Activism:Vox Populi

From Activism

Welcome, all! Below is a series of issues related to the growth and development of the Activism project. Contribute issues, concerns, and ideas to this page as you come across them. And please, help build the project! You don't need to build according to the requests made here. Any development will be appreciated.

[edit] Revamp Main Page

There are some items listed in the Talk of the Main Page already. In general it needs to be cleaned up a lot. Ultimately I think we should move content off the front page completely. The front page should introduce new viewers to the project, and explain what the project is, not what activism is. (Though links to what activism is would, I think, be appropriate on the front page.)

As such, the page should explain the different parts of the project, show current and ongoing events in the real world relevant to events, and have resources for the potential user/editor.

[edit] Policy/Practices page

I have just created a Policies and practices page. It is, at the moment, very bare. I'll work on it, but I may not be able to get to it for about a month (see my user page for details why). I have put up several proposed policies on the talk page, and we can hash them out. I am aware that new wikis don't actually need a whole lot of policies, and some of the ones I propose there won't be necessary or useful until (and if when) it has a larger user base.

[edit] Pages needing work/creation

A lot of pages need to be created. Every single broken link on the Main Page, and in fact everywhere on the project, should ultimately be filled in. Here are some specific pages that I think are particularly important:

• Activism is a rather important page, don't you think?
• Activist lifestyle
• Policies and practices (needs much work)
• Collective Action and Collective Behavior

I have read the article linked by MarkDilley on the Smart Mobs website, referring to the difference between "collective action" and "collectivism". The article draws the distinction between action that is taken collectively and collaboratively and a community that is actually collective.

This is not what I am referring to when I distinguish between collective action (CA) and collective behavior (CB). These two refer to two different theoretical perspectives in sociology. Originally sociologists and other social scientists saw collective events (riots, protests, crowds, fads and fashions, etc.) as driven by emotion (often hysteria). They saw these events as fundamentally irrational. This is the CB view. More recently (since the 1960s), sociologists have come to see these events an fundamentally rational. This is the CA view. People are thought to take part in collective events because they feel they will accomplish something they want to accomplish.

So while the distinction between collectively taken action and an actual collective is an important one, it does not address what I originally meant by distinguishing between CA and CB.

I was mearly posting it as a point of information. Many people get them confused and I think it would be good to keep the differnces in mind. MarkDilley

• Collectivism
• List of everyday activists and famous or not.
• Post-material social movements