Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Calling up everybody who likes writing and believes in the ideologies of the future!

We'd like to set up a Leftist blog and we need to maybe get some more contributors. Right now I think HoniSoit and me are the only declared people interested in this project, that would be something like a blog containing reviews of books and articles, as well as opinion texts, along with a Leftist view on world events, and maybe a regular feature presenting ideological currents and key points of the Leftist philosophical movement.

Which is a fancy way to say just a Leftist blog.

It'd be nice if we could have a panel of different currents of thought too!

I can contribute content about the economics of socialism

I would be happy to contribute.

Are revisionist social democrats allowed too? Or is this exclusive for revolutionary left analysis?
(I'm listening to Ernst Busch's Solidaritätslied right now, that should make me fairly left-wing, no? )

I would be willing to contribute - but would it be easy to have people from social democrats to anarcho-communists on the same blog?

I think it would be best for us more pragmatic Social Democrats and Liberals to have our own blog.

dilpill wrote:I think it would be best for us more pragmatic Social Democrats and Liberals to have our own blog.

I second that motion but I think we are not numerous enough on PoFo to validate our very own blog. Perhaps getting together with the Liberals here (who also seem to be fairly few) would be a gut idea to create some sort of social liberal blog.

I can contribute content about the economics of socialism

I bet you can.

Shouldn't we try to limit people of different ideologies trolling on the blogs of others? Otherwise, what's the point? Maybe make it so only certain ideologies set in the User Control Panel can enter different blogs?

Lensky1917 wrote:I bet you can.

He really can. He knows more about Marxism than even some of the Marxists here, and he's not as averse to it as, say, libertarians are.

Shouldn't we try to limit people of different ideologies trolling on the blogs of others?

Well, the mods (or whoever moderates the blog) will have to approve the articles. As long as the articles are of good quality, it really doesn't matter who write them.

Well, the mods (or whoever moderates the blog) will have to approve the articles. As long as the articles are of good quality, it really doesn't matter who write them.

Couldn't these blogs affect sister sites like Soviet-Empire? Soviet-Empire is a forum where leftists make up the majority of the site. If blogs do make people feel more comfortable on PoFo, couldn't traffic dwindle on Soviet-Empire?

I could give an input from my knowledge of Marxism etc, but with more of a Right approach.

Lensky1917 wrote:If blogs do make people feel more comfortable on PoFo, couldn't traffic dwindle on Soviet-Empire?

S-E already has far less traffic than Pofo, afaik.

Dr House wrote:S-E already has far less traffic than Pofo, afaik.

You're right, according to the statistics, PoFo also has a much more diverse audience:

Politics-forum.org has a traffic rank of: 142,840

Politics-forum.org users come from these countries:

• United States: 57.0%
• China: 10.5%
• United Kingdom: 4.2%
• Turkey: 2.6%
• Poland: 2.3%

Traffic rank change in the last 3 months: down 39,126



Soviet-empire.com has a traffic rank of: 1,268,541

Soviet-empire.com users come from these countries:

• United States: 47.7%
• United Kingdom: 10.9%
• Other countries: 40.8%

Traffic rank change in the last 3 months: down 530,445

Source: Alexa

You're right, according to the statistics, PoFo also has a much more diverse audience:

United States: 57.0%
China: 10.5%
United Kingdom: 4.2%
Turkey: 2.6%
Poland: 2.3%

United States: 47.7%
United Kingdom: 10.9%
Other countries: 40.8%

It looks like Soviet-Empire is more diverse.

Besides, I was focusing more on the leftist demographic. Soviet-Empire has far more than PoFo does. Most people on PoFo just seem to be garden-variety liberals and social-democrats.

Lensky wrote:It looks like Soviet-Empire is more diverse.

I misread that, I should have said they are about the same, there's 60% English/American users on both forums. However the China, Turkey and Poland is very interesting, it would be nice to have more information about the 40% other countries that visit S-E.
It's irrelevant anyway, the point was to prove that PoFo has much, much more traffic than S-E, hence it's appropriate to ask here.

Lensky wrote:Most people on PoFo just seem to be garden-variety liberals and social-democrats.

Name me 10 active social liberals/social-democrats on PoFo. I think compared to the real world, liberals and social-democrats are the most under-represented people here, with communists and libertarians being the most overrepresented.

Name me 10 active social liberals/social-democrats on PoFo.

I try not to pay attention to them, but they're around. The leftists are just more vocal, making it seem like there is a lot. Forum guerilla warfare.

I think compared to the real world, liberals and social-democrats are the most under-represented people here, with communists and libertarians being the most overrepresented.

I was mostly focused on the lefter side of the political scale. I would definitely consider libertarians to be on the right.

Lensky1917 wrote:I was mostly focused on the lefter side of the political scale. I would definitely consider libertarians to be on the right.

It was merely a related remark, I was trying to explain how ideologies that aren't accepted at all in the mainstream are grossly overrepresented here, with the two most notable examples being communism and libertarianism to prove my point that there are hardly any mainstream ideologues around, and even less of them social democrats/liberals.
Just compare the communists you can name off the top of your head (Potemkin, Kurt, Lensky, Le Rouge, FallenRaptor, Vladimir, Kiroff, jaako, ingliz) to the liberals (Paradigm, Nets, Kylie, NoRapture ... ?).

Dave wrote:I can contribute content about the economics of socialism

This is a genuine question: would you contribute in the form of criticism, or in the form of defence of this or that economic aspect of Socialism? To keep a blog-form coherent with the ideological categorisation put in place by Fox, criticism should be, in my opinion, posted in the discussion topic of a given article, while defence should be used to make articles in the first place.

But I'm saying that as a participant for the blog.

Red Star wrote:I would be willing to contribute - but would it be easy to have people from social democrats to anarcho-communists on the same blog?

Hehe, well, honestly it's probably an impossible mission. But personnally I think it could be great to have a blog, a 'publication' that emphasized our common goals rather than the differences. Of course, it'd also be a great way to have different opinions in the same media, it'd be a good way to get each side to consider, or constructively denounce, this or that opinion.

But yes I realise given the replies here and there that it's probably gonna be tough, if possible at all.

dillpill wrote:I think it would be best for us more pragmatic Social Democrats and Liberals to have our own blog.

See my reply above. But if it ends up being a cast of several blogs, then I'll side with you.

Okonkwo wrote:Perhaps getting together with the Liberals here (who also seem to be fairly few) would be a gut idea to create some sort of social liberal blog.

If we can rally one side, we should be able to rally a different side. Now, what's on the left of 'Social Democracy' probably won't agree on much with what's on the right, but we should see how it goes. As long as we don't end up splitting like in that joke about the Trotskysts in the phone booth!

HoniSoit wrote:Well, the mods (or whoever moderates the blog) will have to approve the articles. As long as the articles are of good quality, it really doesn't matter who write them.

I'm with HoniSoit on that.

Lensky wrote:Couldn't these blogs affect sister sites like Soviet-Empire? Soviet-Empire is a forum where leftists make up the majority of the site. If blogs do make people feel more comfortable on PoFo, couldn't traffic dwindle on Soviet-Empire?

I don't see the two being communicating vases. We shouldn't be careful not to walk on each other's flower beds as we say, but instead try to each provide the best contents.

Erebus wrote:I could give an input from my knowledge of Marxism etc, but with more of a Right approach.

See what I replied to Dave.

So what's the status with this? Are you ready to go, are we going to just see the armchair-communist stereotype of talking forever about things and no action?

How many people are going to contribute to this?

Is it being edited by Adrien and HoniSoit (i.e. articles will be approved by them)?