New Forum Added

After a hell of a lot of work, a forum for a secular, democratic Iran has been created.

This is an experiment, to test whether co-operative work can be recorded in a forum, as opposed to files and directories on the web site, and emails and chats hidden from the public eye.

Security Considerations

Till now, volunteers’ work has been carried out via email and on-line chat, with the results occasionally recorded on the web site. The files and directories of the latter have been a lot of work. As well, volunteers’ access has to be controlled–with respect to the rest of the web site, and to each other’s work. Volunteers need to be able to co-operate on the same tasks, yet be unable to edit or delete others’ work. And they must not be able to have adverse effects on the rest of the web site.

A more pedestrian consideration is that a volunteer might not want his/her/per unfinished work to be publicly viewable. Per would want a password-protected area.

And there are more serious security considerations as well: As volunteers are anonymous, there is great potential for vandalism, sabotage and plain incompetence!

In other words, the threats range from the mullahs’ cyber-agents to well-meaning under-competence!

An even more serious consideration, however, is transparency.

Transparency

All work for a secular, democratic Iran is accountable.

As well as being right, and vital, in principle, a crucial benefit of transparency is that it shows people that work is being done! The fight against the mullahs is a struggle against despondence. Outside Iran, there are eight million people hoping for something to happen; and eighty million hope inside!

Consequently, the more visible the work of the volunteers, the better.
Instead of communicating via emails and chat, the forum will be an experiment to see whether co-operation can be productive, while on public record.

Tentatively, the plan is to communicate on the forum, with the final results echoed to outside the forum, in files on the web site.