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The Vision of This Site
Ash and ashers have problems, and of a large variety. The way we are
treated by society, the psychological dilemmas, the practicalities of
suicide - these are just some of the troubling topics which frequent
ash daily.
Information on ASH forums
Ash and its related forums serve their purpose as a place for discussion. Much of this discussion revolves around the problems which concern us. However, the forums are not enough. We need additional information sources to provide answers to issues which are difficult to address in the forums.Questions on the forums may go unanswered. This may be sad but the forums are for discussion, they were not intended to serve as information databases. Nobody is obliged to answer. It may even be the case that there are people on the group who know the answer, but do not post it because they are too lazy, shy or insecure.
Furthermore, even when questions are answered, they lack credibility, accuracy, depth and focus. Answers are typically unorganized and discussion quickly diverges to different related topics.
Actually, if you just have a discussion about a complex topic without having any concrete results (like a document for example) then one might actually be reducing the amount of information accessible to the participants. Of course, in the short term people might still remember the discussion. However, people who have participated in a long, complex discussion, and are also probably the most knowledgeable about the topic, will tire from it. Two months after the discussion has ended, a new reader, who is interested in the same topic, will not get the same knowledgeable response, since the people who have participated in the original discussion are not that interested in this topic anymore. They would provide less detailed information than what was posted originally.
FAQs or web sites can assist by providing a group memory. However, these have their own disadvantages. Most of the work on these is usually done by a single person, who has limited time and probably no special knowledge in the relevant area. Furthermore, most of the material originates from the forums, where deeper research is seldom carried out. If more research is required to fill the gaps, then unless the maintainer is highly motivated, the FAQs will eventually stagnate.
How this site tries to help
Currently, this site just tries to add more articles with more thorough research than a typical FAQ. However, many of the articles on this site were written only by myself, and thus still suffer from the disadvantages mentioned above.What ASH lacks is a collaborative group memory. A repository where many answers and different points of view can be saved. Depth and focus could be achieved if these answers are organized according to topic. By comparing different answers, greater credibility and accuracy can be established.
The Future
What I would like this site to be is both a place for well researched articles, coupled with a community which can cooperate, write, and comment about topics related to ash. There are such forums for other topics such as slashdot for computers, dancetech for electronic music or photonet for photography.To adapt these ideas for this site, I would like it to contain many small pages, mostly resulting from material already existing on this site, or on other pages on the web. Readers can then comment on each page, ask questions, or add links to other web sites.
In addition the site could provide anonymity in a way which is easier technically to most users. This could remove a significant problem which many ashers face.
Such a site can integrate and retain the knowledge of ashers in an organized manner.
The main problems in erecting such a site are to write the software to implement it, and have people assist in moderation, in writing articles, and in incorporating comments of ashers into existing articles.
