Dear WTCD community

Lately, I've been pondering the question, "how can we raise WTCD's positive image and influence within the 9/11 truth movement?" I, for one, as part of this blogging community, am willing to do some self-examination about the direction things have been going lately regarding our standing within the movement and recent "unpleasantness", which I doubt anybody here is very satisfied with, and to consider changing some of our tactics and strategies. I think that WTCD is a crucial beachhead of resistance not just for the cause of truth and enlightenment regarding some of the most important issues facing the world today, but also represents one of the few intelligent "full truth" sites within the controlled 9/11 truth movement as a whole that is really capable of giving the gatekeepers a run for their money, while at the same time being willing to admit that, as gretavo just said today, "W e ain't perfect here and WTCD", and "we make mistakes, we follow bogus leads, we believe in myths that some day we may well reject based on a reconsideration of the facts."

There are some very brilliant and conscious, good-hearted folks here who are capable of beating the most practiced gatekeepers in the game of logic and rhetoric hands down. So, I'm interested in looking at how we can build on our strengths and change or remove things that are holding us back and getting in the way of what we are trying to accomplish. The more people that are exposed to our quality writings and intelligent discourse, the more we can influence people who may have been duped by false arguments to re-consider their perceptions. The way we can accomplish this is #1) increasing the readership to this site, obviously, and #2) being able to post our writings on other sites. Also, I have been bringing more people to this site, particularly some of the folks I met at last weekend's media summit in Santa Cruz, and, to be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed about some of the content on this site and loss of focus of the last few weeks. I know we can do better, and I would like to seriously tap more of our powerful potential here and increase our level of professionalism.

I have some proposals that I think would help with both aspects of the above. In the last few months, I think we can all agree that for #1- increasing our readership - we haven't progressed anywhere close to our potential and the negative image problem has probably increased, especially with all the recent mudslinging between people at WTCD and people at TA. For #2 - being able to post to other sites - we've obviously had some significant setbacks with all the bannings of many of us WTCD members on other blogs in recent weeks.

Don't worry, I'm not going to, or will I ever, want to give up our basic "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" principles or give in to "mainstream 9-11 gatekeeping pressures" to increase readership just for the sake of increasing readership. But, beyond that, I think there are some areas of improvement we can work on. For example, I would like to stop discussing dirty movement politics/petty personal conflicts in our a public forum, and to make use of private forums for such discussions. I think that many of us on this blog, myself included, have sort of felt at times like we were in our own little clubhouse and could joke around and say crude things about people without worrying about being heard by people outside the clubhouse. This really backfired in terms of people on TA "listening in" to our conversations on this blog, and then using it against some of us when we subsequently posted on TA. I think we have to understand that for many people at TA, especially at a time when many of us were posting at both sites, they considered our conversations here at WTCD as identical to us simply having a conversation on another thread at TA. I have no doubt that much of the bad blood and recent round of bannings against most of us on TA, had just as much or even more to do with what we were posting here at WTCD than anything we posted at TA.

I think that it might also be a good idea for us to try a different approach to exposing shills than making overly liberal use of the "you are a shill" nightstick. Not to give potential shills a break, or a free pass, but rather, to improve our own image and take the high road. To be more strategic, and ultimately, to beat the gatekeepers, etc., and expose their false arguments for more to see. I've already mentioned that I perceive that of all the accusations of shillery, troll, etc., that has been thrown around within the movement over the last few years, that 90% of the accusations are probably false, and most of the other 10% of those who really are shills, etc., probably can't be proven to be so with certainty. To take the high road on this matter would be to avoid making unproven allegations, while at the same time pointing out for other people what exact behavior and false arguments are being used, and then let other people decide for themselves what is going on.

In other words, no matter how much we may be convinced that a person is a shill or has dishonest motivations, we should stick to attacking the argument, not the person. I know I've been guilty of attacking the person many times (and have also been the victim of attack numerous times), but I'm willing to shift my tactics and try a different approach that I think will work better in the long run. To put it simply, I think it is more important for us to continue to be able to expose a much larger number of people to false arguments and shill-type behavior by not getting banned for calling out shills, than to be right about identifying someone as a shill. Let's remember that when the discourse stays within the logic and facts being debated, "our side" tends to win the arguments in most people's eyes, as evidenced by the positive votes we get on places like 9/11 Blogger - when we were still able to blog there.

Of course we will continue to get attacked by people who will not play fair and won't take the high road, even if we do. But I still think that we can use a different approach, which will make us look better, than stooping to their level. We should immediately point out that we are being attacked, and then take the debate back to the exposing of false arguments and avoid getting personal.If hypocrisy and double standards are being utilized on certain cites, then in the long run other people (most of the honest ones, anyway) will come to see what is going on and come to realize that we have more credibility. I would even like to see if some of us can get unbanned at TA at some point in the future, possibly after some discussion with Cosmos or others about how to repair or resolve some past issues and to have some sort of mutually beneficial agreement between the two sites.

At this point, I would like to propose that we have a brainstorming thread to discuss some possible improvements and changes in strategies/approaches, and to think about "how can we raise WTCD's positive image and influence within the 9/11 truth movement?", if others are so desire. What do others think?