www.talkcyprus.org

[respiridus]

erolz wrote: At Gardash (from memory) I did talk about the 'forum's ownership'.

I stated my view that essentially (moraly) the forum is 'owned' jointly by those that use it and post to it.

On the 'legal' front, I pointed out that actually there was very little to actualy 'own. The forum software that drives the forum is all 'open source' sw and 'owned' by those who hold the (GPL) licesense for it. The content is all 'owned' by those that wrote it. Really the only other thing that is 'owned' is the domain name (talkcyprus.org). This is currently owned by myself as an indivdual.

I did suggest and express a willingness to, should it be deemed necessary, to set up some kind of 'trust body' that would then hold the ownership of this domain. In reality though, the 'overhead' involved in such a thing probably does not warrant the 'benefits'.

Setting up a formal organisation is somewhat different to this, I think ?

I agree, but we weren't talking about the forum. Rather, we were talking about things that can be done beyond that: Lobbying, meetings, article publishing, etc. This whole idea is a bit premature right now, of course, but it's a good idea to start thinking about it, imho.

[erolz]

respiridus wrote: Well, I think this brings up two issues:

1. Necessary software to support article publishing:

What we need is to add some blogging features to this forum, so that the "journalists" among us will be able to publish their articles and discuss them with other members. I have found this: http://www.outshine.com/phpbbblog/ but I guess it's up to the King if he wants to try it or not.


I just had a cursory look at the link above. From what I can see it is actualy more of a integrated 'portal system' for phpBB that a 'blogging' system. We already have the same fuctionality that this provides with the current portal system - unless I have misunderstood something.

I am more than happy to lok at adding functionality to the site (as a 'faciliator of member wishes - not as 'king'). However we do need to know what functionality it is that we wish to add? A (real) blogging system, a document production and publishing system, some kind of 'wiki' system ? These are all different but overlapping systems. We would need to decide what it we actualy want and need.

PS If I am 'king' does that mean I have jus primae noctis (law of the first night), droit du seigneur (the lord's right) over my subjects here as (alledgedly) ancient kings did ? ;)

[respiridus]

Quote: PS If I am 'king' does that mean I have jus primae noctis (law of the first night), droit du seigneur (the lord's right) over my subjects here as (alledgedly) ancient kings did ?

Or maybe the rights King Elvis had? ;-) :lol:

[erolz]

respiridus wrote: Another thing:

A formal organization would mean that we would have to sit down and draft a "katastatiko", in essence a legal document that says - among other things - what we believe in and what we're fighting for. Creating such a document, and signing it could clear things up and give us more status.

I would just say at this point that for me the 'point' or 'purpose' of setting up this forum was and is to provide a 'neutral' (bicommunal) space where Cypriots and other can discuss Cyprus issues in a respectful manner.

I have no problem with evolution of the site or things 'growing out' from the site, but I would have concerns with anything that might impinge on this 'original' mission / purpose. The site was not set up to be a campaiging site, or to have it's 'own' view and opinions, but merely to be a neytral space were indivduals could express theirs and view others.

[respiridus]

I realise that. The idea was that some of us would like to "turn political". If and when it happens, it might have nothing to do with the forum at all (this depends on you and the forum members of course).

And, of course, we'd have to decide what we'll be "politicizing" about. We haven't talked about this at all yet.

[zan]

And then the fun starts.

[respiridus]

Quote: And then the fun starts.

Not really. The prime objective should be the reunification of Cyprus, in a two-communities state where the majority doesn't oppress the minority, and the minority doesn't strungle the majority. I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

[erolz]

cypezokyli wrote: its something that i thought for a while now. what would you people think about using the forum as platform for articles to be published in cyprus newspapers?

what is the point?
1.we get to sent letters in the press signed by both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot. i istrongly beleive that is absent from our press - at least in the south.

I think this idea has merit and could be done 'tomorrow' without any complications really. At the end of the day if you want to write or promote the writing of a 'letter to editor' of Cypriot papers and seek to have it 'co signed' by members here and presented as such, i think all the difficulty will be in deciding what to write, and agreeing that, rather than any 'functionality' of the site atm.
For me the simple way of doing this is for each such letter to be signed by those that give their explicit consent for such. The site is a faciliating place for this action, but the site itself carries no opinions. If however the idea is to have letters signed 'talkcyprus.org' and expressed as the opinions of the 'organisation' - then is is a very complex thing that would require fundamental changes to the ethos, puprose ans structure of the site as it currently exists.

So a letter that said something like 'this letter was produced jointly via the tlakcyprus.org site and signed up o by the following people' is one thing and relatively easy to do as the site exits. A letter just signed 'talkcyprus.org' is another thing enbtirely and much more complex and requiring fudamental changes.

[zan]

Give us the details on how that is to be achieved.
I would recommend you open another thread in the solutions section. :wink:

[respiridus]

Quote: I would recommend you open another thread in the solutions section.

I already have. It's called "Respiridus Plan v1".

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1621

When I have time, I'll go through all comments/objections I got, and create a version 2. ;-)

[city]

erolz wrote: I am more than happy to lok at adding functionality to the site (as a 'faciliator of member wishes - not as 'king'). However we do need to know what functionality it is that we wish to add? A (real) blogging system, a document production and publishing system, some kind of 'wiki' system ? These are all different but overlapping systems. We would need to decide what it we actualy want and need.

Maybe a CMS (Content Management System) would be suitable here.
People can upload and edit their articles and others (depending on how access rights are set up) could also edit such content.

On the other hand, if we are looking to write up an article only (for the beginning) I think this can easily be done by using the sites current functionality.

[moonskin]

G'day cypezokyli, Erol, Pantelis & everyone else,

I read your ideas about writing bi-communal (this is the keyword here I believe, right?) articles together and I must say that I like the idea very much. However, I have serious doubts whether there are enough people in the forum who discusses the Cyprus Problem at all, leave aside discussing it seriously so that an article could emerge out of these discussions, equipped with original, inspiring ideas or proposals so that we can submit to newspapers. I appreciate your suggestion a lot and I value it very much. I give you my promise that I will take part in it as much as I can. But I think this is a serious problem concerning the resources for such a project in terms of individuals contributing here. What do you think?

In my opinion, the same things applies for Respy's ideas, which are quite exciting but also very difficult to achieve. Let's take one step at a time while keeping bigger goals in mind like the ones you have proposed above Resp.

Bottom line: I think we need more people who are really devoted to this kind of activities. We should discuss ways of reaching to such young Cypriots.

PS: Erol, I think the idea is to present the role of talkcyprus as the platform this article emerged, and the article owned only by the individuals who sign it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers.

[zan]

Wikepedia have already tried that and as far as I am concerned all it has done is allowed the illiterate vandals access to well written ideas. They change a few words and repost.

[respiridus]

Moonskin: Perhaps we should try setting up a meeting during Easter vacation, and ask people who want to participate to come. If there's enough response, we go ahead. The forum will hopefully be larger then, too, thus allowing us to have a larger pool of people.

[cypezokyli]

erolz wrote:

Quote: So a letter that said something like 'this letter was produced jointly via the tlakcyprus.org site and signed up o by the following people' is one thing and relatively easy to do as the site exits. A letter just signed 'talkcyprus.org' is another thing enbtirely and much more complex and requiring fudamental changes.

erol, in my original post thats what i wrote:
Quote:
we can add at the end that the aricle represents only those who sign it and not the forum
we can add that the talkcyprus.org was used as a platform, therefore attracting more members

the original idea, is to get persons signing one or more articles that would have a a concensus from a number of people on both communities.
using the talkcyprus signiture indeed will make things very complicated as we would need the concensus from all forum members.