[I just posted this over at Personal Democracy Forum, a site on technology and politics that I edit, but thought it worth sharing here too.]

Yesterday, I got one of those occasional e-mails that MoveOn.org sends out to its list, entitled "Help Set MoveOn's Course." It read:

Dear MoveOn member,

MoveOn works for the same reason democracy does: when lots of people work together, they generate great ideas and accomplish great goals. That's why we need your help.

To get direction from our members, we have set up an online forum. There, you can share your ideas and goals for MoveOn and our nation. Comments are read and rated by other members and the best ideas float to the top. These help set MoveOn's course.

Take a few moments today to contribute to the Great Goals forum.

Even if there's nothing on your mind, come read what others are saying and help us find the ideas we should pursue:

http://www.actionforum.com/

Thanks for strengthening democracy by participating in these important conversations!

Sincerely,
--Eli, Wes, Joan and the Whole MoveOn Team

I followed the link and cringed. MoveOn is still using the same crappy "ActionForum.com" that it has always used. A page comes up showing about ten suggestions from MoveOn members, along with some "scores" indicating how many people have rated that suggestion, and the percentage that agree. On the right-hand rail, there's an option to add your vote and to indicate, by picking one to five stars, how important the suggestion is to you. (They explain the system further here.)

At first glance, this may seem innocuous, even well-intentioned, but given the robust tools now available for fostering real community discussions (such as phpbb, or civicspace, it's time MoveOn entered the 21st Century. What's idiotic about this platform is that it really doesn't nurture grass-roots participation, quite the opposite.

Here's the first problem: since suggestions only appear ten or so to a web-page, there's no meaningful chance that a MoveOn member is going to have the patience to read more than a few screens' worth. And when you've got something like 11,000 discrete suggestions posted, this can lead to a not inconsequential problem.

I remember when MoveOn first rolled out its ActionForum a few years ago and someone who took Eli, Wes, Joan and crew at their word that this was meant to be a real community conversation posted an angry complaint that she couldn't possibly read through all the thousands of ideas that had been posted. She begged MoveOn's leaders to institute some kind of tagging process that would help sort the plethora of posts and thus help insure that people were really engaging with the broad spectrum of ideas being offered. Alas, there was no reply and soon her valiant post itself disappeared off the first web page of forum suggestions.

And that's the second problem with this kind of scrolling forum system: If you have an interesting idea, but you don't get it in early where lots of other people will see it and rate it highly, you have little chance of catching up to the early birds. MoveOn's system tries to address this problem by sprinkling some new posts in among the top ranked topics on its first few forum pages, but that doesn't  prevent some old suggestions that literally have thousands of votes from continuing to rank high. And it also means that a good idea deep in the bowels of the forum list will never get lifted up to the light. This is called chopping off your own long tail.

And that gets to my last complaint about MoveOn. If Wes, Joan, Eli and crew were indeed interested in "strengthening democracy," why aren't they enabling their members to talk to each other directly? You can post something to the ActionForum and use your own name, but there's no lateral linking going on inside the MoveOn membership, other than what may happen on the ground if you go to a MoveOn-sponsored vigil, such as the ones happening today to mark the 2000th American soldier killed in Iraq.

And that's really a huge lost opportunity. It may not matter that much for the purposes of sifting ideas if a MoveOn member only reads and rates the suggestions of, say, ten or fifteen other members. From a statistical point of view, there's probably a leveling factor that kicks in once some number of people have read a post, and either it's great and it's going to continue to rise to the top of the forum, or it's not and it will fall.

But if you're purpose is to actually strengthen democracy and the engagement of your members in that valuable effort, MoveOn's failure to open up its walled garden is a huge disappointment. It's ActionForum system is useful in the same way a giant focus group might be useful to the people sitting behind the one-way mirror watching people talk. But it's not a way to empower anyone else.

I repeat a suggestion I made a while ago, as part of the conversation of Chris Nolan's detailed exploration of MoveOn for PDF. What if MoveOn were to invite its members to form state-, county- and city-level MoveOn spinoffs, give them a wide tether to self-organize and invent new forms for engaging each other and the issues, and then see what happens?

OMB Watch has issued an urgent appeal about the proposal, which comes in the form of s a manager’s amendment to the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) in the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act (H.R. 1461). As my friend Doug Ireland (who alerted me to this) points out, "While it applies only to nonprofits seeking grants under a new Affordable Housing Fund (AHF), the provision sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the speech and association rights of all nonprofits."

Doug writes:

"Even non partisan activities are restricted under this Nonprofit Gag Provision, like voter registration, voter identification, and get-out-the vote activities. Also forbidden are: anything that "promotes," "supports," "attacks," or "opposes" a candidate for federal office, which could be interpreted to include criticism of elected officials who may be seeking reelection; broadcast of any ads, public service announcements, grassroots issue advocacy, anything – that refer to federal candidates within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary; or lobbying, except if the group is a 501(c)(3) organization it may lobby within permissible limits. Affiliation with any entity that engages in any of the above activities during the same time period -- 12 months before applying for a grant or during the grant period -- will also disqualify the group from receiving money from the AHF."

"This highly dangerous Republican initiative would sharply limit the ability of non-profit organizations serving the poorest among us to speak up about the needs of these voiceless communities. AIDS service organizations that receive federal housing money for people with AIDS could be affected -- like the splendid New York-based Housing Works, which does a lot of lobbying and hosts the Campaign to End AIDS. And so could every affiliate of national lobbying coalitions like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights," he notes.

Apparently, this will be voted on next Wednesday. Folks who know more about this issue should jump in with details.