Anarchistblackcat.org is a moderated discussion board, set up by platformist anarchists. It was set up for a number of different reasons, here one of the moderators gives us her take on why the site was set up and what role it can play in our movement.

Firstly I live on an island which has no anarchist culture. There aren't a whole lot of anarchists here. Usually to meet other anarchist I have to travel abroad to bookfairs or conferences. I do a bit of that because its very useful talking to other anarchists. You soon learn that although our local conditions are different, in lots of ways we are fighting similar battles. We face similar problems. By talking to other anarchists we can learn about other ways of doing things, share experiences and maybe avoid continually re-inventing the wheel. I first started to post on forums a couple of year ago, and at first I was very excited by the possibility of having this type of discussion without having to get on a boat or a train. But then I quickly discovered that the level of discussion on most forums was very low. There was a lot of bullying and play ground behavior. Online discussions were much much worse than anything I had experienced in real life. I then became worried that for new people, just coming across these sites by accident, would think that this is what anarchism was all about. I think to build a new society we have to be able we to listen to other people, to learn from them. We have to be willing to experiment, even if that means we might make mistakes. We have to be able to convince people that anarchist ideas are useful and make sense. Instead, a lot of online forums seem to be based on cliches trading insults and point scoring. It's a million miles away from the type of free questioning dialogue that I think has to form the basis of any anarchist society.
So I thought to myself, you're an anarchist, experiment, try and build a different type of virtual anarchism. So I did, I got some friends together and we set up anarchist black cat. It's early days yet, but I think so far it seems to be working the way I imagined it would. Fingers crossed it will continue to succeed.
Launch Statement of Anarchist Black Cat
Ever wished for an anarchist discussion board dominated by an exchange of argued out political views rather than insults? So did we, so we decided to do something about it.
Ever wished for an anarchist discussion board dominated by an exchange of argued out political views rather than insults? So did we, so we decided to do something about it.
Inspired by the Organise discussion list of the mid 1990s (the first serious anarchist discussion list) and Anarkismo.net, we have launched AnarchistBlackCat. We are building a home for serious anarchist discussion and strong moderation of anything that falls below this according to a set of detailed, transparent and publicly available rules.ceremony.