Testing & Development

The Forum Initiative

Civic feedback infrastructure where the people who generate the data own it. Every partner organization gets a dedicated survey domain. Every response is cryptographically signed. Currently in development.

Data Sovereignty by Design

When a participant deletes their submission, the plaintext is removed permanently. The anonymized ledger entry persists as an unlinkable aggregate record — no content, no identity, just proof that a response existed. Your data belongs to you. Not to the platform. Not to the organization. Not to anyone who didn't write it.

Dual-Table Architecture

Responses are stored in two separate tables. A public ledger holds anonymized aggregate records with zero personally identifiable information. A submissions table holds the plaintext — readable for analysis, deletable on request.

Cryptographic Signing

Every response is signed client-side with Ed25519 before it leaves the browser. The signature proves authorship and prevents tampering — including by The Forum Initiative itself.

Ethical Survey Design

Questions are drawn from a reviewed database designed to collect honest sentiment without leading, priming, or emotionally manipulating respondents. No dark patterns. No engagement tricks.

Cloudflare Infrastructure

Built on Cloudflare D1 (serverless SQLite), Workers, and Turnstile. No third-party data processors. No egress fees. Bot prevention without CAPTCHAs or personal data collection.

How It Works

An organization partners with The Forum Initiative

NGOs, civic associations, and community organizations receive a custom subdomain on yourcommunity.forum — a dedicated survey link they share with their membership. Nothing to install. Nothing to embed.

Members respond to ethical survey questions

Participants visit their organization's link, answer non-manipulative questions on civic topics, and submit. Every response is cryptographically signed in the browser. No account required.

The organization gets structured data

Partner organizations access aggregated reports — topic frequency, geographic distribution, and areas of consensus across their membership. No individual responses are exposed.

Verified sentiment reaches decision-makers

Organizations use the structured, provenance-verified data to inform their advocacy — presenting real constituent sentiment to legislators, agencies, and municipal officials.

mainemattress.yourcommunity.forum

Each partner organization gets a dedicated survey domain for their membership.

Development Notice. The Forum Initiative is a civic project in active development, operated by Richard Ferraro in Maine. It is not a registered nonprofit, corporation, or political organization. Nothing on this site constitutes a product, service, or binding commitment. No legal rights, ownership interests, equity, or contractual obligations are created by visiting this site or participating in testing. All features described are in development and subject to change. Data collected during testing is used solely to evaluate functionality and is not sold, licensed, or shared with third parties.