We're off to an exciting start!

Announcements
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First of all, we want to extend a warm welcome to all of you! The team at Policies for the People (P4P) has been working behind the scenes with anticipation for how this platform would be received. The eagerness that you all have displayed in a single day has been remarkable and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds not only for this online community but, more importantly, for our country.

So, thank you for signing up! Your policy contributions have blown us away.

The vision for Policies for the People

We want to attract Policy Contributors who may not fit the stereotypical mold, but are well informed and passionate about finding new ways, big and small, to affect change in the government. We want to find the voices and ideas that will actually make a difference in the everyday life of Americans.

To be honest, we didn’t expect the adoption to grow as quickly as it did. This has been a good problem for us to wrestle through.

Here are few things we want to be true of P4P:

  1. Thoughtfully crafted and innovative policy ideas are submitted by those with deep knowledge of and passion for the topic.
  2. Policies ideas are engaged with and “vetted” by the people. This is the “open source” part of P4P. We want to the best ideas and most existential issues to percolate to the top.
  3. The policy contributions should have a lasting quality and actionable items.
  4. Contributors should avoid duplicating or reiterating existing policy ideas. Before posting a new policy to the platform, please try to spend some time searching for policies related to your topic. If there is something already written that is in line with your policy idea please contribute to that policy by leaving a comment there and voting for it instead of creating a new policy thread.

We want farmers telling us how best to reform our food production. We want educators telling us how to steward the next generation. We want healthcare professionals speaking into how to pursue wholeness. We want entrepreneurs engaged in solving the many economic issues facing America.

We’ve pinned 5 posts that kicked off the platform to give exemplars for folks on policy proposals.

New Category: Education for the People

We’ve added a new Education section! Please post there as well.

So, how does voting work?

When you create an account with Policies for the People, you are given a limited (but generous) amount of votes to cast for policies that are important to you. To vote for a policy, open the policy page and click the ‘vote’ button to the left of the title.

The voting feature is a great way for us to get a sense as to what policies are resonating with people. If there are duplicate policies that are merged into single threads by our administration team, those votes will aggregate.

We want to curate policies that leaders in power can act upon. If you feel strongly about a policy, become an advocate for it and encourage others to vote as well; who knows, it might just find its way to the Oval Office and beyond.

We’re thrilled with the reception so far and are excited for the weeks ahead as Election Day is just around the corner. Let’s keep the ideas flowing!

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Thank you for the education tab.

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There should be a down-vote button as well. :-1:t3:

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Very excited about what I see on here - many common ideas, but also solutions that I never thought of, and that’s quite exciting!

Some questions:

  1. Is there a way to “cross-tag” policies and notify the admins that they are candidates for merging?
  2. Is there a way to identify ourselves, or be vetted as, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a particular topic? (farmers telling us how best to farm…)
  3. Sometimes the best ideas come from people who are NOT SMEs because they can see things with fresh eyes, or bring the discipline from a different area to bear on a problem in a way the SMEs don’t see. How will you manage that, particularly when merging or consolidating threads?
  4. When you merge topics, how will you preserve the ideas for both (multiple) threads without appending one long thread onto the end of the other? Sometimes there may be great ideas in both and I wouldn’t want a merge to bury the lead.

Again, thanks for this forum, I feel brilliant things happening!

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Appreciate what the project is attempting! I definitely think some stricter approval moderation is needed. “Thoughtfully crafted” is not the first thing I think of when I see many (though not all) of the posts so far. From my experience working with legislators, anything other than a fully written bill with a “please sponsor this” ask is essentially yelling at a cloud. Very few actually try to come up with how to implement broader ideas so “we should do something about X” is basically useless.

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Although… some of the “we should do something about <…>” topics have inspired me to write up something like a plan (or a small proposal - just the bones of it) on several topics already.

Most folks can identify the pain they’re experience, but not everyone has a plan to resolve it. Plopping the pain out there may inspire other folks to propose a plan to address it.

So I’m ok with those.

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Cross-tag reporting is definitely useful. “Megathread” concepts from other sites could be helpful here. I do think there is an inherent flaw in the “no duplicates” model, though, in that frankly sometimes being first and being quality are fundamentally opposed. Hopefully any merges/megathreads are heavily moderated to curate for quality.

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That’s a good point. Perhaps splitting into a second forum would let the best of both worlds.

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There are a LOT of us who have the vision and experience to help guide these policies, but do we want educators guiding the education, or do we want parents who have goals and the children’s future at heart? I am NOT good at writing policy, but I am great at guiding it and picking them apart.

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Agreed @Mainwar.
As I noted, the SMEs may know the stuff, but there are other disciplines that may bring different vision and approaches to solve problems.

I think those subject to those policies have a HUGE stake in how the policy should go - certainly as part of goals, and acceptance / rejection / refinement of proposed methods.

Particularly where folks are just expressing their pain, it’s a call for something different than the policies currently dictated/applied.

That said, I don’t want non-farmer regulators telling me how to farm, because they literally don’t understand, can’t comprehend, or are entirely ignorant on things that matter to me as a farmer.

Likewise, I don’t want mega-farmers telling me, as a micro-farmer, how I should be regulated (there’s a particular pain point I’m expressing).

As to writing vs. picking: Every Writer Needs An Editor. This is why we collaborate, with each of of us bringing our strengths and shoring up each other’s weaknesses. :star_struck:

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I would hope this site gets a time to flourish before changes, after changes go into effect. It’s working now, and I believe part of that is everyone is equal, there isn’t somebody stating with their badge that they are the resident expert on such and such so their opinion is obviously the correct one.
We haven’t even been going for a week yet, but we have many great topics already in discussion.
I like the idea for merging, overlapping policy ideas and the sooner that could be handled the less amount of merging that will be needed.
The admins could set up a “key phrase, word” logger in the title section of the new policy creation. If the key words tag as possible being a duplicate, the site could direct the potential poster to that policy to see if it was similar to their idea.

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Hey, I am ALL in, maybe I misread the sentence, but the educators, aka the NEA union and such,… have me really worried about my kids education now. it was easier back in the 70’s and 80’s.

I really like the work that has structured this so far and I hope I can contribute in a positive manner

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@Soldritica - when posting on my PC (chrome web interface), the system does give me a list of “similar posts” in the right-hand pane when I start a new policy post.

If you’re on a mobile device, I don’t know how that works.

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[Possible to make an Energy tab?]

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I was excited about this when I first read about it on X and almost immediately signed up. I proposed a policy that’s been on my mind for years, edited it and posted. There were 73 or so other suggested policies in the Liberty section at that moment, and it was a thrill to see hundreds in the section the next morning. Its encouraging to see so many citizens so well informed and invested in our American Experiment.

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This is outstanding. I cannot believe this didn’t exist until now. What the hell have we been doing…

Hooray for us :raised_hands:t2::dizzy:

P.S. I wish I had an ample and friendly button somewhere on the screen so I could click on that and route me directly back to my own policy, or say, the last few policies I visited. :face_holding_back_tears:

Edit: the fix I made for this was to add my OWN policies to the “Quick Links” in the navigation panel on the Left

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I love this forum idea, makes me feel I have a potential voice in the state of our union and about its future. I saw one of my posts get merged into a much larger thread and it was exciting to see it in a much larger mold. As this site grows there’s going to be thousands of topics and it will get harder to see what’s already been posted. I agree with the keywords idea just like when making a new reply, where it says this reply is similar to one you’ve already posted, it can tell you if your post is similar to another.

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Idea: The major topics should be rolled-up and reposted with language formatted for a bill/amendment. Letter each paragraph and number each sentence, allowing simplified comments on specific sections. This will allow the community to iterate content into a highly agreed-upon, easy to submit piece of legislation.

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you should post this idea as a policy in Liberty. Getting the highest voted items structured and complied as a draft document that allows the community to edit easily.

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