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Gathering input from one million people From: Peter Shane Date: Feb 12 14:50 UTC Short link
At what point in this process would you be willing to consider that a member
of the public has been "engaged?" Getting a million people to answer a
single poll question seems easy -- just make the prize attractive enough --
but the democratic value seems limited.
-----Original Message----- From: Steven Clift [mailto:<email obscured>] Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 8:27 AM To: <email obscured> Subject: Re: [Consult] Gathering input from one million people Here is my rough cut at how you might engage one million people over a month or two - say from WhiteHouse.Gov and other government websites. (Or if it is inconceivable that government will ever ask for input after the votes are cast, across a network of media or other high traffic civic/political sites.) Distributed Online Survey The Widget I recommend producing a small survey widget that is embedded across the home page of all major government websites and available for inclusion on any website or blog. A widget is a small piece of code that allows someone to include syndicated content/applications from another website within their website. (It is how one displays a YouTube video on another site.) Each day for at least one month a new question selected by a panel of online participants from public submissions would be presented across the network. Project goals: 1. Promote mass participation 2. Acquire opt-in e-mail addresses for further engagement opportunity publicity 3. Produce quantifiable results while engaging many with a low time commitment Upon completing the syndicated survey question, people would be taken to a central website where they can without registration be: 1. Given the opportunity to answer why? with a comment 2. Shown five to ten second tier questions select for that day/week that they can answer 3. Be given the opportunity to securely share demographic data for use in either weighing a potential display of the results based on census data or if not saved with the answers, to at least measure outreach to diverse groups in society 4. Provided an option to rate other comments and view comments (default view +1 or above - Slashdot style, which was recently adopted by YouTube to allow the audience bury useless comments below the visibility threshold) 5. Asked to provide their e-mail address and postal code for a project e-newsletter and other important updates 6. (Random) prizes should be available for those providing their e-mail address (S. Korea has offered prizes on government-funded voter education websites) In addition, upon rating X number of comments, participants would be invited to register and join the online group receiving and rating proposed questions submitted by the public. Assuming that most questions are too biased for direct use (E-Democracy.Orgs experience with online candidate debate questions submissions), these super users would be empowered to amend/re-craft the best question topics into a neutral format appropriate for question display across the large syndicated network. How would you engage one million people online? Please share your outline. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org Member profile for Steven Clift: http://groups.dowire.org/contacts/stevenclift ----------------------------------------- Group home for Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult Replies go to members of Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation with all posts on this topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/NV6QFNcAYaC5c71NyIkna For digest version or to leave Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation, email <email obscured> with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation is hosted by Democracies Online - http://dowire.org.
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