Green Party Watch Open Thread
April 23, 2011 in Green Party Watch
This website Green Party Watch was initially started in 2008 to:
- fill a hole in online media coverage of the Green Party in the United States known as the “Green Black Out”;
- generate and disseminate news about Green Party locals, candidates, state parties and the national party;
- bring Green bloggers and other Greens together in one place to discuss and talk about Green Politics;
After three years, I find myself contemplating whether the site is still serving its original purposes, whether the site can be improved by new (free) software tools, and other questions.
I am always interested in what other people want to see here. We’ve gotten great suggestions in the comments before, and we’ve tried to improve the site and services based on feedback within the bounds of money and time.
Several times we have had suggestions that there needs to be an alternative to Democratic Party “group think” sites like Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, which routinely ostracize and kick out Greens. We certainly agree, and there were some failed attempts at that in the past (see “Green Commons” for example). Can something like that be integrated into Green Party Watch, or should it be a separate website? Is GPW primarily a “News” site, or is the “green way” of News generation to have many Greens reporting and sharing what is happening where they are? Are they one and the same?
And then there is the question about overlap with the official “gp.org” website – sometimes people come here and think they are questioning the “Green Party Leadership”, whatever that means. Shouldn’t some of the things we do here (like a calendar of local and state Green Party meetings) be better suited on the National GP.org site? The difference might be that here at Green Party Watch users can (or should) be able to generate content, while gp.org is less “user driven”. How can Green Party Watch better differentiate itself from the “official” Green Party website? And how can Green Party Watch better enable users to generate content here? Or is “user driven content” the wrong way to go?
These are some of the questions I have been pondering while I am on vacation in sunny southern California, not distracted by work. I’m interested in what people think, and I have some time now to possibly do some site redesigning over the next few days.
What do you think?
Ian Wilder said on April 23, 2011
You serve a very needed function. The Democratic and Republican Parties have 1000s of sites every day that report on their news. The Green party itself reports on news as only part of its function. there is overlap, but there are also areas that each covers that the other doesn’t Your coverage of Green Party news is broader and deeper since you do not have to deal with the day-to-day of running a party. Also you do not have to deal the approval a of a party apparatus to approve stories going up. You also provide a resource for sites like mine who want to reflect Green party news. Keep up the great work!
Eddie said on April 23, 2011
The part about people questioning us here about leadership, you should make a distinction between the GPW and gp.org. You should state something along the lines of GPW being a website made up of people contributing to the website while gp.org is from the national Green Party.
You should add a tab that says “Frequently Asked Questions” for this distinction. But make sure you really do it.
You never added that whole “map” feature where people can say where they are from.
You should add a feature where the material can be converted into other languages, for example into spanish, for spanish speaking green party enthusiasts.
Keep the calendar/events tab. The gp.org website is not enough to handle all green party news.
See if we can perhaps sell green party material, such as shirts, pins, bumper stickers, etc.
Add a tab for downloadable content, for example, if people would like to print out flyers, we can have a downloadable flyer for people to print out to hand out at events.
But seriously, above all, make sure you really try to implement these ideas. The problem with the Green Party is that ideas die easily.
d.eris said on April 23, 2011
GPW is an amazing resource, and does a superb job in filling the hole in online media coverage of GP issues, turning on a green lantern in the corporate news blackout! Even if there is overlap between this site at the GP official site, this is not a problem. There is also overlap between this site and other Green sites, as well as with IPR and other third party oriented sites. But that is to be expected, and is standard practice in online news and the political blogosphere.
Ron said on April 23, 2011
Eddie,
The problem with some of the ideas (map, language conversion) you have is that I am not a programmer, and I can’t afford to hire one. If you know someone who wants to volunteer to implement something I’m all ears. Otherwise I am limited to free plugins and other tools that people have developed that can work with WordPress.
With the event calendar, I want to figure out how to make it self-submitting because it takes a lot of time to scour green party sites and/or call people to keep that up to date.
One direction I think I want to go is to where the editors of this site don’t have to be a filter (or “bottleneck”) and people can directly update and share content.
Ian – good points, I always thought that was a big plus to not have to get “approval” before posting, and I’ve maintained that with the people who post here – stuff doesn’t need anyone’s “approval”.
d. eris – thank you!!! We have ebbs and flows here, but we try. Yes, agreed, overlap is fine, in fact repetition is probably good.
Richard Kuszmar said on April 23, 2011
I think Green Party Watch is great. The problem is that GPUS is basically treading water and not going anwhere . I would like to see some analysis of the GPUS internal politics. What is going on with their finances? They used to publish a financial report under the finance committee on their website but stopped doing that.
chicago voter said on April 24, 2011
Richard,
It would be interesting to know if the GPUS leadership had any realistic plans on how they can turn the GPUS into a serious political contender and not just an interesting, but relatively minor, part of the political periphery.
Eric Cooper said on April 25, 2011
GPW can best serve the GP community as a news source of what is happening right now across the country, since the webmaster of gp.org does not do that as much (at least as often as I would like them to). As far as the GPUS turning into a serious political contender, that is a discussion that belongs elsewhere, unless you want to find free forum creation software and do such a thing as part of GPW
Michael Cavlan said on April 25, 2011
Richard Kuzmar
The Green Party is dying.
Sad but true.
Eddie said on April 26, 2011
Would it be possible to make this website into some sort of forum where we discuss topics? Say by adding a new tab?(Yes, I know, the programmer issue)
or could we perhaps say periodically, someone introduces a topic and we all dime in and say our viewpoints, while still keeping it as an editorial, like the one we are using?
For example, like the “Green Party 2012 Presidential poll” we had a while back, but smaller green party related questions.
Ross said on April 26, 2011
Maybe a way of doing that in the interim would be to have more polls.
Ron said on April 27, 2011
OK I almost have a bulletin board / forum set up. I’m new to the admin side of those things so I’m still working out the bugs of registering/posting etc. in a way that is user friendly.
Gregg Jocoy said on April 27, 2011
First of all, I have to say again, GPW is without a doubt the best experience I have ever had in the Green Party. Without meeting Ross, paulie, Dave, Walter, Ron, or any of the other writers here in person, I have been a small part of a totally positive experiment here at GPW. I love this place!
Secondly, I know that the people who write here have TONS of other Green Party responsibilities they must tend to. I am co-chair of my state party. Ron serves on the Green Senatorial Campaign Committee, has run for local office twice in the past couple of years. Ross has spend countless hours working with Greens in PA, and has been, along with Dave, paulie and Kimberly Wilder, a major source of Green Party news at Independent Political report. Dave is a major part of the core group behind Green Change, one of the web’s best GP resources and a vital Green Party group IRL. That this website gets the articles it does, considering all the other stuff we do, is impressive.
Thirdly, the introduction of Edy and Peter V. Tretter to the mix recently shows both our willingness to bring in new perspectives and to share their considerable talents with the rest of you.
I wish we had a tiny portion of the resources a Fire Dog Lake or a Move On have, but we Greens seem destined to work with less for a long time to come. Even that does not stop us. Even that just makes us dig in deeper and keep on trying, again and again.
I am very proud of my association with GPW, and consider it some of my best investments of time and energy. Unfortunately I have been unable to provide all the articles I should. My energy level is not what it once was. I am pretty sure I’m the oldest person here. I am self-employed, as is the national party webmaster, and making sure the bills get paid has to be first on the agenda sometimes.
We’re making progress, and I for one am in this until I am worm food. I hope that’s a LONG time!
Peace, love and happiness.
Gregg
Gregg Jocoy said on April 27, 2011
Richard…I’ll check on the finance thing and try to get something up. I do know that the Fundraising Committee has been working hard to eliminate a long standing debt, and I get the impression that it’s close to being knocked out. I also understand that the current steering committee is committed to keeping the party out of debt going forward. As sustainability is one of our key values, and debt is not sustainable, I think this is a great idea.
Eddie…I like the idea of an open thread on a regular basis…maybe every Friday? I know the coming forum will provide a lot of that, but it would be a good idea I think to do that on the “front page” too. Would weekly be better, or monthly?
chicago voter..I am so glad to see you posting here. I know that you want us to get somewhere, and I deeply appreciate the tone of your posts. While you are clear that you’re not “fully on board”, you try to help, and if we can get to the point that you’re “all in” I know we’ll be on the right track for sure.
For the near future…and I know this is disappointing to hear…I personally believe our best shot at making real progress is at the local level. Running folks for school board, alderman, library board, parks commission and town council is not nearly as exciting as running for a higher post, but we will have a better shot at those higher offices when we can run folks who have established a solid reputation through their work at lower levels. of course, if we have a nuke meltdown here in the US, or some other catastrophic event, all best may be off.
d.eris…what I said to chicago voter goes for you as well. The work you do at Poli-tea is outstanding, and when you say “The Green Party has it’s act together” I know it’ll be true.
Finally, Ian…what can I say? On The Wilder Side is a fantastic resource, one we use here from time to time as I am sure you know. I am sure that many folks have come to the Green Party because of what they have read there, and if we had a few thousand more we could run this darn nation…and do it well!