Preventing a monopoly of opinion

Some here might know about my recent change of worldview into one that is rather radical and easily disagreed with (because it clashes with current norms and beliefs so severely that even open minded thinkers find themselves hard pressed to envision it).

Interestingly, this actually contributed to the diversity of opinion on this site. For a while there we used to be quite compatible in our views and hence easily agreed. We talked about specific issues and exchanged ideas, but rarely really took contrary positions which would really challenge us to respond to the contrary statements or begin doubting our own opinion.

However, since I own the Libervis.com domain name, design and visual identity (at least nominally) and pay for its hosting, some might fear that I may simply use this position to impose my worldview on this community or change the structure and functioning of the site in a way that would make it a beacon of my views.

Well, I wont. And if you wish I may make this promise as binding as the Libervis advertising policy, for which those who have been here long enough know I have continuously respected (there may have been some slips, but upon a complaint I acted towards resolving the issue and I still reject certain ads on the sole basis of them being against that policy).

The thing is that no matter what worldview I adopt I find the belief in the value of an open minded discourse with people of different beliefs to be more fundamental. And I want to preserve just such a climate on this site.

That said, at times we actually did have a sort of a universal set of beliefs on this site. For example, I remember that at some point we seemed like a Free Software and anti-Open Source advocacy site, partly because of all the articles I've written in favour of those views and partly because members here simply found mostly agreement on that topic.

And speaking of articles, our articles are usually successfully syndicated across a few news sites (depending on what they're about) so they manage to attract some publicity. If article promotes one particular view it is likely to attract people holding that view to our community and if not enough people write articles to balance out one view with another, those who do find themselves holding a sort of a "monopoly of opinion" in the articles section AND actually slowly build up towards this monopoly in our discussion sections as well.

Since I am the one most caring for bringing publicity and new people to this site I was usually the one writing articles, and depending on what genuine views I expressed, I attracted a particular kind of views to this site.

I didn't write an article in a while, and when I think of doing so this is the predicament I hit - who else is going to write to add to the diversity of opinion among our articles? If I write alone, I will unwittingly start building a monopoly of my own, which I don't want to do.

So either I don't write articles at all (and we stick to just forum discussions and other ways of collaborating, in which case we really need to find some other way to attract more publicity (as the lifeblodd of the site)) or we find a way to motivate a number of participants with a number of views to publish their articles here.

Note, btw, that at this point we don't have so many active members for talking about a multitude of people writing articles to make sense, but I am expecting a bit of an influx of new members once I complete the revision and redesign and start a promotional campaign on behalf of the new version of Libervis.com, so this issue seems worth tackling.

Any thoughts?

Nah, it makes sense. More work for me, and in this case the "work" is actually writing stuff I may be inspired to write anyway, should be a more natural thing to do. I guess I just have to make sure, maybe through a disclaimer of some sort that despite being whoever I am here the opinion expressed in the article is not an official opinion of the site, but rather my own, and that everyone is free to join and express their own.

Quotes and polls also sound like a good idea.

Thanks