Input on forum organization?

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Steve Blair,

I agree, but those threads tend to get hijacked pretty quickly.

You got me, but hijacking has a long been a terrorist tactic (now practiced on blogs) worth exploring in more detail.

[Steve Blair]

Posted by Steve Blair,



You got me, but hijacking has a long been a terrorist tactic (now practiced on blogs) worth exploring in more detail.

Good point...

Levity aside, I do think it's a good idea to keep (possibly under a different name) some special area for "red cell"-type discussions.

[Stan]

Good point...

Levity aside, I do think it's a good idea to keep (possibly under a different name) some special area for "red cell"-type discussions.

And we could end up with some Russians and Terrorists as members. That would indeed be interesting !

[SWCAdmin]

Here are some of my thoughts on points raised so far. Far from the last word. Most importantly, in some cases I'm sharing a theory and at issue is how practice has departed from, or will depart, from the theory.

For background on the current macro approach and commentary on things that belong in multiple places -- see this FAQ.

Global Commons --
An important set of topics. It was very much behind the Global Issues & Threats section at the top of the regional conflicts section. Perhaps we could expand the description of the forum. Some of the topics may fit more nicely in some of the participant/stakeholder forums (assuming we keep those).

Red Team --
As mentioned, aligns with the Adversary/Threat forum. Also any real region-specific discussion would make a lot of sense in the regional forum.

Participants & Stakeholders consolidation --
Perhaps. Or may be a key to expansion and better serving a broader audience (see Bill Moore discussion in post #10). I really don't know. The real outliers I see at the moment are the Military Art & Science section which I think could combine some elements into the Participants & Stakeholders section and do away with others.

Conflict Resolution --
Important topic. I'm not sure how that makes sense as a forum that is distinct from a conflict-specific thread in a regions forum (my first reaction); a stakeholder-specific domain or a grand strategy area (TBD?); or a series of forums (not on my short list, but?) re different phases from pre-hostility through resolution and maintaining the peace (or non-war). Would love to hear more.

Coalition Speaks --
I agree with Jedburgh in the sense that everything is or should be coalition and we have perhaps evolved to be less US-centric than we feared, but also with others that there is still plenty of US-dominance in the Council. I do not like the idea of herding non-US perspectives or non-US news into one forum, it belongs everywhere. When formed, the idea of the forum was to provide a spot to remind US to practice what we preach regarding broader perspectives and to discuss US-centricity. It hasn't really emerged that way in practice, for whatever reason.

Region Refresh
Absolutely needed. Especially OIF / OEF weigthing.

IW slicing and dicing
StabOps, UW, CT, COIN, FID, etc. -- I think we've got a heck of a job as a community keeping up with our own terminology and with the utility of applying it in practice. There's a whole theory and doctrine discussion that could backstop any of those terms and make a mixing bowl of all of them. I don't see forum organization along those lines being fruitful. I do, however, think we might make some hay out of cleaning up the theorists & doctrine/TTP sections.

Thinking vs doing
Whatever method there is to our madness (again, see here), we must do a good job of communicating it and still have modest expectations for a) just how understandable it is; b) just how useful it is even when understood.

Pete, if you can figure out how to make room service or take out work for the Kitakidogo Social Club, you will be our next hero.

[HumanCOGRachel]

I still think it would be good to have a separate place to read up on perspectives and news written by foreigners that we here comment on, not US commentaries on foreign efforts where US and foreign people comment, does that make sense? That's why the suggestion International Efforts kind of sums that requirement up....What do you think?

[HumanCOGRachel]

I still think it would be good to have a separate place to read up on perspectives and news written by foreigners that we here comment on, not US commentaries on foreign efforts where US and foreign people comment, does that make sense? That's why the suggestion International Efforts kind of sums that requirement up....What do you think?

International Efforts replacing Coalition Efforts in other words...

[William F. Owen]

Something I would really like to see is the resumption/inclusion of Journal Articles on the Forum. At the moment, many really good articles simply never get discussed on the boards as the folks to "comment" instead.

The Comment threads are usually very inferior to the forum discussion. ....IMO.

[SWCAdmin]

Wilf, we're doing some work to realign the blog, Journal, ref lib, etc. That should net out in a few months to a site-wide login and hopefully will make more Council regulars comfortable in the rest of the site. In the interim, as always, if there's a Journal article that's particularly deserving of some discussion here, anyone can open up a thread.

HumanCOGRachel, I believe I understand what you are saying and concur that, from one perspective of having a neat forum to go for non-US commentary, it would be a good idea. But the flip side of that is that all non-US commentary should then belong in that spot, and that looks to me like a bad way of going about keeping a pervasively international perspective in the other 98% of the board. So, in the net, I'm not a fan. Perhaps there are some tagging tools that we can use to offer some of the former pro without the latter con. For any of it to be successful, we need more commentary from foreign shores.

It does not seem that the intended forum topic of US-centricity is gaining traction as a forum itself, so we'll reevaluate that.

[davidbfpo]

Irregularly forgotten small wars appear, most recently the Estonian nationalist resistance and another which I've forgotten already

Perhaps a thread within History? When I have time I will find the recent references and start a thread. We already have expertise in this area, like Steve Blair and history keeps on catching up with us.

[SWCAdmin]

^ I think a thread within the Historians forum is a great spot for that.

[anonamatic]

I wanted to suggest some sort of medical related area since I noticed there wasn't one+... I'm hazy on how that might work, but coverage of related issues might be something people find useful.

[Tukhachevskii]

I wanted to suggest some sort of medical related area since I noticed there wasn't one+... I'm hazy on how that might work, but coverage of related issues might be something people find useful.

Concur, I've got this growth/mole thingy on my arm. Just won't go away...too embarassed to se my Dr........

[Tukhachevskii]

..how is it that commercial sellers have access to advertise on the site? Is it down to pure initiative on the part of promoters to log on and become members? Not being too hot on all this WWWWWW.net/com/etc stuff I'd just like to know. Cheers