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Getting my organization on

Yesterday, I asked for help:

So, there’s a lot of pro-gun activists on the Internet. I mean, there’s a ton. We’re just not all in the same place what with message boards, live journal, face book, etc, etc. If everyone actually got together, we’d be pretty influential, I would venture.

Any ideas on how to do that?

Got quite a few responses there and at other websites. Seems the most important thing is to define goals. My goal is pretty simple: a way to alert activists to things that are important. Or, as Ace said, a Bat-signal. I don’t desire a unified coalition in the sense that everyone is on the exact same page. So, hopefully that clears it up. Right now, short of something from a gun board getting emailed to me, I don’t hear about. And short of someone posting on a gun board something happening in blogs, they don’t know about it.

Reactions:

In the original post, there were lots of good suggestions in comments.

Joe has a lot more: Join pro gun groups. The first group you should join is the NRA; even if you think they compromise too much.

Mostly genius has more. I suppose using tools like twitter and reddit could be useful.

Sebastian has more as do his commenters.

And lots of people have volunteered to help. So, with that goal in mind, how do we do that? And, FWIW, a lot of folks suggested a unified website. It’s been tried and drawing traffic to it is tough. Trust me.

And bitter says we need a business plan.

Update: A thought for me is that if I were, say, the 800lb Gorilla, I might get in on this discussion too.

13 Responses to “Getting my organization on”

  1. Ace Says:

    The 800-pound gorilla has a news feed on the NRA-ILA area. Xavier Thoughts currently has it on his site.

    You mentioned a unified site. On the original post, someone mentioned using widgets and alerts that pull specific news/blog items.

    How about a unified site full of feed readers specifically set to pull content and news items related to gun control, 2A issues, etc.

    Or is it easier to create a widget specifically to do that, then have everyone install that on their site?

  2. Robert Says:

    If just 1/10th of the gun blog readers would call their senators four times a year, it would make a wave, not a ripple.

    Called your Senator about putting a hold on Sullivans nomination as BATFE head? If you aren’t going to do that, what ARE you willing to do? Nothing?

  3. Rustmeister Says:

    I’m not saying much because I’m not the most web-savvy person in the world, but you can count me in.

  4. DirtCrashr Says:

    The 8000lb gorilla has a cage like stink, with multiple cages and a maze of links many of them the same – leading you to funding them. You can buy things for the kitchen also. It’s way overbuilt and very confusing with too many goals and blind passageways. And stuff that doesn’t make sense – like a member’s only page that has directions to an undisclosed location.

    The California Gorilla has a cage like a house on Sunset Strip – it’s got a front-end and no back end, it’s all about it and the alerts come out the day after the event.

    The other Big California Gun-Primate is a loud screeching cagerrific tease with eyeliner and lipstick. It wants to kiss me but I draw away as it reaches for my wallet again and again.

    There’s gotta be a better way – a reduced instruction-set for one thing, and specificity – not a be-all for everybody-everything.

  5. Robbie Says:

    The unified website seems like a good idea. And it really isn’t the shared website I think that is important, rather the sharing of info. Twitter was metioned, which I believe would be a great tool to use. I was hesitant at first, but the more I use it, the more people I reach in my industry across the nation on a daily basis. The shared website could simply be a blog, with forums if needed/wanted, that aggregates RSS feeds from the numerous websites into one place using a tool like Yahoo Pipes. Just my two cents and I’m more than willing to help out the cause!

  6. Ace Says:

    To Robert: Excellent idea, calling up our state reps.

    Unfortunately for me, I’m in the People’s Republik of Kalifornistan. Guess who my reps are.

    Although I could contact them four times a year and tell them what a shoddy job they’re doing in representing me…

  7. Jacob Says:

    You should focus on a single issue be it one state (which I do), federal legislation, certain specific issues like AWBs or .50 cal bans, or certain specific legislators like all things Schumer, McCarthy.

    What you have now is a random mess of posts jumping from one topic to another.

  8. Mad Saint Jack Says:

    I have more questions than answers.

    On the tech side I am very weak, so Qs about Blogrolls.
    Can a Blogroll be coded with headlines (first topic on the blog), or rolling headlines (top 3 topics)?
    Can a Blogroll be coded so that it can be sorted? By category, by geography, by traffic, by date started, etc. Can they have Tags (like on YouTube).

    General Questions
    Which blogs and forums have the most traffic?
    Which blogs and forums have the most cross posting (traffic in common), and which are the outliers?
    Has anyone done a post mortem on the Jim Zumbo event? Which blogs/ forums had it first? Which had the most traffic? Is that the model for action?

    I am envisioning a master Blogroll with headlines that people can glance at, also with a place they can post action alerts. I also like McZombie idea about a “News Alert Widget.”

    I would contact Cam Edwards at NRA News instead of the 800lb gorilla directly.

  9. Lyle Says:

    Sorry Jacob, but I believe what you’re saying is a perfect example of exactly what we shout NOT be doing, and our policy should be specifically forbidding it. That is, to become a reactionary force, sitting on the sidelines waiting for the enemy to strike, and then reacting to them in a holding action.

    It shoud be exactly the opposite. We shouldn’t have a care or any interest in the world what they’re doing because our tactic should be keeping the enemy tied up responding to us, until it becomes immpossible for them to do anything at all but self-destruct, the 2A having been secured.

    Offense, offense, and nothing but offense. I haven’t the slightest interest in anything else.

    If I’m going to spend my time writing a Congressbitch, it’s going to be demanding some new restriction on anti-gunners’ activities. If I’m going to lobby, it’s going to be for nationwide Vermont-style carry. If I’m going to campaign, it’s going to be for enforcement of 18 USC 214 and 242:
    http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/241fin.htm
    http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/242fin.htm
    and for the 2A itself. because if we can get only a few successes in those areas, all the anti-gun horse crap will have no power and no meaning.

    Never mention the “S” word either– I’m ready to puke on the next guy who trys it (Sport, Sporting, Sportsman, et al).

    Just some thoughts. Carry on.

  10. Jacob Says:

    Nothing I said could remotely be construed to suggest a passive, reactionary course of action.

  11. jed Says:

    > a way to alert activists to things that are important

    I guess the biggest question is how you define “important”. Then once you’ve established that criteria, how do you enforce it?

    It’s quite easy to set up a server-side feed aggregator in PHP. Though I haven’t looked in detail, I assume there’s filtering capabilites in most, or at least some of them, so it’d be possible to automate pulling in a pile of RSS and Atom feeds, and then re-publishing links and excerpts into another feed, but include only items related to gun rights, or at least guns.

    But you’ll quickly run into the problem of what news feeds (and blog feeds?) to include. There’s a massive amount, which you know, of course. This ties into an issue of information overload as well. Not sure how to strike a balance there. Tagging would help, but then you end up with moderators having to tweak tags. For example, some subcribers to this alert system might want to restrict it to just issues for their state of residence plus national.

    Actually, the mechanics of the system aren’t all that important. There’s plenty of techie gun-rights people around, and there are all sorts of pre-built things around to convert an RSS/Atom feed to e-mail, or repackage it however people want to consume it. Of course, maintenance becomes more difficult with higher complexity.

    I think you need to take a stab at what data volume you’re thinking of, before tossing around technical possibilities. Is it Google News for gunnies, or more like Slashdot?

  12. PN NJ Says:

    A unified website might work if some of the gun bloggers would be willing to move from their individual blogs to a focused, group blog format.

  13. LibertyNews Says:

    Ok guys, I’ve added a RSS feed to the top 10 sites from gunbloggers.com. You can subscribe to it at http://www.gunbloggers.com/topstories. GunBloggers counts up who is linking to whom and publishes the top 10 popular blog postings of member sites (about 120 members right now).

Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.

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