To preface, I'm not a PPA hater. One thing that the PPA has actually done well about is begging people to get involved to help shape the organization's actions. Don't like a statement the PPA has put out? TheEngineer has been pleading for you to help devise language you are satisfied with. In that line, I thought I'd use what knowledge I have to help out. And, since Mason Malmuth is my personal hero, I decided to post it in NVG rather than just PM someone.
The situation: The PPA has been running a
daily "take action" campaign. In my view, this has been pretty ineffective at galvanizing the poker community and getting a lot of people involved. 2+2 is a site that, by some estimates, gets 4 million page views a day and 400,000 visits. It's a site with users who have done some pretty incredible things, from leading a mob of internet detectives to uncover the superuser scandals, to donating tens of thousands to charity out of love for Barry Greenstein and donkaments. It's a userbase that has a great deal of power when it's motivated effectively. Despite this, the response to the PPA's initiatives have largely been tepid and cynical, and I don't think this initiative has really had much of an impact so far.
The problems:
1. The goals seem unattainable for one person.
The PPA's main longterm goal is to make internet poker legal, free, and safe in America. To accomplish this, the suggestion is that we should "like" comments on facebook and send a "man shakes fist at cloud" email to CNN. These actions have effects, but when that's the goal we're all fighting for, whether I make a facebook post or not or send an email really doesn't matter. It doesn't make any measurable progress to any measurable goal that the PPA has set, and that drives apathy.
2. Diffusion of responsibility runs rampant.
Given this, everybody assumes that others will help out, that their contributions don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and they don't make them. Individuals are actually being Game Theory Optimal in not participating, but as a group, we all do a lot worse with a group of listless GTO participants.
3. There is currently little to no personal or social benefit for taking action.
The first two problems exist in many social situations. One of them is voting. Each vote is unlikely to make any significant progress to winning the presidential election for a candidate, and it's again "rational" to sit out. What makes half of voters get to the polls anyway is that they have some greater personal or social reason to do so, even though their individual vote doesn't really matter.
4. The PPA's name is toxic right now.
Whether you like it or not and think it's fair or not, the PPA has come to be associated with ineffective, useless leadership, which kills people's desire to help out in a PPA campaign. It even contributes to the previous item - if you tell a bunch of liberals that you're helping out with the democratic party to get Obama re-elected, most of them will think that's pretty cool, and you get some social benefit from it. If you tell a bunch of poker players that you're helping out with the PPA to make internet poker legal, most of them will think that you're a moron who isn't having any effect.
The solutions:
1. Make smaller sub-goals that are more tangible and achievable.
There should be daily and/or weekly goals that can be measured. For the week of June 6th through June 12th, for example, make a goal that 500 2+2 users will sign-on to a list of people who have sent CNN a message asking them to increase their coverage of poker. Maybe that number should be higher or lower, I'm not sure, whatever seems appropriate based on current action levels. The point is that being one person who writes a letter to CNN, that gets poker more coverage, that gets politicians to pass a poker bill, is a daunting and probably useless thing to try, as an individual. But being one person who is part of 500 who helped make the group reach their goal? That makes people feel like they've actually done something. And if the participation increases significantly because of it, than it does mean they actually will have done something. When we get 500, we can go for 750, then 1000, then 1500, with new media targets, and so on. Get people feel like we're accomplishing something and the movement is growing stronger, not just that we're all taking shots in the dark that random actions may or may not be helping and may or may not be growing in significance.
2. Appeal to personal and social benefit.
Get some poker celebrities to sign onto the lists. If Tom Dwan posts "45. durrrr", I guarantee numbers 46-55 are going to get posted pretty damn quickly. People get excited when they see users they respect helping out and being another one of the group. It also creates a more compelling call to action - if you're on this list and you sent your email to CNN/blasted Spencer Bachus on Facebook today, you've helped. If you're not, why aren't you? There's none of that right now. Allowing people to more easily and recognizably go on record supporting the fight will increase the benefit from doing so.
The reason why most people vote, besides not thinking about the mathematics of the utility calculation of waiting in line vs the one whatever chance that their vote changes the presidency, is that they feel compelled by duty to "do their part", and there are social benefits to saying that they went through the effort and did it. "Do your part" should continue to be a theme of the PPA going forward to help avoid diffusion of responsibility and the feeling that fighting for poker rights is useless. So what if I can't make the libertarians more powerful with one vote? I can still do my part.
3. This should be a 2+2 userbase action that the PPA organization helps out with, not a PPA organization action that the 2+2 userbase helps out with.
This is going to require PPA swallowing their pride, but it's completely necessary. When Scott Brown ran for senate in MA, he avoided talking about his party, which is viewed unfavorably in that state. The PPA is viewed unfavorably on these forums, and this can't be the PPA's project. The announcement says "PPA Daily Fight for Poker Rights" - I know this was probably to make it clear that this wasn't a 2+2 project, only a PPA project that the 2+2 is giving a microphone to, but having the word "PPA" in there actually kills off a ton of interest from a lot of people in this forum.
Get 2+2ers to help out in running the operation on this forum (no, I'm not volunteering for that). Don't call it a PPA fight - let 2+2 users run the show, and give help when appropriate using the resources that the PPA has. The fact of the matter is that few people is energized to help TheEngineer out with a take action project, whether or not that's rational or fair. If the guys at Subject: Poker, for example, were willing to help out with an advocacy role, that would produce much different results than PPABryan telling me what to think about Phil Ivey. Imagine, for example, if NoahSD were leading the call for action - I'd slather my ice cream with mashed potatoes if that guy told me it was the right thing to do.
Obviously, there are a lot of problems with the current fight for poker rights, and I've focused on a small segment of them - the ones that have to do with PPA messaging/approach to getting people interested in helping out. Add your own thoughts about whether my recommendations are good, how they should be tweaked/abandoned, and what else can be done to help out.
TL;DR Cliffnotes: Just read everything in italics.
