Any volunteers for our twitter handle?

@praveenarimbrathod Do we have any gmail account to create youtube channel

@rahulkrishnanra I think you can use any email address to create a google account. @arjun has created indianpirates at mail.com, which we can use now. I'm trying to create @pirates.org.in account, we we have that ready, we can switch to it.

yeah , we can use any email address to create a google account..

Pirate Party India already has a Twitter handle - @PiratePIN I run it among some others. It is currently inactive but has 432 followers on the basis of earlier tweets on Pirate issues. It is connected to a FB page as well. Was created during the times of the original Pirate Party email groups. I suggest we activate these. I can add more people to this one or even hand it over totally if someone wants. Does not make sense to start an obscure handle all over again. Twitter is useless for publicity without reach.

I want to put on record that I had opposed contesting elections very strongly. That said, if we are contesting elections, I will support the ideas to the best I can agree with, because the image of Pirates needs all the credibility it can get in India. Toward this end, I can help with tweets. I can also do a few tweets from my own handle - @Vidyut (which has a lot more followers) though I cannot run a full campaign given that I am publicly politically neutral. So some of our best messages - I can definitely give them a boost.

I am still hopelessly busy, but feel free to ping me if there is something I can contribute to, and I will try.

I would highly recommend having a coherent strategy and core message that can be given to whoever wishes to support to take it forward. An election manifesto is a must as well - however brief it may be.

Also, it is inevitable that I will end up like an unofficial spokesperson of sorts - because I've probably been the most vocal about pirate party for India on Twitter. So if there is something I should know to reply if asked, please tell me that too, or I will just give generic replies. Local candidate, test drive, etc.

I'm not trying or claiming to BE a spokesperson, I'm saying that people will inevitably engage with me on it. And having a largish following interested in such issues, anything I say will get noticed - even if not official - and I don't want to be official. It is to our advantage that I speak, given most of my followers agree with Pirate Principles overall (given that I speak in alignment consistently).

@vidyut I prefer to keep PiratePIN in sleeping mode, if/when we resurrect 'Pirate Party' label, we may use that. We can add one tweet introducing the new handle. Yes, we have to start over, because we dropped ball on Pirate Party then. Lets start working on the manifesto.

Dude, your interview sounded like you unilaterally resurrected Pirate Party. There are photos with you flying Pirate party flags and little mention as local independent candidate even if party is not formed. You have to decide whether you are constesting independently or on behalf of Pirate Party, in which case saying it is not resurrected means absolutely nothing.

It is true you have made this call unilaterally and you have a point that the @PiratePIN handle should be left dormant till it is a community decision to form a party. How would you like me to introduce the new handle? As a fork of Pirate Party? As independent candidate of Pirate Party? < - I already did this second one.

@vidyut I had clearly told Kim Arora that I'm contesting as an independant candidate endorsed by Indian Pirates. Photo caption says "Supporters of Pirate Party in Berlin, Germany".

She started the article correctly without mentioning " Pirate Party".

"The Thiruvananthapuram seat in Kerala is set to see a "pirate" candidate, Goa-based techieturned-activist Praveen Ar imbrathodiyil, formally bringing the pirate movement into Indian politics.

Like other "pirate" collectives worldwide, this one too advocates direct democracy and digital rights.".

She used "pirate movement" and "pirate collective". Though at the she used " Pirate Party", possibly by mistake.

"Praveen will launch his campaign from April 23 and is looking forward to drive home the Pirate Party message."

@vidyut you could say, "Indian Pirates, started when Pirate Party could not be sustained, to take the Pirate ideas forward". You could also mention "Pirate Movement", which also could not sustain. Indian Pirates is the third attempt.

@vidyut I have started a thread here https://codema.in/d/lmxwOfSC/election-manifesto

Praveen, the contesting thread did not get a majority of votes. Additionally, out of the seven votes you got, @michaeljohnsinclai is neither Indian resident nor citizen - so for purposes of politics, votes in favor are LESSER than disagreements. You have acknowledged this when publishing the outcome stating that since there are no blocks, you will go ahead (as opposed to we will go ahead). So how can we say endorsed by Indian Pirates?

Perhaps you should start a thread asking whether Indian Pirates should endorse you as an independent - because the result of your campaign will then reflect on Indian Pirates as a whole and people should have a say whether they are okay with this.

@vidyut after the vote, I created a sub group with those who were in agreement. Then I proposed my candidature

https://codema.in/d/3gQl87zO/willing-to-contest

I waited for endorsement by permanent members (those who have the decision making power as per the constitution) before using the Indian Pirates name.

Ah ok. I did not know this. I am not a permanent member.

I can issue a series of tweets with clarification on the issue. Let me know if you are okay with this.

"Thank you all for the good will. India does not have a Pirate Party yet. This handle represents a group of people who were interested in forming one."

"Pirate Praveen, is endorsed by Indian Pirates, which branched off the original group. You may follow him at @pirates_in"

Or to the effect.

Or suggest specific tweets.

I must state my discomfort at the idea of losing a proposal, taking an independent stand and getting it endorsed by two people - other than yourself - as the representation of an entire community. In effect, rendering the original votes meaningless at the high command level.

I can clarify from the PiratePIN handle and direct people to yours. Given the number of people asking me about it, some clarification is necessary.

Beyond that, I cannot support the campaign for reasons of personal ethics.

@vidyut it would be great to have you as a permanent member, just apply. All you need is endorsement by two permanent members (mine is already there, so one more only required). @fayadfami @arjun @vik @balasankarchelamat @akshay @arkarjun are current permanent members.

I created a sub group for assembly elections so those who were not interested need not be bothered (this is a great feature of loomio I like, compared to flat structure of a mailing list). Those who joined that sub group knew about this endorsement request.

Those tweets look good, just change the last sentence, @pirates_in is handle for 'Indian Pirates' and not my personal profile.

"You may follow Indian Pirates at [[@pirates_in]]"

Cool. Will fix the tweet.

I don't want to be a permanent member @praveenarimbrathod till I know the purpose of the community. It can cause conflict of interest with my independent blogging. My support to the Pirate Party ideas as always, but if I move from my neutral stand, it will be a well considered decision and strictly for the purposes of serious politics, party formation and all.

I am not trying to be difficult here. I do support Pirate ideas, but I think the desire to contest is overruling a lot of other considerations and is committing the community regardless of their views on a track other than stated while joining. Particularly when inability to commit to entering politics became a reason for an impulsive "fork" and then another, giving rise to this space. So it seems that certain people will get their views played out by whatever means - breaking a community, arbitrarily restarting it, changing its goals, and ignoring votes against something by taking it to a closed space of a few like minded old-timers. This is not exactly direct democracy playing out.

@vidyut we have trust based membership because there is no expulsion for dissent or indiscipline. You could argue the other model of open membership and throwing dissenters out for indiscipline is a better model. Tonnes of organizations practice that.

I kept the proposal in the main group to get widest comments. Anyone can comment there. This structure allows anyone the freedom do what they like unless its against the basic principles. If it is against the basic principles, anyone can stop it with a block.

Indeed, its not perfect since its a new concept. We can always improve it.

It is not a matter of what structure you follow, but a matter of respecting a referendum when taken. If the opinions of the community don't matter to a decision, they should not be taken. If they are taken and then you overrule them on a higher level, it is not democracy.

This is like taking a referendum from people for something, then cabinet deciding its opposite, because voters aren't elected representatives. Well, d'uh we know that, so the cabinet could have taken the decision on its own, or called for suggestions or volunteers instead of votes.

@vidyut for what it is worth, I met @vik @fayad and @arjun after Indian Pirates formed. Just to clarify its not just old times. Fayad and Arjun joined as associate members and became permanent members.

Either you understand the point I made, or you don't. Your ruling council of permanent members essentially vetoed a referendum taken among the stinking masses. How it came to be and whether they followed the process and whether you will allow someone who disagrees with you to be on it, etc are all secondary. Also, given that permanent members allow in more permanent members on the basis of "trust", it can hardly be counted on to honestly represent dissenting views - like it happened in this case. The common vote went against. Ruling council is 100% in favor.

Welcome to Indian politics.

@vidyut referrundum is the wrong analogy because all those who voted were not members. It was more like a survey. We kept it open for anyone to participate because they get to feel how we work before they join.

ok

https://twitter.com/PiratePIN/status/722005175259389952

https://twitter.com/PiratePIN/status/722005733718364163

i don't know where this conversation is heading. let me interrupt for a moment. first of all i think we pirates don't have a clear/unambiguous system for handling dissent. for eg. do we have any guidelines regarding the % of votes required for a proposal to get accepted? do we have a clear definition of "block" vote? the 7th point in this loomio's official blog post http://blog.loomio.org/2015/09/10/10-tips-for-making-great-decisions-with-loomio/ says "You and your group can define for yourselves what a block means in your context." so what's the definition of block vote in our case?

without answering the above questions one cannot say, especially for a new comer like me, whether @praveenarimbrathod's decision to contest was democratic or not.

anyway @praveenarimbrathod has decided to contest with the aim of promoting the Pirate Ideas. beyond party, politics, leaders, organization, movement, etc. it's the ideas that should really matter, right? since he's making use of this opportunity (election) to promote Pirate Ideas, we should support him anyway, shouldn't we?

meanwhile we should also make our system and constitution more unambiguos to avoid unnecessary problems in the future. this will help to avoid unwanted arguments and help us to focus on the big picture instead.

good to see @vidyut tweeting in support of @praveenarimbrathod irrespective of her personal dissent. :)

way to go #Pirates... <3

Dissent is within the group. Even if I flat out disagree with something, it is between me and the group. The idea of a Pirate Party doesn't need public dissent before party. I don't agree with contesting elections and I further disagree with the manner in which the decision was taken. That said, if there is a Pirate candidate for India, I'd prefer to speak well or maintain silence unless there is something that would harm public interest.

That said, the content of this group is publicly readable and in that sense, even dissent is not necessarily secret.

"The idea of a Pirate Party doesn't need public dissent before party."// i didn't understand what you meant, can you please explain?

We don't have a Pirate Party. What we have is a pirate contesting elections. As an individual. Whether other pirates agree or not is pretty irrelevant in terms of public interest.

The idea of a Pirate Party - a political party that will prioritize issues like IP reform etc is still new in India. Hardly anyone even knows that such a thing has been politically attempted, even less that Indians are trying to do it too. It is better if people discover what we stand for and how it is relevant to their interests before they discover that we have differences.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

@ambadyanands yes, we have to make constitution unambiguous. I will propose some amendments, feel free to propose more.

@praveenarimbrathod i suggest you to reconsider @vidyut's suggestion of using PiratePIN twitter handle. if no one has any objections, change the profile name of "Pirate Party India" to "Indian Pirates". it can be changed later to "Pirate Party India" if we manage to form a party successfully. then let's change the other account from twitter.com/pirates_in to something like twitter.com/piratepraveen or twitter.com/ipkerala16 or something else for the sole promo of election campaign.

consider why i said so: the main idea is to make use of the 400+ followers PiratePIN handle already have. if @pirates_in handle grows big enough and later we form a party then which handle will we use? using both accounts in the long run will only help to split followers. so use one account (PiratePIN) for long-term and another (pirates_in) for short-term.

i suggest the same to do in fb page's case (if fb allows that - i mean changing page name). PiratePartyIndia page got 600+ followers. so let's change its name to Indian Pirates. later if we form party let's create another page and merge it with Indian Pirates page as mentioned here.

@Bady I agree with @praveenarimbrathod that the @PiratePIN handle cannot be appropriated without consent of original community. That said, there is no original community left. We are all scattered. I don't even know if anyone else uses the handle or remembers the password. I was mostly instrumental in promoting it alone. So, while it is not exactly proper, under the circumstances, I suggest a compromise.

I was granted the discretion to tweet from the handle in the interests of the group. We can make it transparent on the handle that it is currently being used by Indian Pirates in the interests of similar views - which is not an exaggeration at all. I am willing to take responsibility for allowing this switch, and in the event Pirate Party is once again in forum and they find my action inappropriate, I am willing to bear responsibility.

This means that I will not be sharing the handle password to anyone, but anyone with an existing Twitter account can use tweetdeck and I can grant them the rights to tweet from the handle through the teams feature. This includes permissions for tweets, RTs, DMs, and all, except actual ownership of the account and control on profile description.

Okay @vidyut :)

Do keep in mind that on Facebook pages, only about 10%(approx) of your followers will get to see your msg.. You need to pay in order to reach out to all of your followers
Also, created a thread for posters on loomio and uploaded a few items I made.. Might not be great but.. https://codema.in/d/Ic70Ju4G/posters

@vidyut @ambadyanands @praveenarimbrathod check this out..
https://codema.in/d/Ic70Ju4G/posters

If the pictures are okay, I suggest we upload one picture a day.. Just to keep it going.. @vidyut if you agree, pls upload a picture tomorrow at a time when most people are likely to be online on Twitter and retweet using piratepartyindia account too.. I haven't used Twitter much.. I know Facebook - early morning before work everyone checks their feed and late night before going to bed.. Don't know much about Twitter trends

Procedure is important, fixing responsibility is important. If we can do it with 90 people, electing us is no use. Let us try :)

For the record, here is my statement:

As the person entrusted with the handling of the original Pirate Party India Twitter handle, in view of the fact that a political initiative is being attempted by Indian Pirates and the fact that the original Pirate Party India community is inactive, I am offering Indian Pirates the use of the @PiratePIN handle for the purposes of communication and outreach. This action is with the authority of the trust invested in me to manage the content appearing on it while the original community was functioning and I am prepared to face responsibility for it if it is challenged. This permission is limited to tweets relevant to Pirate interests and casual social contact with interested replies (as in no "Top 10 Bollywood hits" or cute kittens). If Indian Pirates wants to take me up on this offer, they will have to provide me with Twitter handles of members who need access. This access will be provided via Tweetdeck https://tweetdeck.twitter.com - users with permission will see the @PiratePIN handle available for them to choose to tweet from. I highly suggest using the verify-before-tweeting feature (a checkbox to tick), so that no tweets are accidentally sent from the account.

@vidyut I'm not saying we should use the @PiratePIN handle cuz I agree with @praveenarimbrathod that we aren't there yet .. But where are the other original members now? .. Was it a registered party? if not, anyone else tomorrow could claim they are pirate party of India and contest elections.. I mean what is to stop anyone from using "Pirate party of India" label.. Are the other original members still active with other similar pirate groups like Indian pirates? .. If not, why bother even asking them? .. What I'm trying ti say is, if they abandoned the pirate party for what so ever reason and if they are not currently engaged with other similar groups eith pirate party, why should we seek their consent?

We didn't really have a community space once the lists stopped. So I don't think if the original members wanted to participate also, they had any common forum anymore.

I am not asking them, merely saying that a decision need not be made right now and that I had authority to post content as I saw fit and I am using that authority to deem content about an Indian pirate contesting elections as appropriate and relevant.

Otherwise the handle is abandoned mostly, because the entity it belongs to does not exist.

Nothing stopping anyone from calling themselves Pirate Party of India. We were not registered. If I believe that they are congruent enough to Pirate goals, I may, at my discretion hand the handle over to them, though anyone with the manpower to register a political party won't need a Twitter handle from me.

My formal statement is merely to avoid appropriating it even if we use it.

@vidyut okay.. I needed to.clarify this cuz I thought they were still active..

@vidyut did you check the two posters out? You think we can tweet it out though the @pirates_in handle? .. Things simply to.keep it going since we won't have much content till we actually start campaigning? .. If you could, check my previous post about it pg 1 pls

@vidyut looks good. I propose @ambadyanands and @arjun and if possible pirates_in handle too. I'll propose it to Permanent Members and make it official.

@vidyut @praveenarimbrathod @ambadyanands we need a description for our @pirates_in handle.. Something witty would be nice..

There is no leadership as a pirate there is only called in leaders to abide of national laws, inside the group all have the same basic member status, all have one voice, single ideas from one pirate can be discussed with two more pirates when they agree it is then opened for all the group.

https://codema.in/d/wAznXBGY <- proposed

https://codema.in/d/wAznXBGY <- proposed

@praveenarimbrathod email me when this passes so I can add the handles you tell me. Nisarga's plaster cast comes off tomorrow and is expected to be fairly traumatic for him for several days till he adjusts to the shock of losing the support of the plaster + mobility, so I will be preoccupied and not following conversations here as properly as I should for something this urgent. Or just call me. If it doesn't happen before noon tomorrow, I'll only be able to do it on day after at earliest. We are going to the doctor in the afternoon.

@vidyut , we authorized @arjun , @ambadyanands and @akhilkrishnans as twitter spokespersons. Their twitter handles are makeadiffyet, ambadyanands and akhilanIn.

Done. If they login to Tweetdeck, they should be able to see PiratePIN among accounts they can tweet from :)

Vidyut
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