More Objects, More Relations, and Promoting Sharing

I am unsure if the currently proposed features are adequate to support what I'd need. I might be overshooting the scope of this project, but I need something that has a larger scope or I need to know how this could be combined with other modules to give the functionality that I need.

Basically I want to do everything that you can do on CampusActivism.org, but with a network of hundreds of websites sharing data. Thus I want a contacts module that relates people, organizations (I call them groups), networks (of groups), schools, issues, campaigns, events, resources, and several less important things (email lists, speakers/speaker topics).

Schools - are very important if you are doing campus-related organizing. I believe campus activists are a significant portion of existing activists, and are more likely to create websites and use this technology. I think schools are different from organizations – am I right?

Issues - you need a issue taxonomy. It's essential for sorting things and doing user-friendly searches. At a minimum a flat list of a hundred or so issues will do a decent job.

Campaigns - people and groups working on an issue that has concrete goals, and a stronger level of organization behind it than an issue. It's also essential for sorting.

Events - knowing which organization is sponsoring an event, or in the case of a day of action which groups are participating in it - is useful. Also being able to filter events by issue or campaign is good - as users are going to care more about their preferred issue type of events.

Resources - files like leaflets, essays, posters, how-to materials, campaign packets, organizing guides, graphics, etc. Essential for organizing.

I think if you do a partial implementation of only people and organizations that you are missing the big picture. You're providing good functions, but you could be doing so much more. If you don't build relations between all of these things that are obviously related it will be much harder for users to find relevant information. This is especially true if you want to make as much information public as possible. My goal is to make everything (minus some people who request privacy) public because that's the best way of promoting grassroots activism. I want to see a big shared database (whether centralized or distributed) that would contain information about tens of thousands of groups, people, events, resources, networks, issues, and campaigns. You could log into your local group's website and it would filter relevant information from the network.

Perhaps there are some people who are intending for the information to remain private instead of sharing it? I can see this happening for an individual's personal information. But if you don't make group information public (and resources, events, networks, campaigns) then you are striking a blow against grassroots activism, in favor of centralized offices which are resource-intensive and necessary for main things, but are not the best way to build mass social movements. My emphasis is on sharing as much data as possible.

Who Controls Data
My take is that most information can be controlled by the person who enters it. I'd favor people adding themselves and only groups that they belong to, not being added by someone else. Some information needs to be publicly controlled - like information about schools, or the issue taxonomy. Other information should be shared - like control of a group or a campaign.

I'm guessing it's better to plan big from the beginning so you don't get in trouble later on. If I'm wrong, if there is a way of creating other modules and combining things together - please let me know.