We've soft-launched the new Greenpeace discussion forum! Greenpeace loyalists will remember the fun we had over the years at the old GCC, where we
named the Greenpeace ship "Esperanza" in an online competitionfound a volunteer ("Polecat") to go to the Amazon to help indigenous peoplerecruited more than 60 million USD in potential tourist income to Iceland if they'd stop whaling (that's now more than 90 100 million and climbing!)provided an activist resource for user-run campaigns from New Zealand to Italy to Finlandheld open forums with Greenpeace staff and campaignerscranked up the volume on countless Greenpeace actions with a fabulous network of multipliersand ran or created an entire suite of Greenpeace actions that originated with the community rather than in-houseThe forum also provided, of course, a great sounding board for supporters to question Greenpeace about its policies and decisions, and for Greenpeace staff to sound out the community on new ideas and innovations.
The old system was built on Squishdot by Eco-wizard Radagast with no budget at a time when no major green group was running a forum of any description. It eventually fell victim to its own success, collapsing under the weight of too many users, too many threads, and a server that developed early-onset arthritis from running too many triathalons at the age of five.
Our new system is built on Vbulletin, software which we bought for the princely sum of less than 200 bucks and has all the bells and whistles you'd ever want from a discussion forum. Rate threads, rate users, private messaging, opinion polls, RSS feeds in RSS feeds out, Avatars, etc.
Let us know what you think as we crank up toward our launch window. We call it Louder than Words now, but we're looking for suggestions. And what about the colors? (That's always good for a rip-roaring argument, it seems) What stuff do you want to see on the front page? Jump in, ye Cyberactivists Online Activists old and new, let us know what you think.
It's your basement -- tell us what to put on the walls and where you want the couch.