I also agree that how information is summarized and organized is crucial, and that a blog isn’t going to cut it. The blog is not all there is to our project, it’s just our blog. Our project consists of making grants in a variety of broad humanitarian causes and publishing the information we find in the process on a public website that will be designed to help donors quickly get the picture of what charities we think are best and why. There will be a more full update on this within the next few days.

I’ll also add that I doubt you’re *even* in danger of eliminating the donors who are floating about at random; the transparency is entirely optional. A donor who simply wants a “donate now” button to click will find it and click it; the great majority I believe (or rather, hope) will be curious and, eventually, engaged if the ecology were more transparent.

To succeed, however, the dialog that ensues must be as clearly organized (even structured) as possible…otherwise, the information will be too chaotic to be useful. I’m interested in how you will organize the discussion and the information that grows out of it; controversial issues will generate masses of conflicting viewpoints, as recently happened at Tactical Phil. At that point, comments on a blog post become inadequate as an information architecture model. A wiki might offer the right flexibility, but will scare off some (there are many more blog commenters than wiki users). Thoughts?

I’ll watch this space often; I like what I’ve read so far.