[Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Requirements in regard to split opinion formation

[Michael Allan <mike AT zelea.com>]

Hi Marc,

Although I'm not a member of the Meinungsfindungstool working group, I
have a personal concern with what you're working on.  Specifically it
involves the problem of "split consensus" as Thomas von der Elbe has
called it, or "split opinion formation" in your own terms.

But first I have some questions.  Do you have time to answer?

Marc said, October 10:
> One possible answer our working groups comes out with is, that we need to 
> define kind of standardization. Like the W3C standardizes the internet and 
> Business Entity Model...

And in reply to Pietro, October 16:
> 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.

I try to picture what you describe (pardon my ASCII):

             ....
          ..........  M
        ..............   ....
       .......................
       ......................
        .............   ....
          ..........
             ...


            +-----+  +-----+
            |     |  |     |
            | T1  |  | T2  |
            |     |  |     |
            +-|-|-+  +-|-|-+
    +---------|-|------|-|---+
    |         | |      | |   |
    |                        |
    |    S                   |
    |                        |
    +------------------------+


     M  Opinion in formation
     T  Competing tools
     S  Common standards, practices,
        databases, and so forth


Here T1 and T2 are competing tools for the purpose of opinion forming.
A user may choose T1 or T2.  But regardless of the choice (say it is
T2), the user will remain part of the same overall opinion forming
process (M).  So he/she may continue to work with other users who make
different choices (T1).  This technical freedom of choice is made
possible by the common standards, practices and/or databases (S) that
are shared between the competing tools.  Is this picture correct?

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/