Pegasus initiated a discussion on Powerup about options of Your Democracy and Powerup working together.

I'm hoping he doesn't mind that I didn't agree with his conclusions entirely, but I think there's some interesting issues raised about how we see ourselves as citizens/activists/whatever on the internet.

So below is an extract from my reply to Pegasus, so that we may discuss this here if we like, as well as on Powerup.

As I've said before, Powerup is the place to go for those Not-Happy-John!ers who feel that a new political party - some sort of 'party of independents' perhaps - is the way to go. Please don't take this to mean I don't think you should stop engaging in this site, or even vigorously arguing the case for developing a new political party. Your Democracy is for everybody.

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Powerup has an explicit agenda of starting a new formal political force - ie a political party. Over the past year I have received numerous emails and read many comments suggesting such an option. It's a real option, and it needs a home. I have every intention to direct people who want to raise this possibility on Your Democracy, to direct them to Powerup, without blocking discussion about it obviously.

Your Democracy has a different and very complementary role in my mind. We do not want to represent a policy-viewpoint as such and want people from across the political spectrum to engage about ideas and to defend and develop the democratic institutions in which they can do so.

There is probably already a fair bit of overlap of membership of PU and YD, but even if there wasn't, in my mind it is not the 500 at one website or another, but the 500 (ok, thousands) active at a number of complementary, well networked websites.

Certainly we should explore ways to combine efforts, especially when it comes to face-to-face get-togethers, which we both apparently plan. Some of these for PO will effectively be branch meetings deciding on candidates and the like, but why not have combined get-togethers some time, and see which other websites - Refugee Action Collective sites, whatever - might want to join us. I think we need to think of ourselves as a large internet community rather than a number of isolated sites, at least to some degree.

Another thought is combined software development for, say, an events calander. If a number of activist and citizen type sites found a way to link to the same events calander, we would effectively be a bigger movement. I'm not a software developer and I'm being speculative. But it's the sort of thinking I think we should be doing.

To the good folk at Powerup, very best of luck developing a political party, and when you do I (and Your Democracy) will be following your progress very carefully, and when you gain power in Australia, we'll be-a watchin' ya.