Getting Sociality Wrong: We

So I am strongly in agreement with the goals of We: solving global warming. And I would like to see them harness the energies of the edglings: we, the denizens of the web. But I think they are doing it all wrong, or mostly wrong.

They have a website where you can register, sign a petition, and so on. I guess I did that some time ago. But that’s about it. Oh, I guess you could donate money somehow.

Then, this morning, I got an email suggesting that I could help to rally others to the cause, and if I got ten others to sign up I would get an organic T shirt. ‘Cool,’ I thought, ‘let me get a link and twitter this, and post it on my blog.’ Here’s the email:

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Gmail - Help stop climate change and get a t-shirt - stowe.boyd@gmail.com, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

First thing, I clicked through on the ‘easy online tool’ which would have led to me uploading all my Gmail contacts or something. Email? Yikes.

So I decided to reply to the message, which had a human being’s name on it, but that led to a bounce, since the email address, info@wecansolveit.org, loops back on itself. Gah. Shouldn’t an org like this have an info@ account that works? And more importantly, if they are sending me an email with a human being’s name on it, I want to be able to respond to it, no matter how large their activities have grown. Or don’t put a human name on it.

Then I decided to ping them, asking them how to go about participating via my blog and through twitter. And I got this email back:

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Gmail - Thank you for your email - stowe.boyd@gmail.com, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

So, I am using the means that they suggest to communicate with them — the one that they are using to communicate with me — and they tell me that they may not be able to respond. I just find that unacceptable. This is not as horrible a social gaffe as John Edwards dropping off the twittersphere without saying goodbye (see Shame On You, John Edwards: The Exploitation Of Web Culture), but it’s wrongheaded.

Can’t they harness the people that they are attracting in some wikipediaesque manner? Can’t they scale the organization to meet the needs of social interaction?

And on a much more basic level, can’t they get organized so that bloggers and twitterers can spread this message and get a T shirt?

So please go and register at www.wecansolveit.org, and if they give you the option, tell them I sent you.