Seems like a fair enough question someone asked me last week:  What's different about aarnewal.org from GSOWAtch, Friends of Bill, _________ (fill in the blank)?

There are lots of great sites on the web dealing with AA history, people who don't like AA service structure, blogs relating about experiences in AA, etc.  In addition, dozens of sites and groups that are based on various social networking (both recovery oriented and general) all contribute to (or confuse?) the conversation about and around AA.

It's our hope that this site will serve a need for some people.  We see no real need to compare directly with other sites or online groups.  As long as we support a useful function for some people and somehow we can afford to purchase hosting services, we should be able to.  So, what could one use to compare participation on this site or another site?

Following are some of the things that I feel distinguish this site from some other sites:

1. The basic intention of this site is to encourage and support collaborative thinking about what the future of AA might be.
2. Most members of this site agree that there are problems with AA as we see it and we believe it can and should be changed in some way.  If not structurally, in some manner in which we practice the processes that are in place.
3. We encourage inquiry with no holds barred as to what can and should be changed (e.g. change the conference structure, creating new or different literature, modifying our service structure, changing the basic definition of the program, etc.).  So far as I'm aware, no two people who are members here agree completely as to what the "solution" is but we really respect others' intention that we're all trying to create the AA of the future which will be more effective in future generations.
4. We really want to pay for our own web services and software.  We appreciate that Ning, Google, Yahoo and many other services support great dialog about AA.  For at least one member of this site (me) we want to make sure that we have no other direct affiliations or dependency on those outside entities.
5. Likewise, we'd like to not offer paid advertisements or offer endorsements on our site.
6. We would like to be accountable for what is on our site to the "conscience" of the members of the site.  Frankly, we don't yet know how to work this out in terms of process but it is certainly our hope and intention.