[Election-Methods] Proposing a Delegable Proxy poll: best

[Jan Kok]

On 8/2/07, AllAbout Voting <AllAboutVoting at gmail.com> wrote:
> >[Jan Kok] Let's try a DP poll!
> >...
> >This is the proposed poll topic and title:
> >*** What is the best place to host the US-Iraq Conflict forum?
> Jan,
>
> Can you give us more information about what features the forum will need?

Good question! I'm not sure what features might turn out to be
important. These are some guesses:

- The forum should have a familiar look and feel, so new users can
join in the discussions quickly and with minimum effort. The learning
curve should be as easy as possible.

- Note that some potential participants are _very_ computer un-savvy.
Some refuse to get an email account. Others (myself included) prefer
to interact as much as possible via email.

- I anticipate that there may be a lot of "discussion" (I would rather
not call it "debate" :-) among people with different viewpoints. It
would be nice to have some way to keep track of the issues that are
discussed, the pros and cons, and whether people have reached any
consensus on the issues. The only "solutions" to that summarizing
problem that I can think of that are available now are 1) Grouping
posts by "threads", i.e. by email subject lines, 2) searching through
archived discussions, 3) Someone edits and summarizes the posts (labor
intensive, and hard to do impartially) 4) Create polls to track the
level of consensus on various issues.

- We need way(s) to conduct polls. This could be a whole topic by
itself! Anyway, I would prefer that most polls be open, where everyone
can see everyone else's vote, and people can even record brief notes
about why they voted as they did. See the Bylaws poll at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RangeVoting/database for an example. But
there should also be a way to do secret ballot polls, as a way of
confirming that the public votes weren't bought or coerced.

- I personally would like to be able to vote by email, rather than
having to log in at a web site. When a new poll opens, send me an
email ballot. I can hit Reply, fill in my votes, and hit Send. I would
get a reply that confirms how I voted and (optionally) shows the
results of the polling so far. Does anyone else like this idea of
polling by email?

- Yes, tools to manage the Proxy Assignments and Proxy Descriptions
tables and to count DP polls might be nice. But I don't think they
will be needed until we get 50 members in an FA/DP and we do frequent
polling. Until then, I think spreadsheets and manual counting will be
tolerable.

>
> In particular, does it itself need to support DP polls?
> (If yes, then I am not aware of any site that is suitable.  I don't
> share Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's view that the idea is central and the
> tools don't matter.  Having a site with good DP tools will help the
> idea function and propagate!!)

Ha! I'm not yet at the point of worrying about how to get other people
to create FA/DPs. Right now I'm struggling and begging people to join
a couple FA/DPs that I created. I'm willing to do a fair amount of
admin and count the votes myself by hand for now.


>
> Does the forum currently exist?  At what URL?

The US-Iraq Conflict forum is at
http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=3
The home page that tries to sell people on joining the any of several forums is
metaparty.beyondpolitics.org
That page says how to join the Metaparty FA and how to get email from
the forums. To get hooked into the proxy structure for that forum,
edit the wiki page at
http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org/tiki-index.php?page=US-Iraq+Conflict+proxy+list

(The other FA/DP I would like people to join is the Range Voting FA,
whose Proxy Assignment and other data is at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RangeVoting/database )

> Are there other forums on the same topic that already exist?

There are forums with a strong bias, such as http://antiwar.com/blog/
and http://www.firesociety.com/forum/5/Global-Fires/

There might also be forums where people from different sides of the
issue go to battle with each other.

> If so, why do you want to create a new one?

Every forum has its own culture and way of doing things. It seems very
hard to change an existing culture or to get it to adopt new
practices. For example, the RangeVoting yahoo group has 68 members,
but only 4 have added their names to the Proxy Assignments table,
which is what it takes to indicate interest in participating in the
FA.

And, I haven't looked very hard, but I doubt there are any active
forums about the Iraq war that are focussed on looking for common
ground and trying to find a solution that would be satisfactory to
most people (Americans, Iraqis...). Most forums, I expect, are
focussed on preaching to their own choir about their own rightness,
and doing battle with those <insert your favorite expletives here>
people who have different viewpoints.

By creating a new forum from scratch, I hope to shape the forum's
culture, including the things that go with FA/DP, treating people with
other viewpoints respectfully, focusing on looking for common ground,
and so on.

You can read more about my vision at metaparty.beyondpolitics.org and
my recent posts at
http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=3

Thank you for your interest.
- Jan

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