Consider Awake.ca an experiment of sorts.
We're here to serve as a collaborative media site for people interested in
all aspects of the world around them, to discuss ideas and debate issues,
to open our eyes to the madness, mystery and beauty of the human experience.
Be that through current events, personal experiences, art, sex or a million
other moments that make up a day. Sometimes, it's easy to forget to stop and
look and say to yourself, "I'm really here."
It sounds grandiose, but what makes us different from other, larger, more
established sites?
First of all, I'd like Awake to be guided by the admin and editors in a direction
that promotes interesting discussion. We do have a story moderation queue
where readers can express their opinion and vote stories to be posted or dropped,
but sometimes guidance is needed to steer the site. This doesn't mean we'd
post a story to the front page that people clearly don't want, nor would we
drop a story that people do, but sometimes a minority of people feel strongly
about an issue they would like to discuss, or it's a story we feel should
see more exposure from people who might not see it otherwise. Democracy is
a grand invention, but sometimes benign dictatorship has it's advantages.
;-)
Where would we like to see Awake in two years? I'd be happy to have a small,
close community of intelligent people who basically run the site on their
own, with as little benign dictatorship as possible, and produce insightful
and intelligent content to share.
Will this experiment work? I really don't know. I don't consider us to be
competing with any other collaborative media or blog sites, because while
we may be similar in design, I'd like to believe we're all like ice cream.
All of it is cold and creamy, but it's nice to have 31 flavors to choose from.
We're on the current CVS of Scoop, and I'd like to send my appreciation to
the Scoop team, if you're reading. It's a great software package and just oozes
with the kind of quality the world needs in open source software.
