Friends, I’ve had a problem for a long time now, and I just haven’t been able to get anywhere with solving it. I haven’t even dared to really start tackling it. But I can’t put it off any longer. The problem is called “a website.” Obviously, I need one. If only because I get a million complaints that it’s hard to find a specific document on a specific case in my LiveJournal blog (say, some response from the Central Administrative District prosecutor’s office in Moscow about a Rosneft inquiry). You have to spend a lot of time and read a lot of irrelevant stuff. LiveJournal clearly doesn’t give me enough room to publish all the documents. For example, if I post every response in the Daimler case, I’ll have to publish them every day, and in large quantities. Obviously, you’ll start complaining: Navalny is clogging up the friends feed. Coordinating joint campaigns and communicating with dozens of people through comments is completely unrealistic. There are so many comments that it’s impossible to read them all. And so on. But there’s one more, and it’s the main reason. My LiveJournal has spontaneously turned into a kind of guerrilla outpost in the fight against corruption and all sorts of official abuses. I’m perfectly happy about that, but I get a huge number of emails that go something like this: My name is Petya Ivanov. I live in Saratov. I’m fighting Housing Maintenance Office No. 15, whose director set up a pocket management company registered in his wife’s name. He inflates tariffs, doesn’t do a damn thing, and siphons off the money. Please write a post about it so I can find supporters in my city. ... *My name is Veronika Poneyad. I live in Moscow. I’m a shareholder in Mosstroybetonvodoprod. They’re stripping profits out of the company and screwing us over. There’s no shareholder register. Please write a post so other shareholders in Mosstroyvodoprovod will respond. ... My name is Izolda Menshova. My brother was beaten up by cops in St. Petersburg. Please write a post so everyone else beaten up by cops in St. Petersburg will respond, and we can start hitting back together. ... I am Nikita Mikhalkov from Moscow. I’m being mistreated and persecuted. They’re taking away my flashing blue light (the special siren privilege used by officials and VIPs). Please write a post so everyone who has a flashing blue light can unite to fight this injustice. *And lots more like that. I simply do not have the ability to: Look into all these cases Write about them Or even reply to all the emails. So here’s my idea. We need a website. Roughly speaking, one that coordinates a civic movement against corruption and that sort of thing. Something purely practical. No articles, manifestos, or other crap. Petya Ivanov comes to the site and posts a notice: I’m fighting the head of the housing office. Here are scans of my correspondence so you don’t think this is fake. I’m looking for allies in my city and for people in other cities who’ve dealt with similar situations. Maybe Petya Ivanov will find someone, maybe he won’t. If his case really matters to everyone, he will. If it’s a private issue, he won’t. To put it cynically, it would be a kind of bulletin board and exchange for anti-corruption projects. People who have time and itchy hands can pick something interesting for themselves. People who have a project can find support. We shouldn’t narrow the field of activity too much. For example, a campaign like looking for lawyers who could sue over unlawful detentions at rallies could also be coordinated through a site like this. Separate sections for company shareholders. Where are VTB or Rosneft shareholders supposed to hang out? Not on the company forum, where they’ll be banned in three seconds. After we defeat the regime, we’ll use it to draw up execution lists too. (joking). In short: civic mutual aid. I myself am ready to occupy a very modest place there. ....In the form of the domain name navalny.ru. Mwahaha. No, seriously, I absolutely do not want this whole thing to be bathed in the benevolent genius and foresight of Alexei Navalny. Just a section specifically for my own cases, to make coordination easier with the people helping out. Now let’s get specific. As you can see, the project is currently at the “chaotic idea” stage. I’m not capable of writing the technical specifications for the site myself. And I neither want nor know how to manage the project down to the level of “let’s put a little green line here.” So what do we have as assets? We have about 30 people who responded to the post "Call" and wrote to me: no problem, I’ll build you a website. But whom do I choose, and whom do I work with? And that raises the question: do we even believe in crowdsourcing?
I’d very much like to believe in it, of course. Like, we’ll all unite, join hands, and throw together an awesome website. Or maybe that’s unrealistic, and everyone will just start fighting, calling each other bug-eyed, ham-fisted idiots. One person will do the actual work, and everyone else will spend a ton of time criticizing it. How do we coordinate all these people? I’d suggest Google Wave. But maybe that’s for lamers, and the real hardcore website monsters send signals directly into each other’s nervous systems in BASIC. Lots of questions. Very few answers. If anyone has something to say about this, I’d be glad to hear it. But I’d like to steer away from empty blah-blah right from the start. Let’s make this practical. One very energetic user, seeing me agonize over this website issue, suggested that I sit tight and watch knowledgeable people do their work. He very kindly drafted an appeal to the, uh... “internet public” and even started outlining the general concept of the site. Text of the appeal ** We want to create a website intended for collecting, systematizing, and publishing information about corruption in Russia. The site is to be created and populated using crowdsourcing principles, where all the work needed to launch the resource, maintain it, and fill it with information is done by volunteers. In addition to its informational function, the site will also serve as a tool for coordinating groups of participants working on one anti-corruption project or another. The idea is to turn especially large-scale corruption cases, or those with major public resonance (such as the “Daimler Case,” for example), into separate projects, gather information on them, and organize mass actions around them, such as having large numbers of users send complaints to the prosecutor’s office. The results of these actions would then be published. In the end, what we want is: a) A news resource focused specifically on corruption; b) A public portfolio of projects (to use Project Management terminology) on major corruption scandals, containing factual information in volumes that will not allow the authorities to ignore them. The c*oncept of the resource is laid out in more detail in this document: here (the document is a working draft and will still be changed and expanded). At the first stage, we need website development specialists. If you can help draft the technical specifications or directly build the site, or if you have valuable thoughts about the substance of the project itself, write in the wave linked below. https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:wave:googlewave.com%252Fw%252Bc68HSFyFA.1 * That, I suggest, should be our starting point. Participation, constructive criticism, and air kisses are welcome.
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