Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Fw: [MG] Pirate Party Germany - "Opinion Forming Tool" (WorkingGroup) - Next Meeting

["marc" <marc AT merkstduwas.de>]

nee, nimm Du den International E-Democracy Talk komplett in die Hand - ich 
sauf hier sonst ab...
Und die Nummer mit der Unerfahrenheit kauf ich dir nicht ab ;o)
Wiki bekommen wir gemeinsam hin...

-----Original Message----- 
From: Alexander Praetorius
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 12:06 AM
To: marc ; ag-meinungsfindungstool AT lists.piratenpartei.de
Subject: Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Fw: [MG] Pirate Party Germany - 
"Opinion Forming Tool" (WorkingGroup) - Next Meeting

Bist du sicher das ich da was an mich reissen soll ;-)
Ich glaube dir macht das ganze Spaß.
Wenn du willst übernehm ich auch ein paar Aufgaben die zu erledigen sind, 
aber im großen und ganzen... oder man teilt auf in Dinge die rund um die 
Veranstaltungsreihe zu tun sind und wir verteilen das.


On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 12:00 AM, marc <marc AT merkstduwas.de> wrote:
Ahoi,

das folgende ist echt interessant: E2D sollten wir mal im Auge behalten!

Cheers
marc

-----Original Message----- From: JF Frenette
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 6:29 PM
To: e2d-international AT googlegroups.com
Cc: marc
Subject: Re: [MG] Pirate Party Germany - "Opinion Forming Tool" 
(WorkingGroup) - Next Meeting

Hi Marc,

Just to clarify on other colleagues' responses, E2D International was 
originally intended to act like Pirate Parties International (PPI) (i.e. a 
political international) but specifically for Electronic Direct Democracy 
(E2D) parties around the world (as opposed to Pirate Parties).

Apart from the difference in guiding principles, E2D International was also 
never formalized in the same way as PPI (e.g. officially founded in 2010 
during the Brussels conference from April 16th to 18th, recognized as an 
NGO, managed by a board, etc.)

That said, there has always been interest in developing a solid, core, 
open-source decision-making tool for use by all parties; I believe that is, 
in part, what brought us all together in the first place. E2D parties are 
limited by their decision-making/voting tools but this also seems applicable 
now to Pirate Parties and others, especially with the growing use of Liquid 
Feedback: www.liquidfeedback.org .

As mentioned, we have limited resources and each entity is trying to break 
through the political game by adapting to their environment and national 
context. For example, we use a very limited WordPress based voting platform 
for the Online Party of Canada (http://www.onlineparty.ca/ ) and are 
encouraging other parties/members to participate (Pirate Party of Canada 
included) but will need to upgrade soon to make the workflow more fluid and 
accessible to all members/electorate, especially as usage increases.

Let's keep it going! Cheers!

-JF


On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 4:33 AM, Sven Mason <ruknine79 AT gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Marc
I see you trying to find common ground among the projects, I have been 
wrestling with this myself, soon I will need a DD platform for some projects 
and want to build it into a strong base already developed among other 
groups, and have been trying to see how the different projects could support 
each other while maintaining the freedom to branch in any way they choose.

Each group has taken a specific path and with little resources they are 
focused on their own vision and structure of code rather than trying to 
interact with other projects, perhaps if we could start by abstracting out 
(in the programmatic sense) the different objects and processes then build 
an open standard for each of these there might be paths to interaction.

I have become a bit skeptical about whether this is possible due to the 
complexities, some groups use complex multiserver encryption to manage votes 
and tallies while others do not need that level of security and use basic 
client/server structure. Some allow for bills/issues to be collaborated on 
after voting begins some do not, some offer yes/no rejections, some range 
voting.. Each individual implementation as a single project is not really 
that complex, but having them all work together is.

It would take some flexibility and open-mindedness by the various parties to 
work out how disparate structures can mesh, or a lot of resources (I am sure 
Google could figure it out if they wanted to), perhaps at these early stages 
it is best to let each group forge their own path, collaborating as they see 
fit, rather than trying to standardize everyone.

But at the same time, in support of DD political parties or any organization 
that wants to develop a DD voting system, any and all categorizations or 
information about existing projects would be beneficial.

Maybe I have not seen all your conversations but what is your overall goal 
in this chain of thought, was there a working group on Metagovernment to try 
and begin building an "Opinion Forming Tool"? Who initiated this, was it for 
the yourself/Pirate Party Germany? How are they hoping to apply it, as an 
internal issue raising and voting system within the party or for 
constituents to raise and vote on issues for the Pirate Party to follow? It 
seems to me your thoughts are similar to what many people involved in DD 
have already considered.



Sven



On 10/16/2012 1:54 PM, marc wrote:
Pietro Speroni di Fenizio wrote:
Surely you can use this division to classify tools, but what is your
aim? To get some mental clarity or to find and build a tool that
reaches the widest possible consensus on a topic?

It's more for clarification. Because 'to reach the widest possible 
consensus' is just one single part of the overall problem.

There are dozens of tools around focusing on different topics and following 
several appoaches. All this tools wants to solve nearly the same problem: 
How could we improve democracy to enable more participation and 
transparency?

Unfortunately the discussion between the different concepts often becomes 
kind of relegious fight for 'the best solution'.

The aim is to stop this relegious fight.
Let's have a look on what is equal instead of what tears apart.

The idea is to have a common base (framework of workflows and entities) for 
all tools to enable the interaction and extensibility of the overal process 
of decision-making. Therefore we need a common understanding of how 
workflows and entities interacts in the process.

The thesis is: there are Workflows and Entities that are common to all tools 
in the domain of decision-making!
At a higher abstraction, the tools just differ by the method / strategy they 
implement.

And of course they differ by the area they fall into. For example our 
working group split the process of decision-making into the following three 
areas (or systems): Information, Discussion and Decision.

What you risk doing is to list all the tools that fit nicely in your
schema, and then have a bunch of rogue tools. That try, somehow, to
work at the same time with two or all three of the aspects. For
reasons that should be clear after having read my previous email,
those last tools are the ones where I would expect the app that makes
it to reside.

IMHO it's always not a good idea to build an abstraction and force somthing 
into it. The abstraction should naturally evolve from the special to the 
general. So to define such classification is not to restrict but to start a 
discussion about the similarities of all those tools.

And as always, it is not just black or white. So one tool can easily be 
classified by multiple categories or tags, why not? But I guess there will 
be always a main category for each tool it fits into.

Does this explenation makes the aim a bit clearer?

Cheers
Marc





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