Re: [AG Liquid Democracy] PP-EU ML discussion about LD/LQFB

["Christoph \"Pluto\" Puppe" <piraten AT stderr.de>]

Salve,

bin das grad mal überflogen.

Was mir wichtig war hier raus kopiert.


Aus dem Fred "Declaration of unlimited voting right of every pirate
and     no delegation of votes in the PPEU" von Heiko Schramm

Er postet eine Englische Übersetzung von
https://secure.piraten-meissen.de/wordpress/?p=322

Zusammengefasst: direktes Stimmrecht, ohne delegierte (es geht nicht
um LQFB sondern um Delegationen wie sie z.B die anderen Parteien für
Parteitage haben, daraus entwickelte sich eine Diskussion über LQFB,
die ich weiter unten in auszügen her kopiert habe. Ein spannender
Vorschlag aus Belgien war noch, den ePA zur Authentifizierung zu
nehmen. Macht den Eindruck, das sie nicht verstanden haben, dass das
Haupt argument gegen wahlkomputer *nicht* die Authentifizierung ist :(


Die Zusammenfassung dieses zweiten Threads: Delegation ist grade
wichtig, weil nicht jeder zeit hat jeden tag abzustimmen und wenn er
dazu gezwungen wird, werden die meinugs-trolle gewinnen, weil die
nehmen sich die Zeit ....

So die Posts ....

************* Steffen Ortmann

You can demand all you want, in the end it will be up to the founding
members to decide on how membership of PPEU will look like.

Please remember that this is intended as an organization for all European
Pirate Parties. Just because the German Pirate Party (or parts of it)
speaks out against delegation, doesn't mean it's not OK for other Pirates.

So instead of making 'demands', make a proposal how you imagine PPEU that
can be considered when it comes to deciding about it.

****** andere Mail von Steffen
Before making any more 'demands' on voting, I strongly recommend
reading Matthias comment on the topic:

http://ppeu.net/?p=432

**************************** Stephen Ogden
The language of this 'demand' seems quite strong, but I am choosing to
accept this
as an artefact of translation and not get too caught up with it.

Simply put this is a statement of opinion that seems to prefer a PPEU where
individual people are members as opposed to a PPEU where Parties are members.

As such it isn't really that different from what others have said.

One problem is that it does not actually advance the debate any further.

I think the idea of a single political party that encompasses members
from across
Europe is ambitious, maybe even desirable in the future. But not now. As such 
I
think this concept of a Party for European individuals needs to be reserved.

In the meantime, if we look at the stated goals of the PPEU (my own
re-wording) ...

  * forming a set of lowest common denominator policies that all
NATIONAL PARTIES
    can agree to
  * coordinating the campaigns of NATIONAL PARTIES
  * fostering cooperation, within the European Parliament, between
elected Pirates
    from NATIONAL PARTIES

... then one thing becomes very obvious. The entity that PPEU is
aiming to work for
is the National Party, not the individual pirate. As such it is (in my 
opinion)
obvious that the members of PPEU, right now, should be National Parties and 
not
individuals.

I think it is a sensible and logical conclusion therefore that within
the PPEU the
decisions are made by representatives of National Parties.

If PPDE wants to use liquid democracy to form their single vote within
PPEU, that is
up to them and no-one else.

I will also go so far as to repeat (I've made this clear in previous
posts) that if
production of a common platform (one each National Party can agree on,
i.e. policy
of the lowest common denominator) is the strongest current purpose of
PPEU, that at
the start the decision making process must be one where no member
National Party is
dictated to by the others.

  Stephen Ogden
  Governor of the Board - Pirate Party UK
  Pirate Party UK is a political party registered with the Electoral 
Commission.

********* andere mail
If PPEU has National Parties as members, and PPEU creates a common
platform policy
via a majority vote, then it will leave some National Parties with a choice of
either having a policy platform they do NOT agree with (stupid) or not
agreeing the
common policy platform.

***************** Mattias Bjärnemalm
I have to acknowledge that I do not fully understand the internal
politics of the German pirate party. But I have to say that I am
suprised to read this statement. I was under the impression that the
sophisticated delegate modell of liquid feedback was supported by the
majority of the German Pirates.

But this statement by the saxon pirates, denouncing any and all
delegate systems, tells another story. Even if I am not the strongest
supporter of liquid feedback I still feel that it might be a bit
premature of the saxon pirates to dismiss it out of hand just because
it happens to be a delegate system.

***************** Antonio Garcia
You have understood it wrong, Mattias.

What they say is that they do not want elected delegates with fixed
terms, neither voted directly nor through the parties.

They do favour direct votes through Liquid Feedback, or any other
means like frequent party conventions... where every Pirate cast his
own vote or delegates to whoever he wishes on every occasion.

The delegation system of Liquid Feedback is only a proxy voting system
where each Pirate stays in full command at any time and can override
any delegation at any time, transferring them to somebody else or
voting personally. Nothing to do with the delegation system of actual
election processes that sidesteps people until the next election and
puts all the power unconditionally in the hands of the chosen few.

******************* Sven Olaf Kamphuis
the delegations in liquidfeedback can be easily removed from the code :P

we were translating the thing into dutch anyway, for now its still in
there, as its a beta to see how it works out.

doesn't mean the delegation to other members will stay in there forever.
(as appearantly in germany some pirates are running around with a whole
bunch of delegations from other members ;) and that was not exactly what
the idea was behind the "oh you can vote on my behalf as i'm on holiday or
whatever" thing.

1 guy, 1 vote. (now some have 40 or so ;) fail.

****************** Antonio Garcia
Basically, it is distrust at such levels of ignorance (statistically,
at the mass dynamics level... the less you are knowledgeable the less
you have a margin to be able to trust others) that they would
dissociate from their shadows if they could.

The delegation system in Liquid Feedback is absolutely *optional*, you
can perfectly ignore it.

**** der quote der zum neuen thread führte siehe weiter unten ***************

In fact LQFB as an instrument gives them all the logic and shortcuts
they need to drop any kind of delegation (and boy, do they jump on
that wagon). Without LQFB getting rid of delegation would be much
harder to justify.

The Indignados' Assemblies are the perfect test case... the more
people you randomly put together, the more the level of understanding
of any possible majority gets low, until nothing intelligent can come
out of it. When equality is technically reduced to having an equal
right to vote... nobody relinquishes that right to vote (their
self-esteem relies on it), and whenever the issue voted upon is too
complex then you got a high quantity of coin toss votes or even worse,
defensive no votes so as to not to accept a possible trojan horse,
from a lot of people that do not care to participate in the debates on
the issue. So, technically, without some kind of trust in
knowledgeable people on each issue... nothing beyond the understanding
of the big majority can ever be voted upon with a fair chance of being
adopted.

Reason why they can never propose but the simplest of things... unless
they can trust someone to come with the right propositions.

********************** Jurgen jarrr at pirateparty.be
> if you don't know who your users in liquid feedback are, and thus
> cannot properly disable them, you installed LQFB the wrong way.

I'm sorry but LQFB is installed correctly at ours. User management
remains a pain in the arse. The activation code method too. Even if it's
a one-use code you still have to keep it in order to know to which
member you gave it and allow you to map whatever account he creates on
the LQFB system to your members database.

> germany has several broken LQFB installations, because they gave out
> "anonymous" tokens. the developers of LQFB were very angry at that
> because it impacts the meaningfulness of LQFB. LQFB is a simulation
> of an open vote in an assembly - if you can't check if people are
> real, if you can't walk up to a person and ask her, why are you
> voting that way, then your installation is essentially wrong.

Or let's say the software just sucks in some areas and that it's the job
of the developers to implement features allowing for this checking
without imposing their view on "reality" and the world. they shouldn't
be angry but just become aware they failed at some level with their
implementation. When you make social software you have to adapt to
people's behaviour. Not expect society as a whole adapts to the rules
you invented with a couple of friends without asking anyone.

(as what views can always be different ^^)

> the german parliamentaries are very frustrated about this, as they
> cannot have legally binding votes from LQFB as long as the people
> aren't identiable. that's why they are discussing redeploying LQFB
> in a proper way.

An that's why when we ask to enable us to use our belgian eID in the
software we don't even get a reply on our message. I suspect here too we
again break The Theory ...

> in italy we have solved this differently. people register a unique
> pirate identification (a login/nickname) when they join the party.
> after that, the visibility of that nickname is mandatory. also, if
> you go to the LQFB profile page you get realname and email address.
> realname is currently deemed optional, but visible by default.
> so if somebody hands out a delegation to a troll for years and
> years, you can walk up to her and tell her what a troll she is
> supporting.

As long as "walking up" doesn't resume to sending a useless email which
ends up somewhere between spambox and /dev/null.
I'm afraid but your solution won't work on a bigger population (let's
say whole Italy is using it).

************** andere mail
Regarding eID you can start here: http://welcome-to-e-belgium.be/

Regarding the software you can start here (check the tabs if you're
interested in Dev):
http://eid.belgium.be/en/using_your_eid/installing_the_eid_software/

Our dreamed of system would use this type of approach as it uniquely
identifies a person and would validate votes. We'd like to have this
implemented in the LQFB software too, replacing the subscription code
system.

And I'd be very interested in a exchange of ideas regarding LD. Please
take notice I don't speak German despite my German first name. ;)




**************************************************

Punkte die ich wichtig fand aus dem Thread "Understanding Liquid
Democracy" der mit einem Quote aus der Mail von Antonio Garcia
angefangen hat (neues Thema neues subjekt!"

************* carlo von lynX
"If you disable delegations (aka Liquid Democracy) you will run into
the effect of "dictatorship by the actives," that means you get a
skew towards those that have more time to spend on LQFB against those
who don't have it. It is the effect that led to the demise of the
grassroots democratic approach in the Grünen party in the 80s."

************* carlo von lynX:
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 02:51:08PM +0000, Antonio Garcia wrote:
> One of the biggest problems it has is that it allows people to reduce their 
> participation simply to the fact of setting up a few delegations, and 
> forget all the rest. And we won't change anything in this world if that is 
> all the effort we demand from the people.

i strongly disagree. one of my other sides of life is clubbing - when i
invite party people to care about politics, i usually land flat on my
nose. it only works close to elections and if i give it an extra humorous
twist. would you say these people have to be *forced* to more participation?

truth is, any person that at least exercises her right to set a delegation
and keep it there for as long as the person she delegated to is doing what
she thinks is okay, then it is perfectly legitimate for her not to log in
even for years. she *could* login anytime, and that's a huge difference
from the existing democratic system.

so we are making huge progress if we get "party people" (aka people who
care about their own stuff and only look at politics if strictly necessary)
to apply delegation in whichever way they want, but better than handing
out a non-revocable mandate over 4-5 years.

even if liquid feedback was filled with 80% people who only login once
a year, it would be a more democratic system than representative democracy.
the mere fact that they can react if bad news goes around, makes the
difference.

> Give a mass an option to justify their existence with less effort than any 
> other alternative, and they will buy it massively... specially in times of 
> forced austerity ;) . But those will not commit enough resources to any 
> action with the potential of truly changing the way we manage our world.

you are looking at it too much from the point of view of an active pirate
politician. look at it from the disco dancer's view. to him we are a bunch
of funny people who are pretty cool because they are gaining influence,
still the decisions we take in liquid feedback seem to hardly have an
impact on everyday life (i know this is wrong, but you first have to teach
them so), thus they like being there but don't care to actually work for
the pirates.

now just wait until the pirates are in the bundestag. i bet you will see
a sudden rise in popularity of the national liquid feedback system because
suddenly the stuff that gets discussed there has an actual and obvious
effect.

> They know the possibility is there, and hey... some are already threatening 
> to revolt if they do not get it.

yes. we want participation, and we want it to have an effect on real life.
so far the best we get is 9-13% in some regional parliaments - no surprise
we are only exciting to a minority of idealists.

************* kenneth at pirata.cat

IMO, direct democracy is good for "small groups", so, nobody concentrates
too much power. It would had been an issue for us (PP-CAT) a year ago, but
now maybe it's okay.

We use Direct Democracy, and we almost never reach a 20% of participation,
out of almost 800.

Liquid democracy is good for bigger groups, when a person is simply unable
to gather all that "attention".

On the other hand, to vote for bureau members, candidates and so on, I'd
prefer to stick to direct democracy.

********************************************************************************


-- 
Gruss

Pluto   -   SysAdmin of Hades
Free information! Freedom through knowledge. Wisdom for all!! =:-)

http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Christoph_Puppe

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