Welcome to our forum. Looks like TruthMod had the same idea while I was writing this. But more welcomes never hurt. :)
But who runs this site? I've never been here before. Is Nick Levis involved? There isn't an "about" page as far as I can tell, and when I tried to look at some profiles I get this error page saying, "This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota."
TruthMove was founded by Max and Julian, two NYC residents. "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" was our intro back in 2003. After a couple years of getting into the facts, we started to work with Les, Nick, Frank, and the bunch over at ny911truth. We were involved for about a year. After we realized that Les wasn't kosher, we left the group and decided to start our own organization. Some of our motivations: We didn't want Les to be the only game in town as we felt he poorly represented the movement. We wanted to create a website that was both factual and yet accessible. And we wanted to address a wider array of information that has been ignored or squashed by the mainstream press. TruthMove launched on May 1st, 2006.
We have an intro page that describes our mission. But we decided not to include bios with pics. We aren't trying to brag about our BA's and you can view lots of images of us doing street action. Most of us use our full names when called for, and we are known personally by many people in the movement who can vouch for us being real and sane. We don't really want people to view us as anything other than average Americans who started asking question.
Sorry about the CPU warning. We've got some technical issues to work out. Any time you see that, just wait a minute and try again. Everything is visible.
And how do you manage to operate forums without devolving into chemtrail nonsense? We had to close downt he forums on septembereleventh.org very early on due to this.
I'm starting to think about writing Discussion Forum Moderation for Dummies. We just took a lot of experience with crappy forums such as Democratic Underground, and we came up with specific guidelines and policy for moderation. Having a clear topic is essential as it is equally essential that off topic threads be deleted or locked. What is topical here is defined by the contents of our site, which provide a clear picture of our priorities and as well as our approach.
We do not address 'chemtrails' on our site, and so that subject is not directly on topic here. However, off topic subjects often intersect with those we address, and so you might see a post here like the one Chrisc linked to above. Another example would be the discussion of disinformation. There is an obvious distinction between promoting information and a discussion of the impact that information has on the movement.
Forum introduction is the critical make it or break it phase for moderation if you have some immediate traffic. I suppose my biggest recommendation at that point is to NOT welcome debunkers. A perfect example would be the first attempt made by ae911truth to host a forum. They had no clear guidelines and appeared uncertain at best about their moderation strategy. Mark Roberts was the first registrant and made the first comment. It never recovered and they had to start over and decided to make the new forum private.
That waste of energy, as people could have helped them prevent it, and also lesson learned brings me back to whether or not a forum has a strong definition. Moderators need to have a clear sense of the purpose and parameters of the forum. Why does it exist and what is unique about it. And moderators need to communicate concerns about behavior in a very direct and clear manner. That may include moments of relative ambiguity in which moderators have to say, "That's just not what we want this forum to feel like."
This forum is home to me. I want everyone who appreciates this space to feel as comfortable as I want to feel here. One implicit purpose of our forum is to be a space free of any trolling, debunking, or repetitive argument. And we're also not putting up with mean people. I suppose that personally, I want people posting here to be those who recognize that the problems we face make no time for over-active self-interest.
Finally, relative to the definition of your forum, you have to be willing to sacrifice quantity for quality. Principle before association. We don't want to talk to everyone. We want to talk to those with whom we have certain things in common.
I could go on. I'm thinking about writing an essay about this.
Anyway, once again, welcome to the forum. And if you really want to get a better feel for our project have a quick look at the following.
Truth Movement: Our Common Priority
http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/954?replies=1
Intro Page:
http://www.truthmove.org/page/intro/
And you might have a look at our primary category pages: Values, Insight, Action, and Psychology