We’d like to introduce the beginnings of a feature called topics. With topics, you can…

• Find out what essembly is discussing.
  Every week we’ll show you the top topics the site as a whole is discussing, based on the number of resolves created about the topic.
• Delve into the past.
  By clicking “See more topics,” you can see past rankings from week to week. Discover interesting tidbits like how often essembly is talking about essembly, or a rising interest in religion and morality.

But ask not what topics can do for you, but what you can do for topics. By attaching more topics to a resolve every time you create one, you make resolves easier to find by other members, and provide a better sense of what the community as a whole is discussing.

Enjoy!

Yesterday we made a few changes to the site, and thought you’d like to learn a little more about the thinking that went behind them.

Profile

The profile now features an individual’s full voting history. Think of it as an auto-aggregating blog; a window into what a person is voting or saying on any given day.

Navigation

We’ve switched to a top-based navigation, which gives us quite a bit more room for content. The profile is the first of many pages that demonstrate the power of this new layout, and we look forward to introducing more features that take advantage of this added space in the very near future.

For our loyal users, we thank you for bearing with us during this rather tumultuous change. In the short term, there will be some frustration about where all the buttons and links have gone, but we’re firmly committed to the belief that the long term benefits greatly outweigh these temporary frustrations.

If you have any questions or feedback about the new layout, leave a comment. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Enjoy the new site!

The process of organizing consists of three basic steps, which guides our thinking in the design of essembly:

• Step 1: Discuss ideas and through this discussion identify who believes what. This is accomplished through resolves and discussions.
• Step 2: Use social, geographic, and ideological connections to form into groups, or for existing groups to recruit new members.
• Step 3: Take action with these groups.

We fully admit that we are not there yet in allowing for organizing in these three steps. In order to make essembly the platform for discourse and change we want it to be, we need to make each of these steps work. While we would love them all to work asap, we have to start somewhere. We are going to approach these steps in the order listed above. We are doing this because we believe the steps build upon each other. You cannot do the third step of taking action without getting people into groups, and you can’t form into groups unless meaningful discussion is occurring.

Right now we are hard at work on the first step, discussion and identification of beliefs. Some of our goals are to make the profile a “window into your thoughts,” a sort of auto-generated blog that has the advantage of being connected through resolves to the community at large. We also are trying to make the homepage do a better job of giving users a sense of the “zeitgeist” (thanks to Micah Sifry for that) of the site as a whole, the member’s network, and the member’s groups. We also are going to work on the flow between resolves to make it easier to move between interesting resolves. We welcome ideas and feedback on these goals and how we implement them.