[taifoon]

Good initiative, shows a mature level of awareness, caring and the will to always want to improve.

However, I generally don't see a dramatic decline anywhere which is not part of a natural process on this kind of cyber clubs. Unlike other more specialized internet arenas, like for example motorcars, music or IT (NOT International Tribunal :) related forums, where one gets used to a constant flow of homogeneous activities, political forums in general are by nature mostly boring spaces for half-boring politic nerds who enjoy to participate in intellectual dueling over ideas, opinions and ideals. Not at a lebanese forum however, including FPM's, where the nature of such forum has been almost exclusively event driven, for the last 4 years.

At such forum, life is usually maintained by core members, but activity fluctuation is derived from what happens on a day by day basis, in the outside real world. Get an assassination, a Batrak statement or an exciting - or inciting- piece of news, and you'll notice a quick increase of forum activity. For now, forum activity spins around the elections, and naturally the number of people who find this issue of more or less interest will also be reflected in the members participation in the discussions.

I personally think it's a waste to overdo something in order to try to achieve what, by design, can not be done. We can not overlook the nature of our current reality, it is a tense and fragile one, a troubled reality that constantly seeks to finally settle down on something less exciting than the news and risks of luring death and destruction .. The election preparation and campaigns are currently considered to be the center of this reality.

Another factor to not belittle is normal and plain fatigue. People, from all intellectual and partisan categories, get bored and tired from chewing our same lebanese gum, over and over again. Add to this different life engagements and other personal activities that affect members, and you get different engagement levels in the forum discussions..

I still do have a couple of points I'd like to share on this subject:

A Forum is a public place for anyone to voice an opinion and have others discuss it. In order for this forum to flourish even more, I believe we need to (re)attract as many FPM opponents and other non-FPM, non partisan, non-lebanese folks, as is possible. Diversity of opinions is mandatory for this.

Consequently, comes the level of discussions/posts & replies. I noticed that all-too-sarcastic and/or disrespectful replies -even when they are within the boundaries of forum rules- may repel many of those people and I have promised myself that from now on, I personally will try to suppress such cheap and non constructive urge in order to gradually tame it and get rid of it. Good valid arguments always win in the long run, even against the hardest nut, because they work more smoothly on both the conscience and the subconscience of an opponent. Hard, disrespectful words only repel, scare off and push away those with different opinions.