Forum Post: Who or what killed OWS.org?
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 9, 2012, 11:58 a.m. EST by BannedForTruth
(233)
from Christiana, TN
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Today we can see the same few names post over and over. So i ask what killed OWS.org? I want to know what you think.
I feel the same way. A lot of BS is here, but I try to stay real. This is probably par for course when it comes to the evolution of a forum. There is a lot of impotent rage going on around everywhere including this forum. Stay with us. Timing is everything and the time is not here, yet. Solidarity
Do you think that impotent rage is what accounts for the stunning lack of civility here? I think a lot of people would like to engage in a real dialogue with others, rather than an exchange of insults and a refusal to even try to understand the other person's point of view.
Biggest probelm with is OWS is they do not have a specific Aim, other than occupy physically, they need to have specific aim, like banning out souring, saying no to open economy, closing the borders. if OWS has speific aims it is easy to achive
I was asking about this forum not OWS.
They aren't separate things. Would this forum exist without the OWS movement?
I think that the forum is somewhat representative of the movement as a whole.
Numbers dwindling - very low participation levels at the GA's. Even some major cities have only 5-10 regulars showing up at the GA's. Many Working Groups have been abandoned.
Infighting - check out the some of the Working Group discussions. Or even some other cities forums - where the organizers and what seems like regular active participants are themselves fighting like cats and dogs on the forums. As well as within and amongst the Working Groups.
Going in circles - check out some of the discussion in the Working Groups. They go in endless circles because there is no leadership or direction, no one to draw a line in the sand to move anything forward.
Much discussion over the use of non-violence and what constitutes violence - some Occupy's are working on defining their own rules, what does and does not constitute violence. Occupy Oakland has a new Working Group, as of Feb 1, the Nonviolent Caucus, dedicated to educate and inform about the use of Nonviolent Resistance.
There are many paralells between the forum and what is happening on the ground.
You would you are on the list of about 10 that keep this forum alive.
lol. That's sweet. Thanks. I think. : )
Seriously - am I wrong? Tell me? Tell me how this forum is separate from the OWS movement.
To be sure, there is probably alot more discussion about politics here than in the movement itself, within the Working Groups. There's alot of diverse topics discussed here, more so probably than in the active Working Groups perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. I was reading the Minutes from one meeting of the Demands Working Group where they were discussing impeaching President Obama. And that is just what happened to get into the Minutes. Who knows all what they might be discussing, random discussions, that may not even make it into the Minutes.
But the examples I listed above, some of the similarities I pointed out - am I wrong?
So if this site represents this movement so well, how come the visitors number has dropped so heavily?
I said it was "somewhat representative" and I gave examples. I did not say it represents the "movement so well".
Participation on this site dropping. Are you saying participation on the ground is gaining supporters? Are there more people/supporters on the ground, protesting, going to GA's, participating in direct action activities?
Theoretically as the people are pushed of the street you would think they would come here right?
No. I don't. I think BannedForTruth below is correct in saying that this forum is mainly a bunch of anonymous people. For the most part, not actively involved on the ground. But for some of the regulars here, it's like a little community, that we've gotten to know eachother - some of us. So in that way too, it's a little like the movement on the ground. OWS advocates creating communities.
I think as camps have been broken up, they still have workspaces that they meet in. And they work together on the Working Group sites and also have WikiGroups for some of this. You would see this if you go to the Working Group sites. They have their own forums there also where they communicate online.
I disagree, this forum does not represent anything but anonymous people on the intranet.
I agree it's a bunch of anonymous people. But I'm just saying there are some similarities between what is happening in the larger movement on the ground and what is going on here.
They are not completely separate as you seem to be suggesting. It seems like you have your mind made up, or your idea of what may be causing any problems on the forum. So why don't you just tell us what you think the problems of the forum might be.
the government could stop using bombs today
Too much political talk for anarchists.
Too much violent talk for peaceful protesters.
Too little direct action talk for anarchists.
Anarchists fled to anarchist websites, liberals to political websites, conspiracy theorists to Icke's website, conservatives went back to church, doers started doing, and peaceful protesters are reminiscing about the old hippy days.
By trying to please everybody, this website ended up attracting about 10 regular users. The only thing you find here is watered down talk. For example, it's much better to go on an economy forum if you want to learn something about economy.
You mentioned to much talk for doers twice.
Good eye. Doers really don't like to talk, they do.
To say the forum website here is 'dead' is a false statement...what is the intent here...
There is a lot of negativity from attacks...pretty obvious that isn't helping...
Are u trying to help or stir up negativity...
oh no, negativity is totally allowed here. What isn't allowed is talk about Ron Paul or political action not directly under the supervision of the NYCGA. What is not allowed is anything critical of Occupy elements on the fringe as if we all must were the stains of unsavory individuals for the sake of Brand protection. What isn't allowed is anything related the very reason for any support this movement has. It's like signing up to a god damn political party all over again.
I'm not sure why there so many negative posts getting thru, but discussion should be about issues, not partisan bickering, which can become off-topic...
People can get tired of following a specific person, and then have a lot of the candidates positions end up being questionable, and then told you are 'not being a good supporter' when criticizing particular policies, so I can understand not wanting this to be like campaign commercials in here...
If you have a specific idea or policy u think is good to discuss, that is probably a good thing...
I have seen particular attempts to advocate a political action, and some dump a long prewritten text into a discussion, kind of disruptive too...not saying they all would...
You should bring up any points u think are important, but we can see that there are some reasons for wanting discussion to stick to discussing topics too...
As far as discussions that are critical of certain OWS direction, I have seen many critical discussions in here, so not sure about 'not allowed is anything critical of ows', maybe a little bit overstated...
I do agree a lot of negativity on the forum is a problem...
You are clearly lacking some understanding or are just ignoring what I have said. I can't reply directly to what you are saying because it's not relevant to the point I was making. Thanks for your input.
What?! With my real name?
Winter, Break up of Camps, Media Coverage Fall off, not kissing Obama's ass for political gain.
Come Spring, in an Election Year - it will rise again - ten to one hundred fold.
Again this was about this forum not OWS.
Nothing killed it. As you can see it is alive and well, in spite of some people's wishes to the contrary.
I left over a month ago, just checking in for the first time today. I left because it got political. I had hoped that OWS would stay away from promoting presidential candidates, as we know that alienates all those who don't support a particular candidate. I was hoping the focus was going to stay on the private sector of Wall Street publicly traded companies as was much opf the original focus...successfully changing BOA policy about those $60 a year fees, and bringing attention to how Corporations influence politics which it did in the beginning but really it has moved over into everyone promoting there candidate, and to be honest I go tsick of hearing every other thread about Ronpaul, or attacks on Obama or attacks on the conservative right. At one time we were together there were actually some republican defectors who I was chatting with who were angry that coporations took tax payer money for bailouts...but with all the attacking why would anyone other than the stereotypical people stick around, OWS is guilty of not listening to those who have differeing political views simply because of ethical and moral differences. I learned from this forum that I have much more in common with every american of varying political affiliations than I thought. Everyone could rally around the idea that banks and hedgefunds were to blame for the current economic state of America. But when people start promoting divisiveness through pushing one cadidate over another It all starts to fall apart, I will come back again and see if the tone has change but I suspect as election time gets closer the political bickering will get more intense...lets focus on non partisan solutions to todays issues...we need all voices for a true democracy even the ones you don't agree with...in the scheme of things it doesn't matter if you are pro-choice or anti aboriton, it doesn't matter if you believe in gay marriage, it doesn't matter if you are a libertarian or if you are a republican, all that matters is finding the commonalities we have not the differences, and focusing on them to create change for all humanity, we did it in small part with the bank fees and getting people to move there money to credit unions, those actions happened because everyone could get behind it, leave your ethical/moral/political agendas at the door and focus on the few subjects we have true consensus on across all political parties. There is still much hope for occupy to shift the focus back. Think how successful the bank transfer day was, some 600,000 accounts were closed that is the kind of impact that makes corporations start listening. not sitting around debating issues that you can never change someones views on.
The violence in Oakland. The lack of commitment to non-violence. The realization that there will be more violence to come. Due to the nature of this movement. It's a Direct Action/Resistance movement. For anyone that likes that sort of thing.
it's hard the teach people not to be violent
I'll let you take the credit
the protests were very popular at first
so a lot of traffic came through
that has slowed
Seriously, you give no credit to the management of the forum? Every forum has to deal with the same population and angst from competitors. Why did this forum die after getting to the top of the SEO food chain?
I don't understand the questions
what competitors ? other forums?
Search engine optimization? either by content or visitors
wiki is at the top for "occupy wall street "
Turn off your personal results and try again. The lead forum for the key words "occupy forum" is occupywallstreetforum.com. Every forum has to deal with competitors trying to sabotage their forum (if they are actually a competitor) and they seem to be able to control trolls. Why not this one? Visitors don't get you SEO, clickthrough and content do. This forum isn't even on page one of the results for those keywords. In a few weeks, maybe a couple months tops, this won't be on page one for the keyword "Occupy" either because the drop in new content.
in google
how do I turn off personal results?
why doesn't visitors cause click through?
Because google cannot measure visitors unless you are using their service for analytics. The only way they can understand your traffic is when people click the links in google results, telling them that people are going to your site. Clickthrough and what google picks up for content is all the info they have available. There is no way to distinguish between user names and conversation when they index the sites content.
there should be a set of buttons to the top right on the google search page, click the globe.
The source of this very page ends thusly:
My bad so they are. what does that tell you about the forum not showing up on page one of the keywords "occupy forum"? Seems to me they have all the tools, and two month ago they were on page one for the exact same keywords. Was it worth showing me that, or have we cut off our nose to spite our face?
A correction is always worth a comment. If we can't correct each others mistakes, how can we hope to achieve some kind of truth? If you can't accept that others will correct you when you fail, you'll be the only one with half a nose and spit on your face.
a robot can read a clients history
why could the search engine follows those ?
no, robots do not do that. That info is collected with cookies and user sessions.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html
robots being specifically web crawlers
www.occupywallstreetforum.com ranks over 1,186,336 globally and doesn't rank at all in the U.S. in Alexa. So what are you talking about? It's not popular.
Your count doesn't have anything to do with SEO. It has to do with ranking built by people that measure the popularity in order to get you to go to there site and make them money from the Pay_per_view ads on their site. Under what keywords do they rank that? Exactly, none. there is no context and that isn't how Search Engines work. You have to type in words, that sets the context. I fully support Occupy (I didn't always) and the 99%. So don't act like I am attacking the movement. I am stating facts about people being banned because of the politicians they support, or posting links to something not sanctioned by the NYCGA even though this is supposed to be a leaderless movement. These symptoms are specific to this forum. Why? Why does this forum act outside the standards set forth by the Occupy GAs? Censoring people for political affiliation is clearly a violation of standards that have been agreed upon by every Occupy GA in the country.
Being a critical participant in the movement is one thing. Being openly hostile to the movement is another altogether.
I am not thrasy. And I am not being hostile to the movement by far, I will continue to support the movement even tho this forum doesn't. I am complaining about this forum and it's mods acting in direct contrast to the mandates set forth and agreed to be every GA in the country. Banning a politicians name and those who support said politician is way off base. Banning people because they don't support under the Occupy brand but still support the movement. Removing threads that are politically unsavory while demanding your freedom of speech. Doing nothing to manage the trolls but banning anyone who retaliates against them. It's bullshit and you know it.
You are off topic. I was merely comparing the rankings of this site and the one you mention in Alexa. I'm sure it has something to do with Meta tags or keywords or something like that and nothing as sinister as you mention.
I wouldn't take any of this at all seriously. I've been an active though part time participant in OWS since September 17. I've also very regularly looked in and participated on this forum since shortly after it was organized. Very quickly I came to understand the difference. OWS, the NYCGA and the various Occupations and GAs around the nation and around the world are the movement. What this forum is is something altogether different, a mixture of the curious, people who think they are movement supporters but know very little about it, the hostile and a handful of people who are so isolated that they have no other outlet to express their feelings about the movement whether sympathetic or hostile. But taken as a whole this forum is basically a bunch of kibbitzers and should not in and of itself be confused with OWS.
Who said I take anything seriously? I was just merely pointing out that the site he/she mentions is not more popular than this site just because it appears higher up in the google search for "occupy forum." Do with that info what you want.
But what is the relationship of this or any site to the movement? Some people seem to think that this site and others like it are in some sense part of the movement or at least representative of the movement and as such the popularity of this site or a site like it or lack thereof is indicative of the shape of the movement. In my personal experience, or at least it is my perception, that the relationship between sites like this and the actual movement is extremely tenuous, though I think that people who are extremely active on site like this but who have seldom or never been to an occupation or GA might not see it that way.
I, personally, think OWS is more of an offline movement than an online movement. This forum, when functioning well, sifts through and debates issues that are important to the movement. With the number of trolls, many of whom are likely paid by pro-business groups, trying to destroy this forum, I guess you'd have to conclude that they fear the forum, they think it is important to the movement.
As I'm active both in OWS and on this site, my own view of this site is not especially optimistic. I think I've been active on this site pretty much from the beginning and aside from perhaps the first few days after which it became much more widely known, my own experience is that it has hardly been a place where you could find serious movement debates. It is not a matter of comparing apples to oranges. It's more like comparing apples to Tuesday. Virtually from the very beginning this site, in my experience at least, has been the habitat of erstwhile supporters who really know very little about the actual movement and people openly hostile to the movement, not a place where serious movement issues can be seriously discussed. One of the best examples of this is all the ideas that are floated by so called movement supporters. Some are good, some are bad, some are goofy. But good, bad or indifferent in almost no instance has there ever been a serious proposal regarding how to actually get the movement to adopt these ideas, mostly because the people proposing them are absolutely clueless about how the movement actually works.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I've had some great discussions on here and enjoy the people. It helps to know who you want to engage with and to search for threads that are interesting. Again, the number of people that show up here to cause dissension is probably a good indicator of the influence, at least, they think, the forum is having.
I've had great discussions here too, but the discussions I've had at occupations and in GAs and working groups, many of which might seem superficially of less consequence than the discussions here, I think are of expodentially greater import because they are of an actual movement in movement and not mere speculations.
Ideas matter and the discussion of ideas matters. Hence the trolls.
Correct Beautiful :
[-] 4 points by beautifulworld (3653) 18 minutes ago
Ideas matter and the discussion of ideas matters. Hence the trolls. ↥like ↧dislike permalink
Real discussion advances understanding and promotes education and sparks ideas on how to take effective and proper action.
Hence the attacks of the status-quo, greedy/corrupt, or Troll by any other name.
I was replying to your comment, if it's off topic, then it's because you took us off topic. Otherwise your simply resorting to credibility issues to distract from a poor argument on your part. I never said sinister, I said mismanaged. Lack of experience is not the same as "sinister", again an attempt to distort. If you don't have the ability to criticize the part sof this movement that don't work, you may as well not protest wallstreet either. Thinking for yourself is thinking for yourself, take it or leave it.
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The trolls have frustrated many.
Some who were attacked by them, never came back.
Then there was the bot attacks, and the attack of the bigots.
This forum has been under attack since day one, and it continues to this day.
Although I too, tire of the attacks, I am undaunted.
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My question is why? Nothing was done to prevent it but I can think of many instances when the decline of this forum has been accelerated. I can think of many threads that have been removed and positions of authority taken in a leaderless movement. I hate to say it but I think the owner(s) have been bought.
How do you get "-1 Comments "?
maybe
someone responded and deleted and some sort of glitch tipped the counting mechanism
commie lie machine infested with trolls and owned by arachist commie trolls.... a bad combo
get on jinnwe
Go somewhere else.
If you have nothing but childish crap like this, go find yourself a right wing site and have at it.
Remember this is not supposed to be a left wing site.
R.E.M - Pop Song
Not Dead and not dieing.
That is only the dream of the Corrupt and Greedy Powers That Be.
This is where we are going:
Agree to Disagree. Unite in common cause to end corruption and it's manipulations. Lets all move forward together.
Republican, Democrat, Left, Right or middle. It does not matter.
There is corruption throughout government State and Federal..
There are good people of all of these persuasions ( listed above ) still in government also.
Let us stop arguing about differences, and start discussing common cause.
Let us all get past the distractions, and start working together to move forward in healing government, stopping corruption and making a better world for "ALL".
Occupy isn't dieing and that isn't the question. Why is this forum dieing? I still fully support the movement, but this forum is no longer a viable or trusted resource for the movement. 8-12 regular users is hardly what this forum should have when it ranks #1 on search results for the key word "Occupy". So why is that? That is the question.
Thank you, some people confuse issues so much.
It is not dead or dieing for that exact reason:
"when it ranks #1 on search results for the key word "Occupy".
If there were no one stopping in there would be no ranking. Participation is not just commenting or posting. It is seeing what is going on and what is being said. Some ( many? ) may be doing research and considering what and how they feel. They may or may not join the on-line conversation, or at some time they may feel they have enough information to comment on.
Posting and commenting is not required.
Thinking and education is promoted.
That is why this seemingly small activity is not a true representation of what is happening.
Look at the scarcity ( ? ) of positive contributors. Look at the heat and volume of attacks on positive contributions for awareness.
Attacks would not happen if the site and information presented on it were irrelevant.
Well said, DKA. I often stop by and read comments without commenting myself (hard to believe, I know). Often -- and this is very important in understanding ripple effects -- I see a link, follow it up, and learn something I not only did not know, but I didn't even know I did not know it! That shows me another way to see things, so I wander all around the internet, learning more that I didn't know I didn't know. Then I find thoughtful, intelligent groups of people discussing solutions and new ideas. So for me, and hopefully for many others who "stop by", OWS has led to my education. It has also demonstrated why governance is so difficult: people must agree on a goal and a way to get there before a step is taken.
I'm not here to debate the validity of my 20 years experience in the IT industry. You'll just have to wait and see.
We both will have to wait and see.
In the mean time I will continue to advocate for positive communication and recognition of common cause to promote unity against Corruption Greed and Manipulation.
As will I. But I will do so in places that I am not being isolated or prevented from growing the movement or allow one person to destroy large segments of support simply because they can build a forum. There are many other Occupy forums I still enjoy and use. I will however continue to come here and protest the lack of responsibility observed by a single person leading to such a negative impact on a movement we have all waited half our lives to see and be part of. If they cannot provide resources in a responsible manner for this movement, they should retract such resources. The same way I do not support Black Block and violence, I will not support the abuse of this movement for personal bias or pleasure.
I can agree fully with that statement. That is a great deal of my personal belief and hence my advocating.
Maturity and wisdom do not just happen. And when you reach those states. You Have Not Arrived.
You have only just started the long and never ending journey.
The trolls did it. They're paid by the Koch brothers
Can you point me to some of these trolls or tell me what they did?
If they are paying, where do I sign up?