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Submitted by kid_prototype on Wed, 02/14/2007 - 11:05pm.
kid_prototype
Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17

hey guys
i'm writing cause i have a kinda tricky task i'm tryna figure out. Part of our get involved section will feature a whole bunch of resources (websites, books, and organizations)for getting involved in just about any issues you can think of, all somehow organized into some easily system. One issue is that lots of things fit into multiple categories. What we could do is tag each resource with several labels that would show up in multiple catagories. But that's not the real issue. what's hard is looking at all the movements, problems, and issues in the world and trying to come up with a brief list of categories they can fall under. It would be cool have some input on this...

I pulled all the categories they have on idealist.org. I think the list is way too long for our purposes, but it could give us some ideas...

Art, Architecture, Music
Children and Youth
Communications Access and Infrastructure
Community Building and Renewal
Community Service and Volunteering
Computers and Technology
Consumer Protection
Crime, Safety, and Victims’ Issues
Disability Issues
Disaster Relief
Economic Development
Education and Academia
Energy Conservation and Green Living
Environment and Ecology
Family and Parenting
Farming and Agriculture
Foundations, Fundraising, and Philanthropy
Gay, Lesbian, Bi & Trans Issues
Government Oversight and Reform
Health and Medicine
Health, Mental
Housing and Homelessness
Human Rights and Civil Liberties
Immigration
International Cooperation
International Relations
Job Training and Workplace Issues
Law and Legal Assistance
Library or Resource Center
Media and Journalism
Men's Issues
Microcredit
Multi-Service Community Agency
Museums and Historical Societies
Network of Nonprofit Organizations
Peace, War, and Conflict Resolution
Personal Finance
Politics
Poverty and Hunger
Prison Reform
Professional association
Race and Ethnicity
Recovery, Addiction and Abuse
Religion, Spiritual, and Metaphysical Issues
Research and Science
Rural Issues
Seniors and Retirement Issues
Social Enterprise and Economic Development
Sports, Recreation, and Leisure
Travel and Transportation
Urban Affairs
Veterans’ Issues
Victim Support Services
Voting, Democracy, and Civic Engagement
Wildlife and Animal Welfare
Women's Issues



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 12:34am
SWAMI
Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25
i'm confused.

how is that not the real issue? it seems like your issue is with the categorization of issues in modern society. you solved that problem with the multiple tags. my vision of the idea is that we'd have a search bar and it would come up with relvancy tags [basically a ripoff of wikipedia search]. you could then browse by category or whatever. i don't see why one issue can't have multiple tags. it's not like society and politics are completely separate in our world, why would we try and separate them into categories?



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 12:44am
kid_prototype
Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17
yeah

well i agree that using tags means that something can belong to multiple categories. But there's probably a limited number of tags (aka categories) that we should use, right? Thus the problem of deciding what they should be.

Maybe there can be endless categories.

I dunno, maybe it's me who's confused. It's probably simpler that i think.

This bit of text might clarify the idea a bit too...

It’s not easy to view ourselves as of agents of change in a world where injustice and oppression seem to prevail. We hear new horror stories every day. Sometimes they’re too close, pressing down on us and immobilizing us, until we start getting used to them. Sometimes they’re too far away, just vague atrocities that we feel we have no hope of touching or understanding, let alone resolving.

But many of us also realize that these struggles really come down to us -- individually and collectively -- simply trying to carve out space for ourselves to grow freely and create worlds we want to inhabit. It’s a matter of learning from our experiences and using our imaginations so that we can survive and thrive in a world we didn’t create but hope to change.

The Misled Youth Network has a special focus on organizing and activism because we see these actions as links closing the cycle of youth empowering themselves and their communities from the inside out. Many of us have been mistreated, misrepresented, and miseducated. Over time we recover, build community, learn, and express ourselves. When we get involved in making change, we’re passing on everything we’ve learned and moving closer to our visions for future generations.

In this section of the website, we’ve gathered info on a huge range of current struggles, movements, and issues with resource lists to help you get started on getting involved. We believe that all these struggles are linked in their common goals of freedom, justice, and human dignity. We don’t focus on any one ideology or strategy for change. We’ll support you whether you’re running for office or running from the law, as long as you’re pushing towards a world that you truly would want to live in.

[these are the links that would be on the page:]

Got issues?
Contribute info on a listed issue, or add a new one.

Host an issue

Are you really passionate about a particular issue? You can host an issue and help other youth get plugged into the cause you’re really excited about.



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 1:18am
SWAMI
Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25
hmmm

endless categories is a bad idea, imo.

however, the got issues/host an issue suggestion is beautiful. the issue can be brought into conversation without it even being tagged. the majority would tag it and voila! this is why there would have to be a limit, or i could tag anything as anything if i could convince the majority.



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 1:23am
kid_prototype
Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17
i'm kinda slow

can you give an example of the system yr talking about? My brain is crap

--sarah



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 1:29am
SWAMI
Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25
here is how i see it...

someone would have an idea/problem/discussion they'd like to bring up for everyone to work on. or whatever, relating.

anyways, they would do such a thing in a stickied thread on the forum. we c ould all look at that thread/area and find potential "projects" for us to work on. this goes hand-in-hand with the original idea of the "what do you want to do" flyers. we'd pick out projects through a variety of grading points - availabilty of resources, location, time-span for completion, money cost ,etc. after we decided on our project(s), we'd divy up the responsibilities into task forces. weekly or bi-monthly meetings would help keep the overall aim together.

yeah, i just got instant messaged and lost my train of thought. the vague sketch is there though.

OH, yeah, the tags. we'd have a list of tags and the majority would tag it. and we'd have a page of current projects and we'd put that project under a header of the tag we picked for people interested in joining a project task force.

heh, i sound like a military-folk.



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 1:49am
kid_prototype
Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17
two different things?

Ok, so i think what yr saying is a good system for coordinating projects and such...but i think i'm talking about something a little different. Basically like a big activist yellow pages. Rather than someone expressing interest in a topic and then finding out resources, we'd already have a shitload of resources listed for anyone to browse. Hopefully we can even have people who are particularly involved in an issue "host" it and be a point-person for others who are interested. (the same idea could be applied to learning topics like painting or psychology or whatever). and so like a yellow pages, this stuff has to be categorized. Does that make sense? It doesn't actually even involve the forums -- it's a different part of the site altogether.



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 2:04am
SWAMI
Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25
so according to you, it

so according to you, it works as such:

instead of someone saying "hey, lets do this", it already is up there and we have a lot to offer that person.

the issue here is that you're repeating your argument over and over. the yellow pages is used for people with said interests to get resources. with ours, we'd be looking up projects. however, SOMEONE needs to start up these resources. they just don't make themselves at our feet. someone is running the chinese place we call for food in teh same way someone is heading up the flyer distro project for peer mediation. unless, you're saying that we're gonna out-source projects to other organizations in a sense. we'd look to other groups for projects to hop onto. thus the big listing idea. [shrug]

i don't really know what you're getting at, but i can tell one of us isn't grasping the larger picture. either way, we'll learn.



Thu, 02/15/2007 - 2:17am
mynweb
Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31
internal/external

seems like you guys are thinking about internal vs. external resources. like, sarah's saying make a list out of resources that already exist (say, a drop-in center), SWAMI's saying creating resources within the forums. At least I think that's what's going on. Both are good, and both can work together.

just thought I'd interject...



Fri, 02/16/2007 - 8:13pm
xcriteria
Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04
topics

While an endless list of topics is probably bad, we're not going to come up with a complete list in the beginning. Won't it work to start with some, and expand the list of categories as more resources are added?

One question is... should there be a separate list of categories for external resources, vs. site content like pages or forum posts? There'll be some overlap and some lack of overlap, probably. But even external resources, like a drop-in center, might be the topic of an article or post on a site. So maybe there could be a unified list of categories. Thoughts?

Brendan



Wed, 02/21/2007 - 11:51pm
mynweb
Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31
a start

ok, so i started working on the get involved section
"get involved in the rest of the world" uses a format called a book, which allows you to create lots of chapters (in this case, issues or causes). So click on get involved and check it out. We still need more resources and categories, but it's a start.

--sarah



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