Nancy Scola’s Ideas for Change, and a Roadmap in techPresident’s “Daily Digest†discusses Change.org’s Ideas for Change in America:
The social-action hub has just announced that the project now has the backing of MySpace and a broad coalition of supporting partners, including techPresident, the Sunlight Foundation, Netroots Nation, VotoLatino, GOOD Magazine, Change Congress, Campus Progress, and People for the America Way…. once the top ten ideas are identified, “we will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations and millions of combined members.â€
Sounds intriguing. It’s hard to know just what the “national campaign” will look like, but these are certainly great groups to be partnering with. If Get FISA Right (and all the other pro-civil liberties groups out there) can get our act together and Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties is one of their top 10, then we’ll recruit some significant allies. Seems worth a try.
Currently, we’re tied for eighth with 50 votes.* This is pretty impressive, actually; the “featured ideas” on the main page have submissions from Jay Rosen (co-founder of Off the Bus), Craig Newmark (of Craigslist), and David Sirota, so there’s stiff competition. The current #1 is Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT couples nationwide, submitted by Jen Nadeau of change.org’s Women’s Rights blog.
Looking forward, the FAQ says:
How are the top ideas determined?
The top ideas in each cause are determined through two rounds of voting. The first round will end on December 31, 2008. The second round of voting will begin on Monday, January 5 and will be limited to the top 3 ideas in each category that received the most votes in the first round. Second round voting ends on Thursday, January 15.
There isn’t a category for civil liberties, so we’re in the Criminal Justice category. We’re currently tied for second with Provide Alternatives to Incarceration (submitted by Matt Kelley of The Innocence Project, who’s change.org’s Criminal Justice blogger), trailing activist Jose Torres’ Legalise the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana.**  Finishing the year in the top three seems achievable.
We can increase our chances in several ways: spreading the word virally (in email, on Facebook), blogging about it (and mentioning it in comment threads of relevant blogging posts), and asking other organizations who believe it’s a good idea to forward the link to their members.
So please, if this is something you think should be one of the administration’s priorities — or if you just like the idea of Rupert Murdoch and Fox a civil liberties activism campaign — vote it up, and spread the word!
jon
* The top-rated ideas are a little hard to find, actually — they’re well below the fold on the right-hand side of the Ideas page, below the partners and “browse by category”. The “featured ideas”, presumably chosen by change.org’s staff, are displayed much more prominently.
** Unsurprisingly, there also are a couple of other legalization ideas in the top ten. Insert stoner joke here.
Ryan | 24-Nov-08 at 11:42 pm | Permalink
isn’t change.org the most awesome website ever designed? the more i delve into it the more impressed i am. its like digg+facebook+civics+lots of really smart people
we wont know whats on the other side of the equation until january but i am excited to be involved.
jon | 25-Nov-08 at 9:56 am | Permalink
Since yesterday, change.org got rid the list of top 10 user-rated ideas from their site, leaving the “featured ideas”.
I must be missing something here. The whole point of the site is user feedback. Why not recognize it?
And many of change.org’s partners on this understand the value of transparency in other contexts (in fact somewhat ironically we’re now tied with Craig Newmark’s featured suggestion Act now regarding government transparency). Why doesn’t change.org see the value of transparency here?
Very strange.
jon | 25-Nov-08 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
Hmm, I just noticed that the existing featured ideas are by Jay, Baratunde, Michael, Craig, Alain, Michael, and Arthur — all guys.
By contrast, several of the top-rated-by-the-crowd ideas are from women; from the list I saved yesterday, Jen in #1, Sarah’s “restore the separation of church and state” was at #4, Pauline’s “national holiday on election day” is #6.
I wonder what criteria they’re using to select “featured” ideas?
Update, December 1: one of the Michaels whose idea was featured here is Michael Kleinman, who’s change.org’s Humanitarian Relief blogger.
anonymous | 25-Nov-08 at 4:40 pm | Permalink
Wow, rarely do I see ‘men are scum’ illustrated so vividly.
jon | 25-Nov-08 at 4:56 pm | Permalink
I just report the facts.
Y’know, I’m sure it wasn’t a conscious decision by a bunch of guys saying “hey, let’s make sure that we control who gets on the front page so we can keep it a girl-free zone.” It just looks that way.
jon | 25-Nov-08 at 8:43 pm | Permalink
Sarah Lai Stirland’s Change.org Crowdsources An Agenda For Incoming Administration on Wired’s Threat Level quotes Change.org founder Ben Rattray and Managing Editor Joshua Levy (who as Sarah reported earlier this summer, moved from techPresident to help build change.org’s blogging community). Sarah frames the activism possibilities this way:
Ooooh! Gotta like that! This could work really well with Get FISA Right’s “50-state strategy” … also some interesting historical context:
As Craig Newmark recently remarked, at techPresident, you can get a feel for how the future is being invented.
Speaking of Craig, his transparency suggestion was also featured in Sarah’s post, with a handy widget that allows you to click through. It’s now up to 66 votes … it’d be interesting to know how many of those are through Wired, how many through the listing as “featured”, and how many through other links* or email.
Get FISA Right is plugging along at 59, so we’ve gotten about 20 votes since yesterday. We’re not on the front page and haven’t (as far as I know) been featured in any articles about the site, so this is probably primarily people directly from our mailing list, with some folks they forwarded it to, and then anybody who saw it in the group’s posted items or my feed on Facebook (or I suppose Oxdown Gazette). It’s a long ways away from 23,000, but not a bad start.
* Update, November 30: such as this one on Sunlight Foundation’s blog. Sunlight is a partner for the Government Reform category, and Craig’s a board member of Sunlight.
jon | 25-Nov-08 at 8:55 pm | Permalink
These embeddable widgets are very cool indeed. Unfortunately the cut-and-paste HTML code change.org gives you to make this easy also includes a “web bug“.* Nice. Here’s the code
<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.11NXC/....gif" />For those who aren’t native HTML speakers, if I had put this on my site the way change.org recommends, this would send information including your IP address back to Gigya.com whenever you view this page. Eeg.
If you’ve never heard of Gigya, you’re not alone; neither had I. They describe themselves as “the leader in widget development, distribution, and tracking technologies” and so clearly this kind of monitoring is a big part of their business. Here are a couple of excerpts from Gigya’s privacy policy:
Eeg.
What’s really irritating is that by including the Gigya web bug secretly in their embed code, change.org is trying to enlist me in this creepy monitoring without even disclosing it.
About that transparency …
* For more about web bugs, see EFF’s page, which notes that “Clearly Web Bugs are controversial. Because they allow people to be monitored, when they don’t expect it, they certainly can be very upsetting.”
Update, November 30: I emailed change.org’s founder Ben Rattray last week and suggested that they either (1) ask Gigya to remove the web bug from their embed code or (2) disclose that the embed code includes monitoring software sending information to Gigya. We shall see.
Update, January 10: Ben got back to me and asked for suggested wording for the disclosure but I’ve dropped the ball … oops …
jon | 27-Nov-08 at 12:06 pm | Permalink
There’s now one woman in the “featured” ideas, with Heather Cronk’s suggestion of Interactive Government joining Alex, Mike, Baratunde, Michael, Craig, and Alain. Heather works at New Organizing Institute, and is on the advisory board of mobilize.org (who’s listed as one of change.org’s partners in the Ideas project).
Craig’s transparency idea up to 85 votes, adding 19 in the last couple of days. In the meantime, Chris Myers Asch’s idea Build a U.S. Public Service Academy, which was just submitted yesterday, has shot to 156 votes.
Impressive! Brittany Ballenstedt’s Outlook For Public Service Academy Brightens in the National Journal has more on the bipartisan legislation.
Get FISA Right is at 77 votes, still in second in the criminal justice category, growing at about the same rate as transparency. One way of looking at this is that our network’s current reach for something like this is roughly as powerful as the combination of featured position on change.org and a Wired Threat Level post. Of course it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison but it’s still a useful data point.
jon | 29-Nov-08 at 8:17 pm | Permalink
Chris Myers Asch’s idea is now featured, and up to 187 votes. The other featured ideas are by Alex, David, Andrew, Baratunde, Jay (Rosen, once again) and Terence, so we’re back to all guys.
Get FISA Right is up to 144, but has dropped to third in Criminal Justice, with Debora Blake’s Conduct a new, independent investigation into the attacks of September 11, 2001 at #1 with 357 votes since it was posted yesterday (and marijuana legalization still in second).
Opportunity to achieve our goal, a front-page thread on 911blogger.com, Go vote now, front-paged on 911truth.org, show how effectively 9/11 activists are mobilizing on this. It’s also front-paged on OpEd news and has 24 diggs.
Hmm. Looks like tough competiition …
jon | 30-Nov-08 at 11:24 am | Permalink
Last Thursday’s The DREAM Act Leads the Pack on DreamActivist.org is an excellent example of a post to mobilize activists, complete with a sample email to send friends and suggestions for advocacy on blogs and social networks. The widget for the idea is also featured prominently on the DREAM Act portal at dreamact.info. Impressive organizing work!
Here’s the current standings for the top dozen ideas:
The differences between the most popular ideas and the ones change.org has chosen to “feature” are a fascinating example of the difference between crowdsourced and “expert” selection. For example, it’s really striking is how much more diverse the people behind the twelve most popular ideas are. At least four of the top 12 are from women (not sure about Jo); all seven of the featured ideas are from guys. Two of the top 12 are from outside the US; none of the featured ideas (and in fact six of the seven are from New York, San Francisco, or DC). And so on …
The featured ideas also highlight very different categories of ideas than the crowd. Most obviously, three of the five most popular ideas are on Criminal Justice, but nothing from this category is featured. There are two LGBTQ-related ideas and a couple of youth-related ideas in the top 12; nothing in the featured ideas. Conversely there are three energy/global warming ideas in the seven featured ideas, but only one in the top 12.
All very interesting …
jon | 30-Nov-08 at 7:31 pm | Permalink
Change.org has just deleted the #1 idea on their site — along with all the other proposals for 9/11 investigations. Jon Gold’s So Much For “Change†on Visibility911 has more, including the email from change.org with their justification:
The FAQ on change.org’s site says:
So the challenge for the “9/11 truth” activists is to reconfigure their idea as a forward-looking concrete policy solution — perhaps something like “Revise DHS and TSA policies based on a re-investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath”.
From change.org’s perspective, their decision to take the top items off their front page means that this deletion happened more-or-less in secret — there’s nothing about it on their blog. About that transparency …
Update, December 1: ideas like Fair Investigations of Bush Administration haven’t been deleted. A double standard? Or just kinks working out of the process?
Update, December 2: the Bush administration investigation idea has been deleted as well. Looks like the “forward-looking” standard is getting applied consistently.
jon | 01-Dec-08 at 1:17 pm | Permalink
Today’s featured posts: Chris, Alex, Terence, David, Jay, Heather, Baratunde. Heather’s from DC so the geographical concentration continues.
The top-20 list I put up earlier today only includes three posts that have been on the featured list for protracted periods of time (from Chris, Craig, Baratunde), so it’s clear that other forms of visibility are clearly more valuable than the featured list. Still, there’s clearly an impact in categories like Global Warming, where the two ideas that have been repeatedly featured are #1 and #2 respectively.
So the pattern we’ve seen so far of gender, geographical, and “in-crowd” biases seems very likely to have an impact on the first-round results if it continues. We shall see …
jon | 02-Dec-08 at 8:54 am | Permalink
This morning’s featured posts: David, Rachel, William, Alex, Jay, Heather, Baratunde. Another woman! Three from New York, two from San Francisco, one from DC, one from Portland.
Instead of “new ideas”, the front page now features “ideas on the rise” below the fold (you can click to get new ideas or top ideas). I’m not sure what the criteria for “ideas on the rise” are; when I first checked it, Craig’s idea is there, even though it’s only added 11 votes (9%) since yesterday, but Donovan Caesar’s End the Patriot Act isn’t, despite adding over 70 votes (100%). When I checked again about a half-hour later, there were some different ideas … so who knows, it might be a random selection from a pool of relatively-fast-rising ideas. In any case, it’s a good thing.
On my first check, there were three women in the “ideas on the rise”; on my second check, at least four (one person just has initials). Geographically, there are ideas from Denver CO, St Louis MO, Mesa AZ, Cotati and San Jose CA, and Blaine WA, as well as Brooklyn and the Berkman Center. Once again, the crowd-selected ideas are from much more diverse origins than the ones hand-selected by change.org.
Donna Marsh O’Conner’s Appoint a scientist to head NIST immediately has moved into the top 10 overall and top 3 in the Criminal Justice category. This is an interesting one because it’s likely to get support from people who want to get beyond the anti-science attitude of the Bush Administration as well as “9/11 truth” activists (Donna’s a 9/11 mom, and had submitted one of the suggestions for an investigation that got deleted). As expected, the 9/11 truthers are finding ways to work around their idea getting deleted.
jon | 03-Dec-08 at 8:51 am | Permalink
Today’s featured ideas: Jerry, April, Heather, Rachel, William, Alex, Jay — 3 women, 4 men. Progress! 3 from Washington (counting Jerry Fowler even though his location isn’t listed), 2 from New York, 1 Portland, 1 San Francisco.
change.org’s MySpace page also has a featured ideas from change.org Managing Editor Josh Levy. There are also ten “recently popular” ideas, from Jay, Terence, Heather, Mike, Baratunde, change.org blogger Michael, Craig, Alain, Michael, the Genocide Intervention Network, Arthur, Alex, and David. Y’know, I’m as big a fan of Jay Rosen as the next guy, but his idea was featured for over a week, and still has only 43 votes … isn’t it kind of a stretch to describe it as “recently popular”? Oh well. 4 New York, 4 DC, 3 CA (SF, LA, San Leandro).
jon | 04-Dec-08 at 1:22 pm | Permalink
Today’s featured ideas: Mike (Connery, back on the list), Chris (Myers Asch, back on the list), Justin, April, Heather, Rachel, William; 3 DC, 2 NY, Chicago, SF. I’m a huge Mike Connery fan — Future Majority should be required reading for anybody writing about online politics — but does his idea really need so much special promotion from the change.org folks?
There’s apparently a lot of people getting banned (or else a software bug), because Baratunde idea, which had been in the top 20 with close to 200 votes, suddenly dropped preciptously. It’s currently at 100. Not sure what the story is there …Update, 8 p.m.: My bad. Baratunde has two different ideas. It’s all copacetic. Sorry for the confusion.jon | 05-Dec-08 at 7:54 pm | Permalink
Heather, Jerry, David, Douglas (Rushkoff, the author), Chris, Justin, April. 4 DC, NY, SF, Chicago.
jon | 07-Dec-08 at 12:18 pm | Permalink
Chris (whose idea is now back up to 12th place), Alex, Jerry, Justin, Mike, April, David. 3 DC, New York, Chicago, SF, Portland.
Craig and David Weinberger are now on the “ideas on the rise”. Hmm.
jon | 09-Dec-08 at 9:36 am | Permalink
Yesterday was the same as Sunday: Chris (whose idea is now back up to 12th place), Alex, Jerry, Justin, Mike, April, David. 3 DC, New York, Chicago, SF, Portland. 6 men, one woman.
Today we’re back to a boys club: Michael, Chris, Mike, Alex, Joe, Rob, Justin. 2 DC, NY, Portland, Scotland PA, Chicago; not sure where change.org blogger Michael lives. Alex btw is Civic Engagement Director of change.org partner Focus the Nation.
Reconstructing as best as I can from these notes since I’ve started tracking, the totals so far for featured items are 63 ideas from men, 14 from women … 83% male.
Geographically, it’s 25 from DC, 20 from New York, 12 from the SF Bay area, 5 each from Chicago (Justin) and Portland (Alex), and 9 other … so over 60% from DC and NY.
jon | 11-Dec-08 at 2:43 pm | Permalink
The last couple of days have been Rachel, Jerry, Chris (does he have incriminating photos of somebody?), Mike, Alex, Joe, and Rob. 6 women, 1 man … just kidding! 2 DC, NY, Portland, Scotland PA, two unknown locations.
In Government Reform, at least two of the top five (Chris and Craig) have gotten loads of attention as featured items. So Chris’ proposal is #2 with 578 votes; #3 — not yet featured — has 513. This stuff makes a difference.
jon | 11-Dec-08 at 6:05 pm | Permalink
When I checked page, the top two “ideas on the rise” are currently the same as two of featured ideas by Joe (Communications Director at change.org partner Public Citizen); and Alex (Civic Engagement Director of change.org partner Focus the Nation). David (of the Berkman Center) is next on the hot ideas, and then there’s Craig (board member on change.org partner Sunlight Foundation). I wonder what algorithm they’re using to choose the “ideas on the rise”?
Michael Connery, in Change (.gov/.org) Open for (Questions/Ideas), thinks “there are clear rules/guidelines so participants know what they can reasonably expect in exchange for their participation.” Really? Maybe it’s just me, but I would have expected insiders to disclose their affiliations, organizers to pay attention to diversity, and civil liberties ideas getting featured from time to time since three of them are in the top 20. Oh well. Live and learn.
jon | 12-Dec-08 at 7:10 pm | Permalink
Alex, Chris, Lawrence, Rachel, Mike, Rob, Joe; 2 DC, 1 NY, 1 Palo Alto, 1 Scotland PA, 1 Portland.
Lessig is by the way founder of Change.org partner change-congress.org. Not that this relationship is disclosed anywhere I could see on change.org: it’s not in the idea, it’s not in his profile, and it’s not in Nathaniel Whittmore’s effusive post about Lessig’s idea on the Social Entrepeneurship blog. Lessig’s on the advisory board of change.org partner Sunlight Foundation as well.
About that transparency …
jon | 14-Dec-08 at 10:14 am | Permalink
Same as above …
jon | 16-Dec-08 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
It was the same when I checked yesterday as well, can’t remember what time. Today, it’s Lawrence, Alain, Chris, Rachel, Mike, Rob, Joe; 6 men, one woman yet again. 2 DC, NY, Palo Alto, Scotland PA, 2 unknown.
Meanwhile yet another civil liberties idea is on the rise: Stop NAIS!, by Pamela Matlack Klein of Appomatox VA has shot to #1 in Agricultural Policy in only two days.
On the Get FISA Right idea, it seems like at least 85% of the comments are by guys. By contrast, about 85-90% of the first 30 comments on Pamela’s idea are from women — so there are clearly women who comment on change.org, we’re just not getting them involved.
Also, at least 10% of the comments on the Get FISA Right idea are from people whose accounts are now deleted; I wonder if this is true in general?
jon | 19-Dec-08 at 10:17 am | Permalink
unchanged: Lawrence, Alain, Chris, Rachel, Mike, Rob, Joe; 6 men, one woman yet again. 2 DC, NY, Palo Alto, Scotland PA, 2 unknown.
Updating the overall stats to include the last 8 days:
111 men, 22 women = 83% male
41 DC, 28 New York, 12 SF bay, 37 other (not counting “unknowns”) = 58% New York and DC, 69% NY, DC, SF
jon | 19-Dec-08 at 11:26 am | Permalink
change.org’s weekly mailer went out with then “popular ideas for the week”. 7 guys, 3 women; 3 DC, NY, SF, Evanston IL, Nathrop CO, Washington/Egypt, Philadelphia PA — 44% NY/DC, 55% NY/DC/SF. Two change.org bloggers and at least two leaders of change.org partners (Energy Action and Save Darfur).
jon | 22-Dec-08 at 9:53 am | Permalink
Since Friday, it’s been Lauren, Heather, Victor, Michael, Alain, Chris, Rachel — four men, three women.2 DC, SF, Los Angeles, Evanston IL, two unknown.
jon | 26-Dec-08 at 10:44 am | Permalink
I didn’t check for a couple of days … today it’s Tensie (President of change.org partner Rainforest Alliance), Rachel, Alex (Civic Engagement Director of change.org partner Focus the Nation), Lawrence (founder of change.org partner change-congress.org), Heather (on the advisory board of change.org partner of mobilize.org), Mike, and Michael (change.org blogger). Four men, three women; 2 NY, 1 DC, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Portland, one unknown.
jon | 30-Dec-08 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
Yesterday and today, Jake (of change.org partner Energy Action Coalition), Chris, Rachel, Megan (of change.org partner Refugees international), Alex (of change.org partner Focus the Nation), Lawrence (of change.org partner change-congress.org), Heather (of change.org partner of mobilize.org). Four men, three women; 4 DC, Portland, Palo Alto, unknown. “Only” five of the seven are associated with change.org partners.
Lawrence’s and Chris’ ideas are in third and fourth place in Government Reform — ahead of Donovan Caeasar’s “End the Patriot act”, which hasn’t gotten the benefit of being featured repeatedly by change.org. Jake’s and Alex’s are #1 and #4 in Global Warming; and in Environmental Conservation, Tensie, Rob, and Lauren are at #3, #4, and #5. With multiple change.org partners benefiting from this special treatment, it sure creates the impression of favoritism.
jon | 31-Dec-08 at 10:21 am | Permalink
Lawrence (in the largest location), Victor, Rachel, Chris, Megan, Alex, Heather.
Lawrence and Chris’ ideas are tied at 1277 so an extra vote from the higher-profile listing of Lawrence’s idea could make the difference …
jon | 31-Dec-08 at 3:40 pm | Permalink
But wait! It’s now Lawrence, Vanessa, Arthur, Rachel, Sam, Bradley, and Pedro — tough break Chris! And sure enough Lawrence has opened up a six-vote lead …