, in this for now small group, can do to achieve this goal.
Could we think about it some more? What can we concentrate on?
One obvious thing is to use WDDM as a place to report on our local practical
efforts, as Bruce suggest.
I was thinking that WDDM could (also) become a laboratory or model for DD.
Has anybody actually already succeeded in creating a truly "horizontal"
group/organization without leading elites, in which everybody would have an
equal voice/opportunity? (It seems to me that WDDM members are somewhat lost,
expecting some sort of leadership, in spite of their professed stands against
the top-down approach. Could we truly self-organize instead?)
That is why I think we need to develop some procedural structure, procedures
how to collectively process proposals and come to conclusions without having a
dominating person or committee. I don't think this is "masturbation". If we
succeeded, it might be quite valuable contribution on the way to DD.
A related question: Is there any place in DD for leaders? Or better: What is
the role of leaders/facilitators in DD? Some people are more initiative than
others. They instigate change. Do we need some formal checks to prevent them to
also usurp most of the decision making?
More: how to accommodate people (e.g. like me), who do not have time to
devote all their time to public matters? That would be a vast majority of all
the people in any future DD. People will always have to take care of their
lives, feed their families, etc. It would be necessary to find ways how not to
overload people with unessential information, and still provide everybody with
all the objective information needed to participate in making informed decision.