What's Ricochet?

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We're a right-of-center community -- one that's united not just by shared principles, but by a desire for a smart, civil and above all lively discussion of the world around us.

Do we all agree on every aspect of policy? No. Do we all march in lockstep with RNC talking points? Of course not.

But, deep down, we're all basically conservative or libertarian. We each dissent from the current, leftward drift in national policy, and we want to see something done about it. And what we're creating, above all, is a strong, unapologetic, civilized, inviting conservative meeting place.

Please join us!

Ricochet Blog

The Logo

Why "Main Feed," and How Will It Change?

November 11, 2010

We changed the name of the "All Conversations" tab to "Main Feed" because it had become inaccurate: our home page no longer has all the conversations; some of them are in the Member Feed section.

That said, the Main Feed won't change much, and it's our intention to keep it as Ricochet's center stage. Over time, we expect to see about 60% of the conversations initiated by contributors (it was 100% until a few weeks ago), with the remaining 40% divvied up between conversations initiated by partners (like this), news items (like this), and, of course, members (like this).

Revealing What Half the Country Already Knows

November 11, 2010

As the above Inside Ricochet box suggests, Ricochet is based on the premise that conservatives have been consistently mis-portrayed by some of the loudest voices in our culture: broadcast news celebrities, editors at urban newspapers, activists, entertainers, university humanities professors, etc. Not all of them, of course -- the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are notable exceptions -- but the sense one gets from watching SNL, seeing a movie, reading the New York Times, listening to NPR or getting a BA degree is that conservatives are ignorant at best, evil at worst.

Well, our experience has been the complete opposite. Everywhere we've looked, in every industry and community, in offices and neighborhoods across the country, we've encountered smart, clever, savvy right-of-center men and women – accomplished, thoughtful voices from the conservative end of things.

And that's what Ricochet's about. Revealing the broadly-conservative community as we know it to be, and making sure we're able to keep out the few bad apples who give conservatism a bad name. Since launching a few months ago, we've been enormously gratified at the quality and civility of the conversations on site, and now we want to start giving our members a greater voice.

The member feed page we’re introducing today is one step in that direction. We'll add more to this in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Introducing "Inside Ricochet"

September 7, 2010

We're launching a new sub-page on Ricochet.com-- "Inside Ricochet." If you're curious about where we are going with the site, about upcoming features and known issues, and any other Ricochet news, this is the place to come!

Upcoming Features

Private Messaging

Status: Completed

Simple, private member-to-member messaging.

Keywords / Tags

Status: Not Started

The ability for Members and Contributors alike to add keywords or tags to their Conversations. This should allow people to find them more easily. In addition, this will allow us to place a list of "Related Conversations" at the end of each Conversation, generated automatically from the similarity in keywords between conversations.