Re: [Fsfe-uk] Online Petitions

[Jocelyn Chappell]

Dave,

Thank you for your comments.

The difference between e-petitions and petitions as we always knew them 
is an interesting philisophical question.

I like your suggestion to incorporate petitioners into an online 
community to stay in touch with the issue. I note petitions.gov.pm.uk 
works now and the alternative you propose would add some complexity to a 
relatively simple system and therefore might discourage some teachers 
who would otherwise sign-up. Never the less setting up a petition system 
that is independent of:
+ the petitioned
+ the petitioners, and
+ the issues represented
would be a really interesting project I would like to be involved with.

It seems to me there is just as much work involved in running a 
successful e-petition on the pm.gov.uk site as its paper counterpart - 
except I am not sure how successful this one is yet. Similarly I spent 
as much effort writing an email to my MP as I would have writing a 
letter to bring the corresponding Early Day Motion (EDM 179) to his 
attention. It was worth it - he now supports the campaign.

It does seem petitions.pm.gov.uk being relatively new hits the headlines 
regularly at the moment. This must bring some credibility to the process 
in the eyes of those less computer oriented whom we would never-the-less 
want to encourage to sign our petition(s).

As you can see I am an advocate for and a practioner of the opposite of 
the lazy approach, that is I seek "by all possible means to save some." 
[http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=by+all+means&qs_version=31]

Regards,

Joc

Dave Page wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 09:42:31AM +0000, Stuart Yeates wrote:
>
>   
> > Might I suggest that in order for a truly significant number of
> > signatures to be garnered, we first need to build a consensus about
> > behind the a particular approach and behind a particular form of words
> > which the maximum number of people can sign up to? One petition on the
> > site has 1,379,129 signatures, but 10,000 would take us easily into
> > the top twenty on the site.
> >     
>
> There's also an argument for not using petitions.pm.gov.uk at all,
> namely that it encourages "lazy activism" with its fire-and-forget
> nature. An online petition which also allows signatories to sign up to,
> say, the FSFE newsletter would help keep people who sign it in the loop
> concerning Free Software and give them monthly reminders of the issue.
>
> Dave
>   

--
Jocelyn E. Chappell
ICT Co-ordinator
Pebble Brook School, Churchill Avenue, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP21 8LZ, UK
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[promote free and open source software in schools] 
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/schoolsoftware/

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