Welcome to our Centrist / Moderate Community!

The idea behind Centrists Rising is a bit different, or rather bigger, than your standard political blog.  I’m not talking about how rare it is to find a well put together website that is meant to cater to political centrists and moderates… although that is another issue that this site aims to help solve. I’m talking about this site not just being a mouthpiece for a handful of us more prolific centrist / moderate blog authors that have been doing this for a while.

I ran the blog site ‘Rise of the Center’ for just over two years. In that time, it went from being a hobby blog, where I just shared my own personal thoughts on politics, to being a multi-author site with a few dozen contributors. Why we grew faster than the vast majority of blogs (I think anyway – 20/20 hindsight and all that) – I’m a bit of a workaholic, I was pretty active on social media and I networked with other centrist / moderate blog owners.

I’ve come into contact with hundreds of intelligent (and, frankly, not so intelligent) centrist and moderate voices over the last couple years, and after some thought decided I’d take running the blog more seriously. We should have a place where we can voice our opinions too, like the left and right do (among other areas of the political spectrum. That is what this site is about.

Not everyone has the time, or know-how, to build a site of their own – so this new site has a user blog area (Centrist Views – Moderate Voices) where any registered user will be able to write just about whatever they want. For those who would like to put a bit of time into it, we’ll review posts made to that area for potential promotion to the front page, where more people will see it. Those who regularly post solid content will be able to potentially earn their way into their own column on our site.

But blogs are only part of the equation. Another thing that I’ve had dozens of people say is missing for people in the political center is a political forum. If you have a topic you’d like to start a conversation on, you’ll be able to head over to the Centrist / Moderate Forum, and talk with other political moderate and centrist readers.

We’ll also be working on a Political Centrist / Moderate Wiki, where we’ll build a repository of useful information – of, by and for centrists and moderates. Users will be able to contact each other, person to person, if they want to have one on one conversations, and other simple social networking / community functions will come later.

As I alluded to above, all you need to do to write on our site is create an account, using a name that sounds like a real person. If you want to have your posts considered for the front page, you’ll have to fill out a short bio, and upload a picture of yourself. We’re not going to verify any of these things, but we’d sure rather you give your real name, tell readers a bit about yourself, and use a real picture. Up to you.

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you all in the comments, forums, groups and whatnot, and hope you enjoy the new site!