Works for me.
But there's nothing provocative about being realistic... I'd say we can sketch out the framework DoDo proposes and fill in the gaps as ET develops. I also believe there's a chance it's a flywheel process: even if it starts small, it can attract readers and contributors, brining in more people to expand activities, etc.
One thing that the US grassroots is good at is letter-writing, and it doesn't take as much time as you think. In fact, the shorter your letter, the more likely it is to be published. (I have a friend that got up everyday and wrote a LTE first thing in the morning.)
What you need to start with, before heading straight into letter-writing, is compiling lists of resources: contacts of major European media outlets and of political representatives. Start with the obvious but also try to compile nation & region specific resources.
And also a "how to" on letter writing.
Rather than reading everything, just posts alerts when you have read something aggregious, along with talking points about why it is aggregious, and contact info. You can do this as diaries (as Jerome has been doing) & set up a sep. box on the right for LTE alerts. Or you can start an e-mail list.
Which is what the Rapid Response Network has done. I rec. you check them out and ask for pointers if you are serious about this.
http://rapidresponsenetwork.org/
And I cannot emphasize this enough, but ET needs serious cross-pollination with other groups. Blogs like Bella Ciao and I'm sure there are pro-France, -EU, etc blogs out there you could work with.
Daily kos did not just happen to get so big. After the primaries Dean, Clark, Edwards people came there looking for a home. Then the Kerry and Deibold people flocked there. Tons of grassroots, political and activist organizations convene there. One sto-shopping. Even looking at RRN, it was born of Dean, PDA, and other organizations.
I think the quality of debate here at ET is outstanding enough to ensure that ET would not be diminished by working with other groups. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
Even with the Daily Kos analogue, I see problematic developments for here in Europe - the EU will not "federalise" much further at this point, I believe. Europe is up to different challenges and much more divided by cultural differences (or what about language barriers?) than the USA is... But it's very late over here, and I tend to get gloomy at these hours.
I now scanned through Colman's initial post and much of what you wrote comes back again. Let's see if I can recap:
ET is not DailyKos (yet).
What the world desperately needs, I am convinced, is a medium a lot like this one in some respects, but differing in having scalable and flexible dynamics for group entry, exit, and overlap, -- this being combined with an improved set of community-building, discourse-debugging, and integrated Wiki-like collaborative tools. In aggregate, changes at this software-framework level hold promise of substantially improving the quality of community discussion and output -- including rapid responses of the sort under discussion at the moment.
Unfortunately, I've found it hard to get this topic itself discussed, and find that many blogpersons take their current medium for granted, saying (to slip into metaphor) that clay tablets and styli are just fine, thank you. This, despite the enormously beneficial innovation we've seen in just the last 5 years.
Ooops, now I'm once again urging that we examine and take the potential of new technology seriously. Damn.
/rant Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
