Post in Should this clean energy forum continue?

2007 Jun 28 19:02 UTC

Good to hear from the people who weighed in on this issue already!

If haven't responded yet, please reply and let us know if you want this forum
to continue and why...what's been useful to you...what's been hard.  I think to
justify the energy it takes to keep this going (and $ in the future), we'll
need to know it's of use to more than just a few of us!

The Pioneer Valley Clean Energy Collaborative decided to host this forum to
give another way for people to participate in the clean energy planning
process. The e-democracy.org website has been generously donated to us. We'll
need to pay for it at some future date.  Some staff time was paid for in
October, but since then it's been all volunteer. It has taken a significant
amount of time from a large number of people, just to keep up with what's being
posted. Is this a good investment of our time?

Here's the feedback on the forum I've received so far...

At it's best this forum is like having a meeting with 165 committed people
available to really dig into important topics. It has been a repository of
documents that people felt were important to the conversation. It's been a
place where people can hear many sides of an issue.

At it's worst this forum has been described as a platform for misinformation,
suspicion, and illwill. Emotions have sometimes been high because we're leaning
into topics that have a direct impact on some of the people participating here.
Some people have left the forum because they have found it hard to even have
the intensity of the messages coming into their email box even though they were
interested in the discussion. Some people have felt the conversation is
dominated by a few experts because of the length and intensity of the postings
and because of the strong responses given when people raise an issue or ask a
general question.

Clearly there are a wide range of opinions about what's been happening here,
but everyone has said so far, that they'd like to see the forum continue, maybe
with more agreements about how to work together more constructively.

So the question is - should this continue and if so, how?

We'll probably need to raise some money to support this on into the future, so,
if you haven't responded yet, please do! Let us know whether this forum is
important to you.

You can reply to my email (<email obscured>) directly if you'd rather not
post your feedback to the forum.