The Associated Humans Digg-Like « Humanews », a social network for sharing humanist links

We’re trying out new Web 2.0 tools. As a result, the Associated Humans are proposing a beta version of a humanist digg-like : Humanews. We’ve noticed quite simply that a great number of us use traditional Internet tools (e-mail, discussion lists, forums) to share our pertinent links throughout our personal, associative and citizen networks. Now with the expansion of the Web, specialised communities linked to technologies have ready access to high-performance services such as the sharing of social bookmarks. So, why not us?

This system might require technical notions you didn’t even know existed. The best way to learn is to give it a shot and discover as you go along. The functions are simple.

What is a digg? To-date the definition has yet to be firmly established.

The first of its kind is digg.com, a highly influential site with 800,000 hits per day in spite of the fact it produces no content. This in turn has created what is called the digg-like effect : information on the front page is highly visible and creates a massive instantaneous buzz (thousands of hits -sometimes more- within the first few hours), a dream come true for the media and marketers.

Some Web observers think digg will only appeal to geeks.
These technical aspects may seem a little discouraging. But let’s not stop there. Concretely speaking, what does Humanews have to offer in comparison to a website, blog or forum? It’s a participative service. Once you’ve registered, you can suggest a link (for an article, site, blog, paper, video, or photo if you like…), select the corresponding keywords, write a short summary and then submit it to the community.

Other users can then vote for your news if they find it interesting. Depending on the number of clicks, it will climb up the home page and maintain its position on the ‘front page’. Each link is accessible via a personalised address and everyone can comment just like for a blog.

The result being a lively information portal who owes its existence to a common participation (using the file format RSS feed, you can subscribe to Humanews and follow in realtime the news as it happens).

We invite you to test this tool with us, which is in the course of being translated and adapted, so we can see together whether it is mutually beneficial. The themes are those developed by the Associated Humans : humanism, ecology, human rights, etc. The categories will be enriched (you can make suggestions here). Naturally, certain subjects are out-of-bounds. Humanews (pligg) has a Nethique Charter which all participants must make sure they respect. Therefore all links and comments of a conspirational, revisionist, negationist, racist, sexist, homophobic, pornographic, offensive, or extremist nature are not welcome at Humanews, nor are trolls. Some people are for an Internet that is antisystem and antimedia and are capable of propagating populist ideas of every conceivable nature.

A contrario, we have thought since 1994 that the Web can be used to share information and ideas that nourish concrete uses with a particular interest in maintaining the standards of quality, rigour and information deontology. We also think it’s possible to create informal and efficient citizen networks committed to humanist values in order to carry out genuinely altruistic actions together.

Our goal is to offer, up to our standards, a participative space related to citizenship with quality and conviviality. This requires an effort from all those who wish to take part. What happens next depends on us all.

Sharing links is one of the components of collective intelligence, refered to as human research. This guarantees that the information selected in this way is pertinent, useful and intelligent.

When we share links we consider interesting, we are investing a little of our time, knowledge and culture. These are precious values for the business world as well as for a free Internet.

« Digg-Like « Humanews » des Humains Associés, réseau social de partage de liens humanistes« , translated from the French by the voluntary translation staff.
Read also “Refonte de la communauté en ligne des Humains