Resolved: The TB2K board, with minor alterations, and a companion TB2KPREP moderated board is the proper vehicle for the enhancement of preparations in the coming Y2K endgame.

For the Affirmative: Chuck, a Night Driver and ( - - - - - - )

FOr the Negative: ( - - - - - ) and ( - - - - ).

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Answers

Resolved ....

Agree

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Opening for the Affirmative: Having read and reread EY's Valedictory, and having participated in a Chat or two, I have come to the conclusion that the question of a vehicle for enhancing personal, community, and corporate preparations is a valid one. It is time to look at what can be done and how it can be done. None of us, in general, individually, can materially enhance the preparations of our locallities. Nor can we, again in general, enhance the preparations of our corporations, or our states.

Unless we work for a very small company, we cannot walk in, sit down and talk to the owner/CEO about Y2K and his/her/their contingency plans. I am fortunate in that I can, and have. I have had zero effect on my company.

I, like most of the current forum participants (posters, lurkers, etc.) live in a large metropolitan area. I have attempted to find the contact point for the area and have been unsuccessful in effecting any type of increased awareness. Nor have I been able to get past the 3 day scenario, where I have found awareness. By posting on this forum, I can reach tousands of people, a number that will rapidly start to grow later in the summer/early in the fall.

This forum has a history of being the best single point of contact for individual awareness and preparation assistance.

The initial larger question is of vehicle. What would such a vehicle look like, and what do we want it to do? I would submit that the proper vehicle MUST at least have the following characteristics:

It must be accessible by the greater population at large.

It must be fact based, as much as possible.

It must provide action items, as well as strategies and tactics.

It must be a resource for sources of materials, equipment and skills.

It must be user friendly, easily accessed, easilly updated, easily navigated.

It must provide answers to the questions of a large audience.

(providing a spell check function wouldn't hurt ;+))

The importance of each of the above characteristics, in generating or enhancing awareness and apropriate preparations should be quite clear to each of us. I won't belabor any of them.

What medium can be utilized to provide for all of the above, and not be cost prohibitive? Print media is expensive, if one wishes to reach large numbers of readers. The cost of reproduction, while certainly non-trivial, is small when compared to the cost of distribution. These costs CAN be underwritten, but are still fairly high in terms of readers reached per dollars spent. Radio can reach large numbers of people, but a reliable outlet must be secured, and this outlet must have a high, National Profile. To secure the reliability of a high profile outlet, one needs to part with a large quantity of cash. To assure the effectiveness of the message, it must be reduced to small "sound bites," suitable for the repetition which is required to penetrate the general noise surrounding the typical target person.

Television has the same advantages and disadvantages as radio, but in a more costly framework.

As has been said, the Internet is the locus of most of the personal, private research done today. It is extremely cost effective and efficient, and can provide information in either high point, overview style or in-depth. The user simply needs to be provided a pathway to the information and a tool with which to harvest it.

Thus we can see that an Internet platform will serve us quite well, for a minimum dollar investment. Couple this with the fact that the TB2K forum is being hosted for free as an experiment in hosting technology, and we have the general outlines of a very cost effective vehicle.

In terms of user friendliness, the greenspun fora are among the most user friendly, until it comes to formatting a post. Whether or not this can be adjusted, is immaterial. Those PROVIDING the information are NOT the people we need to cater to. Our sole thrust is for user friendliness for the ACCESSERS of the information.

Having identified a suitable platform, let us examine what tweaks and modifications would be required for the TB2K forum to become even more usable, and even more user friendly.

The first point is ACCESS. We need to secure a single major point of access, such as Westergaard, novay2k, WIRED, or some similar high profile website, so that we can show up on the various earch engines, and so we as users can distribute an easily remembered URL to a site that links to the forum(fora). Securing one of these (or more) will insure our availability.

The next set of points revolve around facts and their presentation. The TB2K must have either as a major area within itself or as part of a tightly linked additional forum, an area wherein the posted information is heavily moderated, to ensure that facts are posted, factual tips are posted, and that debates are carried out elsewhere. This area would be specifically for preparations, and would be moderated as such. This can be either a second forum, with specific catagories of information with catagory moderators, or several linked fora with specific fora catagory moderators. The argument that taking the preparation info off the forum will either lose the preparation information or kill the forum itself are specious. The arguments that the several or two fora would not hold together are equally specious. I defy ANY of the readers of this restricted distribution document to refrain from posting cross linking posts and information for 48 hours once the dual forum is set up!

In conclusion, I believe that the only tweaks we need would be to set up a carefully moderated by topic preparations only adjunct forum to the current TB2K forum, and we would have the vehicle for the Y2K Endgame.

Respectfully offered by:

Chuck, a Night Driver

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

I agree in principal.

Brian's been coming up with some suggestions about having another companion board that allows people in each state (Canada and US) to "come together" under their state flag (so-to-speak) since local issues are part and parcel of the end game.

I'll make it a point to read Phil Geenspun's web-book this weekend (gasp) so when I communicate with him about changes, I can talk with some persuasive grasp of the limitations and capabilities of the software.

[ Ask a Question | Unanswered Questions | New Answers | About | Publisher ]

(If you look over on Rick Cowles Electricity forum youll see hes added a search capability).

What Id like to see SOON is?...

[ Ask a Question | Search | Unanswered Questions | New Answers | About | Y2K FAQ | Publisher ] [ Preparation Archives | Preparation Forum | State-by-state Conversations | ?? | Canada? ]

In other words... more linked top level options... which enhance the main forum rather than diffuse it.

Id also like to see our own web-site and links.

Humm. I remember seeing something on Steve Daviss Civic Prep e-list about grant money. Humm.

Oh, for what its worth. I can come up with an internet PR plan once were ready with the new stuff. (Knew that M.B.A. et. al. training might come in useful).

Diane

(Need to line up some personal funding activities too, so I can continue with this, sans digging a deeper $ hole with all the time- off).

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Chuck's making sound points. Separating discussions from specifically prep-oriented posts is great - but might take some doing!

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I'd use "Local-Area discussions" instead of "State-by-State". Cleveland is 4 hours on I-71 from Cincinnati. I-90 across Montana is 680 miles long. Nye County, Nevada, is bigger than many states. Texarkana, TX is nearer to Chicago than to El Paso. Need I say more.

Push comes to shove next year, your neighborhood is all you've got.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

Tom,

Maybe local areas organized under a state? There need to be *some* kind of organization.

Diane

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999

Having gone through the past couple weeks, hindsight offers the lesson the priority...

#1) Has consisted of cleaning up the Forum re: trashy posts #2) Coming up with a set of GUIDELINES that most can agree with #3) Supporting said guidlines so TROLL posters give up

Then we can get on with making this thing into something useful for the end games.

Think a heavily moderated board for prep stuff is great.

Also there are limitations to the Greenspun software, so we could have a third board organized by state for those who wish to carry on more local conversations.

Those could all be hotlinked through the "ABOUT" statement... at this timing.

Just my thoughts.

Diane

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999