[EM] Fwd: proxies Was Mae West

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

 Was auto-unsubscribed for some reason, so this is a resend.
 
 From: raphfrk at netscape.net
 
 > On 4/2/07, Howard Swerdfeger <electorama.com at howard.swerdfeger.com> wrote:
 > > 1.)
 > > I became aware of proxy democracy over a year ago. I find it interesting
 > > from a intellectual standpoint. I think it could make a fine democratic
 > > system. However, I do not believe the the people of the world are
 > > anywhere near ready to implement/accept such a system. I think it would
 > > be most useful to medium to large size groups or organizations for now.
 > > In the mean time I feel no obligation to promote "proxy democracy" as I
 > > am most interested in democratic reform at the provincial/Country level,
 > > and I feel "proxy democracy" will not achievable or acceptable to the
 > > people for many many years, with many changes to our democracy between
 > > now and then. I prefer to focus on the next evolutionary step.
 >
 > Do you agree that some good might come if people on different sides of
 > an issue would talk to each other?
 >
 > If so, consider creating a River Province Open Forum, which would be
 > an FA/DP. To the people of your province, it might seem like just
 > another discussion group. What would be possibly unique about it are
 > that it would be neutral on all issues, and welcome participants from
 > all sides of an issue, and it would also be very general in scope,
 > i.e. any issue that might be related to what the provincial government
 > does or how the government is structured would be on-topic for the
 > forum. Also, there would be a proxy list.  <recommendation to setup a neutral forum> > (Perhaps newcomers should be
 > encouraged to choose a proxy about a week after they join, so they can
 > continue to be represented even if they go inactive. It's typical that
 > only about 10% of newsgroup members are "active" in any sense.) And
 > there should be some mechanism for conducting polls.
 
  I think it would be hard for newcommers to select a proxy. Also, they
 likely would consider it providing them no benefit. After 1 week, would
 they really know enough about the other members to pick a proxy? On the
 other hand, if the forum was specifically setup with that in mind so 
 people knew it would be required, then there would likely be less
 resistance. I wonder if a possible solution would be to automatically assign proxy
 and then allow the user to opt out. For example, there could be a system
 where users can rate posts in the forum. For example, "strongly agree, 
 agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree". If the new user marks
 say 5 of a single poster's posts as agree or strongly agree, then the
 system would recommend that the user selects that poster as his proxy. The user would obviously have the ability to completely override the
 system if that is what he wished. However, the idea would be to make
 it so that the user wouldn't want to as they system tends to give 
 effective proxy links. Also, the system could give an estimate on what the user would think
 of a specific post. The user could then make adjustments as needed.
 As time passes the system should be trained better. This could even be recursive. If you rate lots of posts as "agree"
 then the system could probably figure out what other posters you 
 would agree with based on how other people rated the posts. This would lead to fractional proxies. Each user would in effect give 
 other users proxy scores from say, 0 to 10. The user's vote would then 
 be split in proportion to the score they give to any proxies with the 
 max vote being limited by the score granted. For example, if I rate proxies as A: 7
 B: 10
 C: 1
 D: 2 and A, C and D vote, then my vote is split 
 A: 0.7
 C: 0.1
 D: 0.2 If they all vote, it would be
 A: 0.35
 B: 0.5
 C: 0.05
 D: 0.1 However, if only D votes it would be
 D: 0.2 ( as D only obtained 2 points, so is capped at 0.2) This allows a user to set lots of proxies at say 1 and 2 and thus not
 giving all of the vote to any 1 user. Another aspect of the proxy system is the feedback. This could be 
 implmenented by allowing users to flag a thread as important. If one 
 of your proxies (or at least someone you have rated highly) does that 
 then, maybe you would get an email. Each user could set their own
 threshold for being emailed if a fractional proxy system is used. Also, there is the issue of sock puppets. They can be (possibly/partially)
 solved by having some kind of reputation system. If a 'username' is 
 consistantly able to effect real world effects (like getting say 20-30
 people to attend some function), then they gain some additional power 
 relative to a newbie user. Actually, this problem is more generally that each username does not
 represent the same level of commitment. If the point of the FA is to 
 coordinate real life actions, then a person's vote should be related to
 how much real life effect they will have.  If the point of the system is to negotiate compromises, then the default
 situation needs to be known. If you have 1000 users but only 10 of them
 are likely to take part in any protests/counter protests/actions, then
 only those 10 really matter.  Ofc, if the point of the organisation is to coordinate voting in 
 the actual election, then everyone matters equally. You get just 
 as much effect on the election by convincing 100 people that your
 candidate is a good one as you do by convincing 100 people that 
 your candidate is worth dying for. > If the forum attracts many members and is representative in political
 > makeup of the province, _and_ if the polls are honest, then the forum
 > could become quite influential, because it would be a strong statement
 > of the will of the people if a poll resulted in 90% of the members
 > being for some particular position or solution. There are alot of ifs there. It is a basic bootstrap problem and if
 it actually does start to become influential (so it is worth corrupting),
 then sockpuppet prevention becomes more important and difficult. One option would be to link every user to a RL registered voter. Users
 in the forum could be general users and confirmed voters. All polls
 could report both results. > If the forum does become influential, then there is some incentive for
 > people to corrupt the polls to their advantage. How to avoid that?
 > - Make it part of the culture of the forum that proxies are
 > responsible for verifying that any clients they accept are who they
 > say they are. In order to avoid one person masquerading as several, it
 > would probably be necessary for the proxy list to use people's real
 > names.  I know I suggest it too, but this could be a biggie. One of the 
 'benefits' of the internet is that people can be anonymous. > For a bit of additional security, add the person's street
 > number or the last three digits of their phone number, etc. If a proxy
 > is found to have accepted a fake or duplicate person, just post a note
 > to the forum reporting the evidence.  What evidence ? Also, posting user's addresses isn't going to go down
 very well. What is needed is some way to prove that a user is a RL person without
 giving away to much identifyable infomation. > The credibility of that proxy
 > would go down if it happened more than once, and people would start to
 > discount votes associated with the proxy's supposed constituency.
 > - Make the polls open (no secret ballots). Then anyone can interpret
 > the ballots however they like. This is a good thing. However, I am not so sure how practical. There 
 would need to be a way to automate it. Few people will read the entire
 vote and re-weight all the votes.   Raphfrk    Raphfrk
 --------------------
 Interesting site
 "what if anyone could modify the laws"
 
 www.wikocracy.com  
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