Welcome to the Dialogue areas of American Love Stories! We're delighted that you're interested in joining the discussion. However, before we can assign you to a new dialogue group, there are a few details we need to bring up.
What follows is a little longer than we'd like it to be, but necessary to establish how we hope the dialogues on this site will be very different from what we've seen elsewhere on many public bulletin boards. So please, DON'T JUST SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM; take just a few minutes to read through this page carefully.
First, we need to ask you to ask yourself a few questions to make sure this space is right for you:
Are you interested in experimenting with an alternative model for developing meaningful dialogue and relationships online?
If you answered yes to the above, then you've come to the right place. Read on.
Commitment and Accountability
These Dialogue Groups are different from most other web-based discussions and they require a different kind of commitment and accountability than most people are used to online.
By agreeing to participate in a Dialogue Group, you're agreeing to be part of a small community for a period of three weeks. Although your email address and real name will never be made public, this is not a completely anonymous system -- everyone
will have access to your personal bio and know which posts are "yours." The Dialogue Group you are assigned to is YOUR group; you and your fellow members will determine what you talk about and be responsible for making the space what you want it to be.
Disagreements
Each Dialogue Group will have people with very different views and perspectives on the issues under discussion. We expect disagreements to develop -- nobody's being asked to leave their passions and beliefs at the door -- but this site is meant to be an alternative to all those places in the media and online where people argue from fixed positions and nobody learns anything in the process. We begin with an American tradition which seems to have been lost in recent years -- we believe we can learn something from each other, even from those we disagree with. We just need to be willing to listen and respond honestly and thoughtfully.
Participation
Finally there's the issue of participation. For small group discussions to be truly effective, people have to be active members, regularly reading what others in the group have to say, and posting regularly. You don't have to respond to every post, of course -- we know you have a life off-line. But this is not really a place for lurkers; if you just want to read the dialogues, you can always do that through the public Dialogue Directory or Featured Posts.
Of course, these are only expectations, not requirements. But we hope they sound reasonable to you and you're still interested in participating.
Guidelines
We welcome participation in these dialogues by people with a wide range of opinions and beliefs. To encourage free and open exchange between members, we've established a few basic guidelines. Although we must reserve the right to revoke membership privileges in extreme cases where these guidelines are repeatedly disregarded and a group is seriously disrupted, we hope we never have to do so. We know, in the end, that it's up to you to decide how to get the most out of your participation in your ALS dialogue group.
Now we get to the legal details. Just click here if you agree with the above. Thanks!
