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How would Yoomoot need to change to allow large-scale formal decision-making and polling?
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Seems to me that, while there are many alternative ways of organizing discussions, we would fall far short of the goal to create a world wide parliament type of organization if we merely did that.
Allow a constitution to be created
Each group using Yoomoot for decision-making would have to create a constitution addressing the usual issues affecting democratically-organized groups:
- How many votes are required to be cast for any resolution to be passed, e.g.
- Does the most supported answer count as the passed resolution if only one person out of a group of 1,000 votes on it?
- In a group of three, is a unanimous decision required? Or can two people overrule the minority?
- How can the constitution itself be changed?
- Do some users get more voting power than others (perhaps it's a project and 5% of the group do 90% of the work, so they get more votes)
- By Nicolas Holzapfel
- Oct. 17, 2009
Summaries across the whole discussion to determine the level of agreement and disagreement
The two forms of summary we have in Yoomoot are the summary text provided for each "note" by the author or authors, and the total numbers of agreement (or recommends) and disagreement (or discommends) for each item. The list of questions under a heading, and the list of answers under a question are another form of summary, and so too is the number of questions and answers. But lots more needs to be done to distill the essential threads, and weigh the consensus of opinion. This is necessary, beyond facilitating better talking, to decide how and when to take action.
More about how to "weigh the consensus of opinion". This is a vitally important issue for our civilization.
First, it is critical to realize that the nature of opinions is very often much more subtle than the extremes of 100% "agreement" and "disagreement". It helps to add in several varieties in the middle, the extremes of being "neutral" or "unsure" or having "no opinion" (each of which is subtly different). But all of these extremes are very often over-simplified exaggerations of what is really trying to be expressed, which is filled with exceptions and qualifications, uncertainties at many levels, or certainties about our lack of certainty. I may neither agree nor disagree with something because it is a loaded question, or it is irrelevant to the issue being addressed. I may both agree and disagree for different reasons. I may be merely supportive or critical, or I may offer enhancements or alternatives. I may either feel strongly about something or not care much one way or the other.
Rather than encouraging exaggeration and over-simplification, we should be doing the opposite, by encouraging precision and elaboration, just as I was encouraged to elaborate on what I meant by "weigh the consensus of opinion".
Over-simplifying our choices to one of three extremes, "agree", "disagree", or ... something else, is on a par with the over-simplified plurality voting system where we are only permitted to vote for one candidate out of many rather than express preferences in any form, and which results in eviscerated polarization around the middle.
Similarly, over-simplifying the kinds of "notes" to only the extremes of "question" and "answer" is ignoring the many subtle variations and facets of relationships between notes that may, for example, imply questions within answers, or be leading questions, or loaded questions, or rhetorical questions, just to barely scratch the surface.
All of this needs to be expressible in the first place, and second, the rich variety of opinions must be accounted for in summaries. This is about not just the individual opinions but how they relate to each other, and how many people tend to agree or disagree with each other, and how strongly they feel about it. It is easier to sum up the total number of agreements and disagreements, but just doing what is easy doesn't make it fair or relevant. We may agree with the same thing but for very different incompatible reasons, or we may disagree on the surface but really be in agreement about everything else. We may be mostly in agreement, but a few people feel very strongly that we are wrong.
Third, just as the nature of opinions is very subtle, the nature of how to express opinions and how to make summaries of opinions is just as subtle, if not more so. Given a dozen different opinions, there may be a dozen ways of expressing each of those opinions, and a dozen-dozen ways of summarizing across those expressions. And, by the way, the difference between opinion and fact is, again, just as subtle. These are meta-level discussions, for the most part, discussions about the discussions themselves, about the way particular opinions were expressed and summarized, and more generally, how opinions tend to be expressed, and how summaries may be more or less accurate reflections of reality, just as this very note is about the same.
None of this is easy. We (humanity) have been making some progress on the easiest parts, voting for representatives in our democratic governments on the one hand, and twittering tweets on the other. But we have a lot more to do to bridge the huge gap between the governing of our society and those who are governed, between the rule by the powerful and the will of the people.
- By Daniel LaLiberte &1 more
- Oct. 17, 2009
Allow questions to be given deadlines
A resolution is exactly the same as a normal question+answers except that
- By Nicolas Holzapfel
- Oct. 17, 2009