cooperation

Recently, I made a very informal proposal for Drupal developers to cooperate to fight spam at the source of the problem. Unfortunately, there has been no reply to my email.

Regularly, the developers' mailing list, just like many other discussion groups, would go into lengthy debates about fairly inconsequential topics. Around that time, a new default theme for Drupal was being heavily discussed, as well as a new convention to name different Drupal releases.

Recently, spammers were heavily targetting wechange which was experiencing problems as a result. I wrote to the Drupal developers' list to ask for assistance. Fortunately, I have been able to find a solution quickly.

Yesterday, I was lauding Hau Long-bin for his willingness to work with people from opposite parties for the common good of the people. In the last 6 years, it has been obvious that most politicians have put their own parties first and the real long-term interest of the people last. It may be because their own political ambitions depends on how the party fares in elections, and they think that helping officials from another party, even if it's in the best interest of the people, will be detrimental to themselves.

This confrontational attitude exists across the political spectrum, but it has been especially acute among pan-blue supporters since they lost the highest executive post in 2000. I am very ready to admit that president Chen Shui-bian has many faults and that he has been a less than ideal president, but we must recognize that he has constantly been trying to extend olive branches both to the opposition in Taiwan and to the mainland Chinese leadership. He has made efforts to reach out to the other site, certainly because it was his interest to do so, but the Taiwanese people would have also benefited a lot if that olive branch had been accepted.

This site aims to work in cooperation with scores of like-minded other sites.

Many web sites that have been existing for a long time are a great source of information on topics much more narrowly defined that at Wechange. Just to give two examples:

• www.carfree.com in very informative on the field of better urban design and backed by a small but active community.
• www.reuniting.info presents in a compelling way both scientific and spiritual arguments for a healthier type of sexuality.