Portside FAQ
Faq information
Organization
Editorial
Donations
Faq information
The moderators of portside. -
We welcome new questions, suggestions or improvements. Please send them to portside@portside.org.
Organization
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.
Portside is a community of people on the left and an alternative medium of communication. While the commercial media are becoming steadily more monopolized by the same giant economic interests that control finance and industry, we are dedicated to realizing the democratic potential of the Internet and other new communications technologies. We are part of the movement to create an alternative information infrastructure. We are beholden to no corporate interests.
The moderators believe that a new and more just social order must be imagined before it can be built. We intend portside as a space that fosters such imagining. We aim to be a catalyst to imagination by sharing dreams and experiences, political programs and struggles, which are the raw material of imagination. We believe that we are all emboldened and reinforced by knowing about the real efforts, all around the globe, to achieve a better world.
The moderators all think we can do better than capitalism -- and had better do better, if we and our children are going to have a future -- without proposing a neat blueprint for the future or a well- drawn roadmap to it. We believe that the search for alternatives must be based on working class solidarity and on principled opposition to all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, homophobia and ethnocentrism. We seek a society based on democracy, social and economic justice, and racial and gender equality. We believe in globalization from below: in development of international ties in the interest of peace and social progress. We know that our future depends on developing and implementing new models of sustainable social reproduction and guardianship of nature.
With the aid of readers and contributors, we search the Internet every day for relevant, insightful, critical, informative, perhaps funny, material and deliver it to your digital doorstep. In deciding what to distribute, we seek information from diverse sources. We encourage debate. We respect our readers as people who think for themselves. We strive for variety in subject matter and opinion. We look for things that are topical. We also look for things that are analytical, probing and challenging. We rely on readers to help provide those things.
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The port side, in nautical parlance, is the left side of the ship when you are facing forward.
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October 2000.
portside has seven moderators, one for each day of the week. The moderator of the day decides what material to send out.
All material submitted to ps remains in a pending queue for at least a week, so any moderator may see it and use it. -
The moderators are Judy Atkins, Carl Bloice, Barry Cohen, Will Jones, Carol Pittman, John Peter Pittman, and Jay Schaffner.
The moderators all hold down full-time jobs. Their work on ps is an unpaid labor of love. No kidding. No pay, but they love it. Must be the benefits.
The moderators include a historian, a philosopher and a computer scientist. The other moderators have held or hold positions in the labor movement, including elected official, researcher, editor, negotiator and organizer.
The moderators are racially diverse. They reside in NY, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and California.
They've been involved in more movements, campaigns, causes, demonstrations and debates than they'd care to remember or you'd care to hear about.
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At the time of this writing (end of March 2003), 10,000-plus. There are subscribers from more than 60 countries, but about 90% are in the United States (we think). ps subscribers seem to be a very diverse lot, geographically, occupationally and professionally, age-wise, racially, ethnically and otherwise. Also very politically active and opinionated, which counts as a good thing here.
Editorial
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Send material to portside@portside.org.
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Paste your submission into the body of an email. Use plain text -- not MS Word or other special format.
Give it an informative subject line. ('Mammoth cloned from ancient DNA' is better than 'Whoaa, this is awesome!') If the item is short, include the entire item in the body of the e-mail. If it's long, include a fragment and a web address to the whole item.
Do not send attachments. Because attachments may contain viruses or other nasty beasties, ps neither sends nor receives attachments.
Include the web address of the source. This should have the form 'http://www.domainname.org' or something similar. It's usually best to cut and paste it from the location field in your browser.
By default, we will attribute comments and other original material using the full name of the author, if it is given, or else the username of the submitter. If you want to use some other name or to submit the piece anonymously, please say so at the beginning of your submission. Your email address will be used only if it appears as part of your signature, or if you specifically request it.
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We receive many more submissions than we can distribute without overloading subscribers. A week or so after something is submitted, it is gracefully retired from the 'pending' queue if it hasn't been used.
That happens to lots of items. It's not a criticism. Your input is still appreciated and desired.
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We promise material which is 'of interest to people on the left.' That's pretty subjective, so we exercise our best judgement.
We strive for variety in subject matter and opinion. We look for things that are topical. We also look for things which are analytical, probing and challenging. We look for things that are clear, and even better, entertaining.
Debate is good, if it's respectful.
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Look at the guidelines for submission, above. Look at the things that get used. Campaigning or lobbying for your material won't help.
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All portside messages are in a searchable archive. You should be able to find the item you're looking for there pretty easily.
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Sure. We're happy to have our material reused (preferably with appropriate attribution).
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Well, there's nary a lawyer, much less a constitutional scholar, among the ps moderators. But from a common sense point of view, reproduction of politically relevant material which has been placed on the internet would seem to enjoy lots of First Amendment protection. These issues may ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, though there doesn't seem to be any too much constitutional scholarship there, either.
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It's a big and complicated world. We try to poke into many aspects of it.
We send enough to permit variety. Different people have different priorities, interests and areas of activity.
Probably most readers delete lots of ps messages unread after glancing at the subject line, or after looking at the lead paragraph. Hopefully, most readers find something of interest most days. No format suits everyone, but based on reader feedback, we've pretty much settled into the five-a-day mode.
Subscription
You can sub on the web at the account management page. Or send an email to support@portside.org -
You can unsub on the web at the account management page. Or send an email to support@portside.org
Send us the friend's name and email address. Or have the friend visit the account management page. -
Not at this time, though we may in the future add the ability to customize your subscription by subject.
However, there is a digest mode, in which the day's messages are bundled into a single message. You can set this preference by going to the account management page. Or you can write to us, and we'll set it for you.
There's also a 'No email' mode. You remain a member of the group, but view messages only via the web at ps home page. -
Yes. Set your subscription to 'No email' (above) before you leave. Reset it when you return. Or ask us to do it. You'll have to ask us to reset it when you return; we won't keep track of the dates of your vacation.
portside does not share the email addresses of subscribers with third parties for any reason.
Donation
We've made portside advertising-free. We plan to introduce quite a few new features and services and to continue to reach out to larger numbers of people. We are determined that portside will continue to be available for free. The moderators volunteer their time and effort without pay to make this happen. But the operation of portside does cost something, so your financial support is crucial. We can accept credit card contributions on the web, and greatly appreciate whatever you can give. This is a secure transaction.
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