Kasama Re-Amp

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Kasama began as a simple blog in December 2007, publishing Nine Letters to Our Comrades (http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/), and initiating a conversation over how to overcome two great absences: the absence of a revolutionary movement and organization, and the absence of a revolutionary strategy.
Five years and 5.6 million unique page views later, Kasama has developed an organizational network separate from this website, along with projects and collectives of many kinds and unities throughout the country.
Just after our five year anniversary, we will be launching a new, completely re-vamped site. Kasama has long out-grown the simple blog format, and it is time to experiment with something new.
It will launch as a beta, and some things will still be a work in progress. The old Kasama site will continue to live on archive.kasamaproject.org (http://archive.kasamaproject.org). The new Kasama site will revolve around three distinct spheres, aimed at contributing to the reconception of communist theory and strategy, and the regroupment of revolutionaries into future serious revolutionary organization:
1. Kasama Main: A radically redesigned magazine style communist publication that will both be more fun to read, and will aim at featuring higher levels of discussion and debate.
2. Kasama Threads: An open blogging platform aiming to allow participants on the Kasama site to do their own blogging and participation, while at the same time fostering the culture of principled and comradely struggle that has come to characterize Kasama.
3. Kasama Social: An independent revolutionary social network built into all aspects of the site, aiming to allow networking, parallel communication, real-time chat, a platform for study groups and organizing, and a lot more. It’s like communist facebook. We’ll also be looking at ways to have integration with existing social networks in ways the protect security.
To make all of this happen, we’ll need a new layer of moderators, authors, participants, contributors, and donors (shit is seriously expensive, total costs were about $8,000 plus $2,000 a year for our server). Hit us up and volunteer. Hit that donate button in the top right corner.
In the meantime, the current Kasama site will be slowing down as we prepare for launch.
Here we go! Lal salaam.

Source: http://kasamaproject.org/2012/12/07/coming-soon-kasama-2/


Sounds incredibly ambitious as well as something which I do not think it likely to succeed outside of the main site but I am going to be greatly interested at how things turn out and will be sure to utilize whatever I can.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I just discovered that the launch date for this new site will be January 20th (this Sunday). I will be eagerly awaiting the launch as I am interested to see how much of the new plans they will be able to implement off-the back.

[The Idler]

I'm curious about what this will look like.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I'm curious about what this will look like.

So aren't I. Sounds like it could be quite fun if pulled off correctly.

So far the new site hasn't been launched yet but when it does I will post a link and maybe offer my critique of the new format.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

So aren't I. Sounds like it could be quite fun if pulled off correctly.

So far the new site hasn't been launched yet but when it does I will post a link and maybe offer my critique of the new format.

For those comrades wondering: the new site should be online within the next hour or two (unless they experience technical difficulties).

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Alrighty, it took a little longer than expected but the new Kasama site is live! The address is still the same as it ever has been: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/

The social site: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/social

Not all the bugs have been worked out yet and it is still small but join and help it grow! There is an open blogging platform, one can create groups (much like here on RevLeft),and add friends and comment on other members statuses.

I will be writing up a full report in the coming hours (or days).

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I have a preliminary report on the new Kasama site for those interested:


On the 21st of January a new website was launched by comrades at the Kasama Project (http://archive.kasamaproject.org/). The new site is a radical departure from their old format. Incorporating more modern web-layouts as well as integrating a social-networking aspect (which has been described as Facebook for communists) the new site, while not without some significant launch problems, is shaping up to be a powerful new medium.


Logging on early in the morning I found the site had been redesigned from the ground up. In the place of the WordPress blog format was a sleeker re-work; gone were the stilted outlines of conventional blogging and in were a format more akin to that of a newspaper. Easy to navigate and simply to browse, I quickly found my way to the social aspect of the site.


Dubbed Kasama Social (http://archive.kasamaproject.org/social), or Kasama Threads, this dynamic of the site was the bit which has been described as “Facebook for Communists”. It is here that participants could make a profile, upload an avatar, and start sharing just as if they were on Facebook proper. Indeed the atmosphere, the looks and aesthetics, are so similar that one might think the Kasama Admins took Facebook and made it better, more radical.


Registering a profile for use on this social site was easy. Taking no more than a few minutes of one’s time I had a shiny new profile in moments. From here it was but moments more where I had uploaded my own in-site blog entry. This feature, called Open Threads (http://archive.kasamaproject.org/threads), is an open blogging platform. Members can publish entries and comment much in the same way Facebook’s “Notes” feature works. Designed as a source for in-depth discussion Kasama Threads operates as so: members upload blog entries and the most detailed and mature entries win a spot on the “main” website. In addition to this there is also a “Groups” feature which allows members to create discussion groups which will assist the movement in re-conceiving. Finishing off the re-design with an in-built chat feature, the new site has more communicative properties than a smart-phone. One can easily be overwhelmed.


Nevertheless, after I had slated my momentary urge to add a bunch of friends and respond to various comments, I turned my attention towards the actual mechanics of the site proper, namely, the articles.


While the layout is fine enough and the major categories are there (world events, liberation, theory, etc) once one clicks on the tab of interests the loaded screen is simply that of endlessly scrolling articles. It is here that I have my only true compliant. I believe that a more finely tuned search system could be created.


This is what I mean: say you want to find out more about Queer Liberation. Fine enough, simply go to the “Topics” tab, go to “Liberation” and select “Feminism and Sexuality”. At this point the system breaks down. You are taken to a list of articles which have even remotely to do with the topic you selected. There is no break-down or sub-topics. The site demands that you simply scroll until you find an article with a title that might be of interest to what you are looking for.


I maintain that this can be steam pressed into a much more compact, helpful, system. By this I propose that instead of the articles being strewn around haphazardly everything can be sub-divided into sections much like how on the original site ”Reading Clusters” were used to educate newcomers on some basic Kasama theory.


In the same way articles in the old Reading Clusters had simply their title in-fixed with a link to the article itself, I am thinking such can be done for each section’s results. This would require some more administrative responsibilities, admittedly, but in the least I think that if this approach wasn’t adopted than a brief “Recommended Reading List”, composing of relevant Kasama articles, before the endless scrolling would be greatly beneficial to guests and members alike.


Other than this complaint, and the expected host of bugs and technical details which are implied with the launching of any major interactive site, the new Kasama site is a promising accomplishment. More members are needed to truly make it a powerful tool and all the features must work properly, but with some refining and support, the new Kasama experience is one not to be missed.

Source: http://thequeerproject.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/new-kasama-site/


As the site gets more traffic and has its various bugs worked out I will probably continue to update this thread for a while more.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The plot thickens: recently there have been a series of DDOS attacks against the new website. Currently security is being beefed up. I wonder who the culprits could be (will never find out but still). At any rate it certainly shows that Kasama is a thorn in someone's side.

[maskerade]

does anyone know the amount of traffic that kasama gets? in other words, is it a decently popular website (as far as leftist websites can be popular)?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

does anyone know the amount of traffic that kasama gets? in other words, is it a decently popular website (as far as leftist websites can be popular)?

As far as Leftist sites go it is hard to say as other websites do not usually publish how much traffic they get (or if they do it is embellished). The reports from Kasama, during the previous website's four years, state that it got over five million hits. How many hits the new website has thus far gotten in the few days it has been up is unknown (maybe a few hundred or one thousand?).

[maskerade]

As far as Leftist sites go it is hard to say as other websites do not usually publish how much traffic they get (or if they do it is embellished). The reports from Kasama, during the previous website's four years, state that it got over five million hits. How many hits the new website has thus far gotten in the few days it has been up is unknown (maybe a few hundred or one thousand?).

are those unique hits? if 5 million people have at some point made their way to kasama i would be happily surprised, as it is an excellent website.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

are those unique hits? if 5 million people have at some point made their way to kasama i would be happily surprised, as it is an excellent website.

I am not quite sure what you mean by unique. If by proven than there was a chart, at one point, which showed the views, but since the new move, and all the responsibilities and challenges which go along with it, I cannot find that post. If by unique you mean five million different people than it seems unlikely (though it would be absurd to imagine that a decent fraction of the five million total were unique individuals).

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I am not quite sure what you mean by unique. If by proven than there was a chart, at one point, which showed the views, but since the new move, and all the responsibilities and challenges which go along with it, I cannot find that post. If by unique you mean five million different people than it seems unlikely (though it would be absurd to imagine that a decent fraction of the five million total were unique individuals).

I just found this old entry from years and years back which may help shred a little bit of light on Kasama's audience: http://kasamaproject.org/kasama/1879-11kasama-2010-starting-year-3-together

[maskerade]

I am not quite sure what you mean by unique. If by proven than there was a chart, at one point, which showed the views, but since the new move, and all the responsibilities and challenges which go along with it, I cannot find that post. If by unique you mean five million different people than it seems unlikely (though it would be absurd to imagine that a decent fraction of the five million total were unique individuals).

i did indeed mean 5 million different people, though I realize that is a lot. this revamp of the site seems quite ambitious and I was just trying to gauge if there was a large enough readership to provide inertia for the social network aspect of it. either way, the site looks boss and has a few new decent additions to it

[TheGodlessUtopian]

i did indeed mean 5 million different people, though I realize that is a lot. this revamp of the site seems quite ambitious and I was just trying to gauge if there was a large enough readership to provide inertia for the social network aspect of it. either way, the site looks boss and has a few new decent additions to it

That is a good question. I would say, judging from their stats and growing influence, that there would be a small base for a networking site. Once all the bugs have been cleared out and the security increased, and the mechanics are greased to perfection, there will be a decent audience. However I do not think it is meant to be a very large group as Kasama focuses, as you know, on a specific task-US communist regrouping from a Maoist angle-and as such has a limited outreach (at least to the sectarian left who doesn't want anything to do with it).

[keystone]

As far as Leftist sites go it is hard to say as other websites do not usually publish how much traffic they get (or if they do it is embellished). The reports from Kasama, during the previous website's four years, state that it got over five million hits. How many hits the new website has thus far gotten in the few days it has been up is unknown (maybe a few hundred or one thousand?).

actually, it was over 10,000 visitors on the first day of the new site.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

actually, it was over 10,000 visitors on the first day of the new site.

Quite impressive, I didn't think it was that high.

- - - -

Some more information on the new Kasama site for comrades looking for a concise entry:


Q: What is Kasama Social?
A: Kasama Social is a social network built into the framework of the site. It allows participants in the Kasama site to have horizontal communication, real time chat, groups for focused study and organizing, and more. Kasama wants to encourage horizontal connections between participants in the revolutionary movement. We have often discussed the value of harnassing "many to many" as part of new forms of radical organizatioin. We have tried to develop Kasama Social to help with that.
Q: What is Open Threads?
A: An open platform where anyone with an account on the new site can blog about news, revolutionary theory, and more.
Q: What is the moderation policy on Open Threads?
A: We'll moderate as problems emerge. Please don't fspam or abuse this channel, or flood it with too many posts. Unprincipled posts about the internal life of organizations or personal attacks will be removed (and could result in a ban). We want a culture of high level debate and struggle, not low unprincipled personal attacks.
Q: How does the chat work?
There is a Facebook-style real-time chat once you make an account. It also supports group chat rooms for study groups and meetings. We're also looking at ways to give people a way to add our chat interface to programs like Pidgin and mobile apps.
Q: Where do I access to old Kasama site?
We're having an issue with our domain providor, and are having to transfer it to a new company. In about one week, the old site will be accessible from http://archive.kasamaproject.org
Q: How secure are messages stored on Kasama's servers?
A: More secure than the servers controlled by Google or Facebook, but you shouldn't rely on that. Nothing on our servers is encrypted. The best policy is to assume that all communications are public.
Q: I never got a verification email after I registered?
A: Check your spam folder. When we launched, a lot of our emails were going to spam. That should now be fixed, but some of the earliest signups still had their emails go to the spam folder. If you're still having trouble, send us a heads up using the Contact (http://www.kasamaproject.org/contact-kasama) form. We can manually activate you.
Q: My avatar disappeared?
A: Give it a day or so and see if they come back. Our host disabled access to some of them during an attempt to hack our website. Most have come back.
Q: Someone attempted to hack the new Kasama site?
A: Yeah. It was the cause for some of our down time. To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing, it shows we've accomplished a great deal in our work.

Source: http://www.kasamaproject.org/kasama/4383-new-kasama-site-faq

[kasama-rl]

to add to the discussion of site traffic: Kasama has had 5 million total pageviews. That is far from unique visitors. And it includes a lot of traffic that we get from google and google images. In other words, a lot of people (doing homework or whatever) come to our site looking for a map of puerto rico, or a picture of che.

We get about a million page views a year (average) and there has been a pretty steady (almost linear) growth.

But the regular visitors (and engaged participants) are (realistically speaking) in the thousands -- though it is hard to know exactly how many thousands. (I'd guess at least half of our readers come from countries outside the U.S. -- including especially Europe and india.)

I expect that we will see changes in traffic with the move (especially a drop in the softer traffic we get from google). As to whether the new format engages people more, and enables people do connect in new says.... well we have hopes, but we'll just see how it turns out.

[The Idler]

does anyone know the amount of traffic that kasama gets? in other words, is it a decently popular website (as far as leftist websites can be popular)?


As far as Leftist sites go it is hard to say as other websites do not usually publish how much traffic they get (or if they do it is embellished). The reports from Kasama, during the previous website's four years, state that it got over five million hits. How many hits the new website has thus far gotten in the few days it has been up is unknown (maybe a few hundred or one thousand?).
Actually, its not that hard since there are many free tools to compare websites (uniques, hits, traffic, rank) including Alexa, Quantcast, Nielsen, Compete etc.
Here is one comparison I made using a free tool
http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=kasamaproject.org&d2=revleft.com&d3=socialistworker.com&d4=libcom.org&d5=wsws.org

[Q]

Actually, its not that hard since there are many free tools to compare websites (uniques, hits, traffic, rank) including Alexa, Quantcast, Nielsen, Compete etc.
Here is one comparison I made using a free tool
http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=kasamaproject.org&d2=revleft.com&d3=socialistworker.com&d4=libcom.org&d5=wsws.org

How the hell does Libcom get that many?!

[The Idler]

Here's another comparison
http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=kasamaproject.org&d2=socialistunity.com&d3=wsws.org&d4=worldsocialism.org&d5=marxists.org

[bricolage]

How the hell does Libcom get that many?!
It has a massive library.

[kasama-rl]

Actually, its not that hard since there are many free tools to compare websites (uniques, hits, traffic, rank) including Alexa, Quantcast, Nielsen, Compete etc.
Here is one comparison I made using a free tool
http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=kasamaproject.org&d2=revleft.com&d3=socialistworker.com&d4=libcom.org&d5=wsws.org

Thanks for sharing this. Quite interesting.... including that Kasama seems in the same ballpark as both Socialistworker and revleft.

I'm curious about understanding differences in results, though.

For example, the day we rolled out our new site, we had 10,000 page views (in the first 24 hours. (note: that was page views, not unique visitors, but we average about two page views per visitor, so i imagine there were still several thousand unique visits).

But nothing vaguely like that opening day spike is visible in these stats including for example in the Quantcast graph (which goes to Feb 1 and shows us with zero traffic? Is that because it doesn't have stats yet for that period?).

Am I missing something?

[The Idler]

Dunno, soz. Maybe someone else may be able to help.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

An appeal for web-hosting donations:


Kasama's web host, eboundhost, offers a promotion where a portion of the web hosting sales bought through them will go towards helping us out with our own web hosting. All of the sales go directly towards Kasama's dedicated web server costs, which are about $2200 per year.
Eboundhost offers 24/7 US-based phone support and cheap web servers. If you're looking for web hosting for a project, consider helping us out.
Check out eboundhost here (http://www.eboundhost.com/af/af-kasamapr). You can also donate directly to Kasama here (http://archive.kasamaproject.org/donate).
From each sale, here's how much goes towards our hosting costs:
Hosting Unlimited: $100
Hosting for Business: $200
Virtual Private Server: $200
Dedicated Server: $300

Source: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/kasama/4407-fundraiser-buy-web-hosting-help-kasama

[cyu]

How the hell does Libcom get that many?!

The website seems bugged. Those are the numbers from http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=wsws.org

Alexa is probably better. Also checked some less radical sites. I was actually surprised indymedia is still so popular.

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=indymedia.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 13,048 Traffic Rank in GR: 295 .
Sites Linking In: 23,988

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=commondreams.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 18,343 Traffic Rank in US: 4,253 .
Sites Linking In: 14,529

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=democracynow.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 23,407 Traffic Rank in US: 5,565 .
Sites Linking In: 16,025

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=marxists.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 33,883 Traffic Rank in US: 28,199 .
Sites Linking In: 11,702

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=wsws.org&r=home_home&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 37,297 Traffic Rank in US: 19,632 .
Sites Linking In: 8,125

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=libcom.org&r=home_home&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 76,313 Traffic Rank in IN: 36,642 .
Sites Linking In: 12,687

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=adbusters.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 80,989 Traffic Rank in US: 35,497 .
Sites Linking In: 6,390

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=socialistworker.org&r=home_home&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 171,297 Traffic Rank in US: 46,202 .
Sites Linking In: 2,009

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=revleft.com&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 280,729 Traffic Rank in PK: 24,285 .
Sites Linking In: 1,165

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=infoshop.org&r=home_home&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 281,091 Traffic Rank in US: 114,028 .
Sites Linking In: 3,667

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=worldsocialism.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 395,093 Traffic Rank in GB: 32,956 .
Sites Linking In: 810

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=socialistunity.com&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 403,315 Traffic Rank in GB: 24,222 .
Sites Linking In: 558

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=upsidedownworld.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 956,388 Traffic Rank in US: 332,733 .
Sites Linking In: 1,206

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=iww.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 993,809 Traffic Rank in US: 252,426 .
Sites Linking In: 1,481

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=kasamaproject.org&r=home_home&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,204,678 No regional data .
Sites Linking In: 547

http://www.alexa.com/search?q=www.soaw.org&r=site_screener&p=bigtop
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,775,741 Traffic Rank in US: 613,521 .
Sites Linking In: 1,216