31–40 of 59 posts
I know this is all in good spirit and you just want to show some appreciation for the help. But rewarding programmers by number of commits is a bit perverse. Nowadays everyone generally agrees that paying programmers per line of code is a bad idea. I think rewarding based on number of commits creates very similar unwanted incentives and should probably be avoided completely.
I was pretty surprised to see the EFF's naive take on the Tea Party [1] in "recent deeplinks" underneath the linked article, which seems not to recognize it as pretty much an astroturf instrument of the neo-bircher Kochs [2], [3]. Of course co-opting TP sympathizers around a common goal of opposing overweening government surveillance to unknown purpose is a Good Thing, but unless the EFF, an org I've respected for ag…
The US House of Reps is almost done with development for an API (that was spearheaded by outside organizations like CMF) for 'campaign' communications (communications where the majority of the messages are 'similar') from third party advocacy organizations. After this occurs, the hope is that only messages sent via web forms are completely unique messages sent from constituents without the assistance of a third party…
I think it's really great that the EFF is reaching out to the community like this. I reached out to donate time and I encourage you to do the same.
I was pretty surprised to see the EFF's naive take on the Tea Party [1] in "recent deeplinks" underneath the linked article, which seems not to recognize it as pretty much an astroturf instrument of the neo-bircher Kochs [2], [3]. Of course co-opting TP sympathizers around a common goal of opposing overweening government surveillance to unknown purpose is a Good Thing, but unless the EFF, an org I've respected for ag…
If you're trying to get self-identified Tea Partyers on board, a great start is not alienating them. Appealing to the aspects of their ideology we can all agree on is a great idea to garner allies. The Tea Party's "grassroots" origin may be spurious, but the sense of injustice that fueled its adoption by ordinary folk is real enough. As I understand it, a lot of basically normal, non-frothing people now believe that…
I found the piece to be a very (actually surprisingly so) savvy bit of strategic outreach from EFF, even if it was quite blunt in its tactical approach.
See also: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Republican-Rand-Paul-...
In the UK we have a decent website for contacting one's MP: https://www.writetothem.com/about-us And it works! For petitions to Number 10 we also have: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/ ...and it works, as in you can sign something that will be totally ignored (eyes roll)! So in every country we are duplicating effort. Hence I think the EFF need to think beyond the shores of that renegade British colony known as the U…
"How technical do I need to be?" - not very. Sorry, what?
"You should be comfortable using Github, having basic programming proficiency in at least one language and have a reasonable grasp of HTML and Javascript. Experience collaborating via IRC is handy, but not critical." So... very technical?
Basic proficiency in a random programming language and some grasp of HTML is something that's taught in a high school computer class or any introductory course for a tangentially related college program such as statistics or physics - this level of proficiency is something that a random student (of not-computer subjects) is somewhat likely to have.
I mean, it definitely is technical and does require some background, but it's appropriate to say "a bit technical, but you don't need to be an expert".
I'm really impressed with the project. It's a great idea - both the concept and the execution are brilliant. The bookmarklet for generating the yaml file could be used for all sorts of things - I've never seen this idea before. Even better, it's being used to crowdsource the data for the tool. I'm really impressed with this. Kudos to all involved.
I was pretty surprised to see the EFF's naive take on the Tea Party [1] in "recent deeplinks" underneath the linked article, which seems not to recognize it as pretty much an astroturf instrument of the neo-bircher Kochs [2], [3]. Of course co-opting TP sympathizers around a common goal of opposing overweening government surveillance to unknown purpose is a Good Thing, but unless the EFF, an org I've respected for ag…
If you're trying to get self-identified Tea Partyers on board, a great start is not alienating them. Appealing to the aspects of their ideology we can all agree on is a great idea to garner allies. The Tea Party's "grassroots" origin may be spurious, but the sense of injustice that fueled its adoption by ordinary folk is real enough. As I understand it, a lot of basically normal, non-frothing people now believe that…
the site - http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/ the code - https://github.com/parliamentwatch/parliamentwatch
the site is in german, but you might guess the content with a little help from an online translator. It is very popular and linked to from the biggest german online media. It might be an indicator for it's success that several conservative politicians tried to fight this site with all kinds of tricks, but they still did not succeed :)
Unfortunately the code is drupal, it certainly would be much better to convert this to some more flexible framework like pyramid or django, but it works.
It might be a much better alternative to make questions to congressmen publicly visible than just sending stuff into spam-folders of people that do not have interest at all in being contacted by "the people".