[Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Time to start testing proxyfor.me (was )

[Scott Raney <scott AT metacard.com>]

This list has been quiet for awhile, so maybe you all have some time
to test a new decisionmaking tool I've been working on. It has certain
similarities to the LiquidFeedback system you may be familiar with,
but I hope solves the most serious of the problems with that system,
particularly the fact that the LQFB delegation system never really
worked the way it was supposed to. A description of how this new
system works can be found in the help system, which includes a link to
the paper that I credit as being the inspiration for how delegation
really needs to be done: Automatically. Here's the announcement:

OK, we've let representative democracy thrash around for long enough
and it's just not getting the job done.  So it's time to start testing
a new decision-making system that can replace it: Democracy by Matched
Proxy. An alpha-test version of this new system can now be found at:

https://www.proxyfor.me

The most important thing for everyone to do is register (log in) and
then fill out your profile. Then vote on whichever proposals you find
interesting and/or important (the system has been preloaded with about
a dozen of them, with another couple dozen already in the development
queue). I'd recommend *not voting* on at least one upcoming proposal
so that you can test the automated proxy calculation: You'll get
reminders by email each week telling you what your proxy vote will be
if you haven't cast a direct vote, and because this is the way
(eventually) the vast majority of The People's votes will be cast it's
important that it works well.

If you can post and/or cite after voting, that'd be great too as we
need some content to help incoming voters make their decisions. Note
that although the UI is still just alpha-test and so may change, the
intention is to keep the data (proposals, votes, and posts) live all
the way through to production use (i.e., your votes and posts may be
used by thousand or even millions of others as this project scales
up). If you're multilingual, please consider making a post in some
language other than English. Even better would be a multi-language
post where you include the translation(s) for us so that we can get
some idea how well automated translation tools work for this type of
content (e.g., try http://translate.google.com, which if there is
enough interest could be integrated into the app).

Feedback can be provided directly to me, to this list/group, or on the
new forum (which is also the place to debate the proposals if you're
having trouble making up your mind):
http://www.matchism.org/forum/

Please don't cross-post this announcement outside of this list/group
at this point because we need to get some benchmarks on how much
server resources we'll be needing to scale up first. Once we get to a
1.0 release, though, we hope that you will be able to help spread the
word.
  Regards,
     Scott