Why did I set up yet again another political blog?

For three reasons:

First, we live in interesting times. There is a lot going on in the world that will have a great impact, for good or ill, on our country, the world and future generations. I believe we are at a tipping point where the world will get a whole lot better or a whole lot worse based on the decisions we (as a species) make over the next 10, 20 or 50 years.

Second, so much of the so called political debate in this country is of a very low standard. Politics in this country is all about The Game and good governance falls by the wayside. I wanted to create a venue for reasoned discussion and debate about the issues of the day.

Finally, third, I wanted a place where I could write about important issues that I am passionate about on a daily basis.

I hope to make CentristRants.org into a venue for reasoned discussion and debate about the issues of the day.

The will be some ground rules:

1. No trolls, ideologues or comment spammers allowed. All discussions will be moderated by me or other designated individuals. Flame wars will be nipped in the bud and users that cannot rise to a higher standard will be wasting the time that they spend here. As I figure out WordPress I will use all tools that I can find to keep the quality of the content high.
2. As I figure them out, I plan to use the various WordPress user levels to invite users that I trust to take a greater role in creating and managing content.
3. I plan hook CentristRants.org into various revenue producing mechanisms such as pay-per-click ads, donate buttons, and the Amazon.com affiliate program. I expect that this revenue will be trivial compared to the time I put in and I will prioritize the quality of the content over the productivity of these revenue streams in most cases. If the revenue ever becomes significant, I will consider setting up a revenue sharing scheme for other users that provide significant content. These are not just words. My dream is to create a venue for reasoned discussion and debate and I will not have time to write all the content myself.
4. There will be a bibliography on site. All postings and comments use this resource to support their arguments rather than relying on unsupported assertions. I will figure out a mechanism for all registered users to add to this bibliography.

There will, no doubt, be additional ground rules as time goes on.

CentristRants.org is a work in progress. The Multiple Columns By Category WordPress template is a hack job at best. I will be working toward moving it (and a supporting plug-in?) into standards based compliance over time.

Anybody who wants this stuff can have it “as is.” Any support will be on a catch-as-catch-can, co-development basis – i.e. I expect as many or more answers as I do questions. Discussion of this development will be held in the Know Defects category.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 11:54 pm and is filed under 2_Center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.