I propose the following ITEMS for the upcoming face2face REAL.COOP meeting agenda. I support the adoption the these ITEMS because (from my experience with Realneo) I believe the adoption of the ITEMS will improve the overall quality and civic usefulness of Realneo and will heighten all user’s enjoyment of Realneo.
ITEM A. Initiating a prohibition against anonymous users on Realneo - (with two exceptions which must be clear from the content (or from an argument submitted to Realneo admins via the contact link explaining why a poster requests/needs anonymity):
1st exception - whistle blowing on corruption, crime, discrimination, and other issues of public importance.
2nd exception - Nome de plume for poetry, fictional writing - which poetry or fiction does not contain ad hominem attacks on real people.
The reason for this change in Realneo policy is to prevent multiple personalities from one user (like Chimera who was one of three user personalities from the same user - who went after Quest anonymously) and to prevent gratuitous ad hominem attacks (flame wars) from an anonymous user. As Norm has pointed out, this will make Realneo more REAL and civil.
ITEM B. Initiating a prohibition against posting a “teaser” post with a link out to a commercial “blog” like Examiner.com or About.com. The entire article must be posted on Realneo – without commercial spam links.
The reason for this change in Realneo policy is to prevent the hard work and investment of the Real.coop members (like Roldo) from being commercially parasitized by selfish commercial “users” who are intentionally capitalizing on Realneo’s traffic to drag viewers to another url which generates revenue not for Real.coop members, but for one individual and/or another commercial business (like Examiner.com or About.com). Conversely, I support this change in policy because if advertizing revenue is to be generated, it should be generated by and for Real.coop – but the present Realneo policy is to remain commercial free.
ITEM C. Initiating a policy so that EVENTS will be posted to the event calendar and not to the HOME Page – However, unique Realneo user written material which advocates for the event, explains the event, reports on the event, has personal images of the event, is a review of the event - CAN go to home page.
The reason for this change in Realneo policy is to prevent the dilution of “original content” by long lists of events going to the Home page and driving down other user’s unique individual effort/work. For example, when Cleveland Engineering Society posts (via cutting and pasting) 5 events in a row, Roldo’s article – which is content which has much more individual sweat equity in it - is pushed out of sight.
To give all users the limelight of the top of the homepage, Events need to be listed elsewhere than the Home page.
NOTE (I have no problem with the Engineering Society – or any other bona fide organization - posting as many events as they want)
ITEM D Initiating a policy to restrict the number of posts per day per user to 2 - with no restriction on the number of comments any user can make (as is presently the comment policy).
The reason for this change in Realneo policy is to prevent the Home Page from being monopolized by any particular user. Admin has received a number of complaints about too much content from one individual user consuming Realneo’s Home Page – causing the cooperative aspect of Realneo to be strained.
ITEM F Initiating a policy which prohibits deletion/radical editing of content by a user as soon as another user has made a comment to the original post.
The reason for this change in Realneo policy is to prevent any user from wasting the time of readers and commentors who have made the effort to read/write a response to a post, only to find that the original post is later deleted (which also deletes their comment).
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Please make any comments on these ITEMS ASAP so that these ITEMS (with any changes) can be presented as a MOTION for ADOPTION at the upcoming Realneo meeting. If you would like to second this MOTION, please do so in a comment.
Thank you,
Jeff Buster