We, the developers of this system, are perhaps not the best people to describe its strengths and weaknesses. Our users are perhaps best able to do that, and we hope you will by sending us comments on both. Nevertheless, some things do stand out:

Strengths

The strengths of this system are the people who have been involved and the volume of material they have assembled and created for this site. Over one hundred and fifty leaders of the field have been involved in this project so far (see the Participants List), and we hope that once more people learn about this, they will become involved, too. So there is a tremendous amount of wisdom and experience reflected on these pages.

Another strength was the team of people at the University of Colorado who helped us put this site together. They assembled a staggering amount of material, wrote it up in essays, linked it as additional resources, coded it so it would show up in the right place, and created the database and website into which all of this was placed. These people are named and acknowledged further in the Participants List as well.

Weaknesses

Perhaps the biggest weakness of this site is that it was written primarily by Americans. We did have quite a few participants from other countries*, and many of the Americans have extensive international experience, but to those who claim that this is primarily a U.S. project we have to agree.

At least initially.

We could only get so big, so fast. But now that we have a good start on this project, we want to go bigger. We have begun to contact people in other countries who are interested either in using the Knowledge Base, contributing to it, or both. If people feel that it reflects an American view that doesn't make sense in their country, send us a comment, or even a whole essay explaining how things are done differently wherever you are. We very much want to expand this system so it better reflects the knowledge and experience world-wide.

One other weakness is that as big as this is, it is missing a lot of material. The amazingly heartening fact is that we know a tremendous amount about how to deal with these conflicts more constructively. The sticking point, we believe, is not knowledge, but knowledge dissemination and knowledge utilization. We need to teach this knowledge to people in all walks of life, all around the globe. Lack of knowledge is not what keeps these conflicts intractable; what does is lack of hope. We hope that this website can give the hope -- and the knowledge -- to help people find a way out of the messes they are in. And we hope many of you will help us make this website better.

*Olympio Barbanti from Brazil, Deborah Shmueli, Julia Chaitin, Joel Peters and Daniel Bar-Tal from Israel, Jacob Bercovitch from Australia, Mari Fitzduff from Northern Ireland, Paul van Tongeren from the Netherlands, Juan Guitierrez from Spain, Leopoldo Artilles and Nelson Espinal-Baez from the Dominican Republic, Leo Smythe from Ireland, John Katunga from Kenya, Gachi Tapia from Argentina, Evenlin Gerda Lindner from Norway, Fen Hampson and Michelle LeBaron from Canada, Angela Khaminwa from Kenya, Sanda Kaufman from Hungary and Israel (though currently living in the U.S.), Andrea Bartoli from Italy (though currently living in the U.S.), and Mohammed Abu-Nimer, an Arab-Israeli (currently living in the U.S. as well).