An appeal for increased organization

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

This is sort of a continuation of the thread " Does anyone actually

want to solve this problem? " but I wanted to get away from the idea of

suing people/organizations and propose something different. People

who read my other post will recognize some of the content as a repeat

but I would still like to see what sort of response people have to

these ideas when posted on their own.

It has often struck me that as a group we are not as organized as we

could be. At the moment people are largely working independently and

providing information back to the group on an anecdotal basis. I

think it would be of great use to us all if we could try to organize

ourselves to a greater extent.

I would propose some of the following small " projects " that the group

may consider undertaking:

1.There are a limited number of papers and other bits of research

available. I have read some of these papers but not all of them. It

can be quite a chore to collect all these bits of information. What I

have been considering is getting some of these papers scanning them

and then uploading them as a torrent. It would be relatively easy for

people to get their hands on what little information we do have

available. This torrent file could be continuously expanded by adding

peoples case histories and whatever other information the group would

think was appropriate. Resources required to get this project off the

ground is an administrator to control the torrent (i.e. Add new

content) and quite a few members of the group to run torrent clients.

2.I would like to see very intensive and thorough testing. At the

moment the group members are all individually undergoing tests and

while I think that everyone should do whatever they feel is necessary

these tests are not, on the whole, advancing our knowledge of the

problem. This is partly because there is no central repository of

test results (solved by 1 above?) and because the tests are largely

repeats of the same test. To achieve very intensive testing we would

all need to contribute to a central fund. A set of tests could be

debated and the best possible set chosen. A member of the group, or

perhaps a few members of the group, would then have to elect to have

the test/s and the central fund would cover the costs. These members

would agree as part of the scheme to provide the results back to the

group (names deleted.).

I think that I could safely contribute £20-00 per month to this

central fund. I would not necessarily expect anything for my £20-00

per month as a consider this in a similar manner to playing the

lottery. Perhaps I will get some return but I am not counting on it.

I think if one of the older members of the group volunteered to

collect the money (they would have to expose their name in banking

details) I would be quite happy to send my money to some account in

the name of Joe Bloggs – long time member of this group. I don't

think that a person serving in this role would be likely to steel the

money given the reason for which it was donated. The volunteers would

then only have to expose their names to the central fund

administrator. This keeps things as private as possible.

3.I am still toying with the website idea. Something like

thevoices.org (unfortunately there are the usual bunch of squatters on

the names that I have thought of thus far) where videos can be

posted. Perhaps people could just narrate a video of images from

their city if they do not wish to directly appear on camera. I have

thought in the past of going down to Regent's Park in London and

narrating my story using Regent's Park as a backdrop. I would never

actually appear in the video. If people could come up with a format

that is not to visually boring this may work and be more accessible

than lots of black print while still keeping people's identities

largely private.

Cheers

Murray