All posts in the topic Building consensus online (Short link)
Summary
- There are 52 posts — by 19 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Michael Allan at Apr 01 19:06 UTC
I've found that most online tools and techniques bring our differences of
opinion rather than forging agreement within large groups online (over say 15
people). The Internet does a great job at getting issues on the table, allowing
like-minds to coalase, and when done right builds respect among those with
differing opinions.
Can take this further?
Let's say that we want move online from the statement of positions or surveys
that show current opinions to agreement or consensus on actions or proposals
among the vast majority of say 1,000 people.
What would you do? What have you seen?
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
That's an interesting challenge, but could I take a step back?
Local issues forums, to take one example, do often beget sharp differences of
opinion and little sign of consensus-building. But Wilhelm found that national
political discussion forums in the US have the opposite tendency, towards what
he called a "homogeneity of in-group members".
Beware, then, of apparent consensus, which may be undesirable!
With most e-tools, in fact, it's not easy to tell how representative the
user-base is of the relevant population: whose interests are represented and
whose are excluded? That in turn makes it difficult to be sure whether the full
range of issues and perspectives really has got onto the table. All I can say
is that if there are tools that can do this, then at least you know that a
subsequent consensus-building process would be meaningful.
Simon Smith
One possibility (not sure if it applies in your case) is a voting mechanism such as a delegate cascade. It tends to coalesce votes and encourages consensus. http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/design.xht#delegate-cascade I'm implementating it within an open electoral system (Votorola). The sampling errors that Simon mentions would be less of a concern for that application. Its user base is intended to approach the size of the population (electorate). I'm trying (with less confidence) to ground the system's design in social theory. Unforced consensus is crucial to Habermas's theory of communicative action, just as it's crucial to the design of the electoral system. (I'm hoping to find other correlations, and maybe make predictions from them.)
Steven Clift wrote:
> I've found that most online tools and techniques bring our
> differences of opinion rather than forging agreement within large
> groups online (over say 15 people). The Internet does a great job at
> getting issues on the table, allowing like-minds to coalase, and when
> done right builds respect among those with differing opinions.
>
> Can take this further?
>
> Let's say that we want move online from the statement of positions or
> surveys that show current opinions to agreement or consensus on
> actions or proposals among the vast majority of say 1,000 people.
>
> What would you do?
Run a de Borda preferendum (see www.deborda.org).
1. First you need a human + computer process to make sure you have the
full range of options.
2. Then you need people to come together in groups to draft wordings for
options that (a) give them what they need, but (b) don't alienate so
many others that they would put your option last.
3. Run a vote using a preference ranking system, where everyone has to
order the options from best to worst.
4. Calculate the highest consensus option using a de Borda count. This
simply adds up 1 point for a last choice, 2 points for a second last
choice and so on.
5. If one option has over 75% of the maximum possible mark, then go for it.
6. Otherwise, try to merge the leading options into a new one combining
the advantages of both, offer people the chance to redraft their
options, and run another vote.
This process finds what people will settle for if they cannot all get
their first choice. In trials in Northern Ireland, it has even found
consensus between Sinn Fein and DUP supporters, in the years before
money brought them together in government.
Note that this only covers options on one issue. If the best solutions
require trading off different questions (you get A if I get B), then a
system based on interest-based negotiation (as in the Harvard
Negotiating Project and some of John Zeleznikow's systems for mediating
divorces) would be better.
Hi, I would like to submit that what you are talking about here can be addressed by using a form of argument, dialogue and/or debate mapping. In addition, I have authored a computer supported discourse mapping approach called consultation mapping, which is aimed at doing many of the things you have raised. It functions to represent the issues and positions of participants and display the range of views in a forum. The application of consultation mapping resembles a process called the 2nd Generation Systems Approach designed for dealing with Wicked Problems. An example of my mapping can be viewed at http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/ Kind Regards, Ricky Ohl [Bmgt/Bcom(Hons)] **************************************************** PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) and may contain information that is confidential or privileged. If you receive this e-mail and you are not the addressee(s), please disregard the contents of the e-mail, delete the e-mail and notify the author immediately.
Hey Steven,
My name is Bob Leming and I get called Lem.
By way of introduction I work with a partner in a small consulting company,
Communishare Consulting, here in Philadelphia. We are currently working
intensively with the American Friends Service Committee.
I have just brought my Dowire Profile up to date.
At the AFSC we are focused on the power of bringing together small groups of
5 or 6 for collaborative work & collaborative learning - and we are excited
with the results.
I will be very interested to hear the insights that others on this list have
re building a concensus across large groups.
One platform that provides tools that take steps in this direction is the
Actions Options Tool. This tool allows Activist Organizations to post
Actions that are then broadcast to all of the other Activists using the Tool
in that Region. Each organization is invited to vote on each Action. Votes
currently include Co-Sponsor, Participate, Support, No Support or Abstain.
To see the Tool in action see: www.ilcpj.org/actions/index.php?start=0&np=6
To learn more about the tool see: www.actionsoptions.org
The tool is being deployed across the Peace, Justice and Environment
Network: www.pjep.org
I am the volunteer facilitator for the Connecticut / Rhode Island PJ&E
Network, which is just starting to gain momentum.
A key is to have the facilitator stay in close touch with the activists in
the network and to stimulate participation - which can be labor intensive.
The goal of the project is to build first awareness and then
collaborationand concensus amongts the Activists in support of each others
work.
Bob Leming
Philadelphia
<email obscured>
Simon Smith noted: Local issues forums, to take one example, do often beget sharp differences of opinion and little sign of consensus-building. But Wilhelm found that national political discussion forums in the US have the opposite tendency, towards what he called a "homogeneity of in-group members". Beware, then, of apparent consensus, which may be undesirable! Reply and outline ... I am starting from our Issues Forum premise that you we are starting with participants from across the political spectrum with diverse views on the topic at hand. I am also suggesting that the event and the outcomes be described in a way that make it clear the goal is to come to some agreement with a release value that quantifies minority opinions/options. So here is an example - Minnesota's Governor appointed a Climate Change Advisory Group - http://www.mnclimatechange.us - with 56 members - http://www.mnclimatechange.us/MCCAG.cfm - who recently approved 50 recommendations for the Governor and legislature - http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/24/climate/ - imagine either taking what they have produced as fodder for a 1,000 to 2,000 person two week online event (consultation) or step back and figure out what interactive and accessible online infrastructure could be designed to support input into such a report or the crafting of agreement among participants. You'll note that they did an excellent job providing access to the documents generated to support the in-person process, but how might we take it further. Up until now, I've felt the Internet is better at getting issues on the table, but that in-person/telephone connections are best when it comes to deciding or negotiating. But why not push the Net a bit further? Is anyone aware of a government or civil society task force making political recommendations like this that used the Internet to gather input, allow two-way interaction among interested parties, and/or use online tools between meetings to accelerate or develop consensus or greater agreement? So let's imagine a two week online event on what Minnesota should do about climate change (or some other issue or a set of top themes at our 150th anniversary as a state) ... Minnesota Listens A two week online exchange among Minnesotans about our future. Topic and Panel Development - 3 Months Preparation - Draft short discussion point documents - Gather short videos, photographs and other mixed media to create contextual starting point that is screen readable - Secure two major keynote speakers - one to open the event, one to close - Craft small set of expert panels for participant Q and A and high quality debate Pre-Event Promotion - Over 2 Months - Attract 1000-2000 registered participants prior to the event - Seek participation to better ensure diverse representation - geographically, politically, ethnically, gender, age - Recruit a mix of "average citizens," interest groups, community leaders, and elected officials - Pre-event interest/opinion survey Open Online Event Prime online event participants with e-mail newsletters/updates before and daily through the event. W-Th - Event Opening - Keynote #1 - Panel #1 F-Sa-Su-M - "Home Room" Hello - Start two-way interactivity in small private discussion spaces of 15-20 members - Develop a format where everyone says hello (posts something) in this "safe" environment - Tell as story about X - topically related - Assign participants in stratified manner based demographics to create a diverse mix Tu-W-Th - Major Thematic Debates - Public, moderated and facilitated - Hire writers to produce daily summaries sent to all participants via e-mail - Produce issues summary and questions from debate for deliberation in the small groups F-Sa-Su-M - "Home Room" Small Group Deliberation - Discuss issues summary questions as a group - Answer preliminary survey questions individually with report to group - Require group to development and report various agreements via structured form aggregated across all small groups - Allow path for "agree to disagree" or minority position reports - Writer/staff rapidly synthesize small group results and report to all participants Note: Additional public or private group discussions could also be designed such as a discussion among local elected officials, etc. A focus on the time required for participation is essential. Tu-W - Closing and Public Poll - Final synthesis report release on website, to all participants via e-mail, media promotion - Final Keynote - Allow broader public to rate/rank/vote on produced recommendations for X weeks after the main online event closes This is my rough cut at how one might craft a **well-funded** high e-touch online event/consultation with the goal of moving the results beyond statements of difference or a basic online survey based just on expert scoping of the issues. What would you do differently? What do you like about the format? Would this be worth the $250,000 or $500,000 or $50,000 it might cost to produce this? Or better yet, share your outline for the online event/consultation you'd like to see. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org
On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 05:12:02AM +1300, Steven Clift wrote: > Or better yet, share your outline for the online event/consultation > you'd like to see. I would outline something radically different. But it would require an expanded goal. Instead of public comments on a limited set of *existing* policy proposals, the goal would be to discover *all* proposals that could achieve public consensus. In that case, we might take an approach similar to open legislative drafting: "Just as legislation can be opened, so can policy. Distributed drafting can generate a diverse body of policy ideas, while cascade voting simultaneously pulls them together, resulting in one or more consensus documents." http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht Consensus would be quantifiable with this approach. It would be measured as the size of the voting group that backs the leading consensus document, vs. the overall number of participants (ideally the full electorate participates). Lack of consensus would also be quantifiable. It would be measured as the distribution and size of the divergent interest groups. Textual differences among their sub-consensus documents (one per divergent group) would often reveal the reasons for their inability to acheive a broader consensus. If anyone is interested in this approach, I can point to further details.
Steven Clift wrote:
> I've found that most online tools and techniques bring our differences of
opinion rather than forging agreement within large groups online (over say 15
people). The Internet does a great job at getting issues on the table, allowing
like-minds to coalase, and when done right builds respect among those with
differing opinions.
>
> Let's say that we want move online from the statement of positions or surveys
that show current opinions to agreement or consensus on actions or proposals
among the vast majority of say 1,000 people.
>
I've been giving this a lot of thought, as regards several projects I'm
involved in, but I keep coming back to a somewhat broader question: Has
anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building
consensus among groups of any size.
I'm led to this question by my involvement in several long-term planning
efforts - one for our Church (as a Board member), a technology planning
action for our school system, and a longer-term strategic planning
effort for the schools. That, plus 37 years in the ARPANET/INTERNET
community wrestling precisely with the dichotomy between the Internet as
soapbox vs. the Internet as a tool for getting things done.
I keep coming back to the observation that strong leadership, and strong
organizations, get things done; while committees and crowds don't.
At the simplest level - picture a business meeting of 6 people around a
table (all examples from personal experience):
- a staff meeting, called by a clear-thinking, decisive leader, can move
quickly, reach decisions, and move to action
- a committee meeting, with a strong chair, and a clear agenda, also
tends to get things done - be the chair someone who drives the content
of the meeting ("ok, I've heard enough, here's what we're going to do")
or just drives the process ("ok, we're going around in circles, it's
time to make a decision - will somebody please frame a motion")
- a committee meeting, with a weak leader, or with nobody in charge,
seems rarely to get anywhere - and things can get particularly perverse
in a room filled with Type A personalities (it can also get pretty
entertaining - is anybody else watching "Celebrity Apprentice?")
- now scale things up - to a company, a corporation, an Army: the
organizations that seem to be effective are ones with strong leadership
(think Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, or Jack Welch, or Gen. Eisenhower
during WWII).
- compare that to a town meeting, or Congress
- when there's less structure, it seems like a strong leader is even
more central to getting things done (think "corporate culture" as
epitomized by the old Hewlett-Packard, think JFK as motivating a
generation to action, or Martin Luther King, or, for that matter, Hitler)
Of course, there are some clear perversities here:
- strong EVIL leaders with strong organizations (e.g., Hitler) can do a
lot of damage
- week leaders, with strong organizations (think Congress) tend to go in
circles and get little done
- the same organization will do better or worse depending on who's in
charge (think any number of corporate failures and turnarounds, or the
contrast between different U.S. administrations)
Hi Miles
In your last email you wrote:
> ... Has
> anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building
> consensus among groups of any size.
Did you see David Newman's response on 21 January where he outlines a
process that finds "what people will settle for if they cannot all get
their first choice. In trials in Northern Ireland, it has even found
consensus between Sinn Fein and DUP supporters, in the years before
money brought them together in government
Note that this only covers options on one issue. If the best solutions
require trading off different questions (you get A if I get B), then a
system based on interest-based negotiation (as in the Harvard
Negotiating Project and some of John Zeleznikow's systems for mediating
divorces) would be better."
Seems a good starting point? Apologies if you had seen it or you feel
this doesn't meet your needs.
Peter
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>In your last email you wrote:
>> ... Has
>> anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building
>> consensus among groups of any size.
Most hard-driving process is the Consensus Workshop Method. It's astoundingly
integrated. I've used it for small groups up to 135 people at once, by myself.
The basic model can be applied to online sessions too, but lose the
face-to-face effect.
see thorough description: Brian Stanfield, The Workshop Book.
see light touch / chapter in: Laura Spencer, Winning Through Participation.
take training from any "ToP Trainer" (for Technology Of Participation)
Thanks all. There are two threads I see: 1. More Agreement - Measuring/encouraging agreement by a largest part of the group possible with a bit of process, back and forth, and structure that forces a group to make a joint statement (even with minority reports which I would think are necessary in an online environment gathering people with weak or no ties) 2. Group Consensus - Imagined by an image like this - http://www.ica-usa.org - a smaller group gathered often with a lot at stake to with some sort of pressure to come up with the best possible decision everyone can live with and hopefully embrace. My large scale online event outline definitely is in the first area. A lot of my skepticism about online collaboration (another term) among people who do not usually work together (other than online advocacy campaigns that pop up to fight _against_ something) was reinforced when I met with a researcher who studied "CSCW" or computer supported collaborative work. He said, after 25 years of research they determined that people just don't want to collaborate and that if you still want to pursue this, the optimal group size was two. However, the next theory they were working on was developing series of twos - so for example creating small groups that then negotiated with each other in series of twos. So, my thought about private small groups (influenced by Weblab's small group dialogue experience - http://www.weblab.org/sgd/evaluation.html ) that would be brought through a process to report as a group in via an online survey suggests a focus on broader agreement with a path for new ideas and options that can bubble up rather than developing strong consensus. In terms of leadership, I think you need a mix of facilitators assisting every small group and quick summarization of what's coming through the small groups and the overall process. A "daily e-newspaper" highlighting public results that creates an incentive for active participation seems essential. The vote/rating idea at the end (perhaps compared to an entrance survey) is my way of allowing the results to gain more legitimacy with the media and decision-makers based on broader participation. Anyway, I would love to see someone else's outline for a multi-day online agreement/consensus building event that provides some specificity on tools, timing, and resources. Or, perhaps you have a different track - how would you do something low low cost using a blog or various free tools across the Internet. It might be that for $5,000 you could generate 50 percent of the quality, engage 20 times more people and afford to do something ten times instead of once. What is your outline? Cheers, Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org
Miles Fidelman > Sent: 01 February 2008 14:10
> > Steven Clift wrote:
> > I've found that most online tools and techniques bring our differences
> > of opinion rather than forging agreement within large groups online
> > (over say 15 people). The Internet does a great job at getting issues
> > on the table, allowing like-minds to coalesce, and when done right
> > builds respect among those with differing opinions.
> >
> I've been giving this a lot of thought, as regards several projects I'm
> involved in, but I keep coming back to a somewhat broader question: Has
> anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building
> consensus among groups of any size.
This prompts me to ask whether anyone involved in e-democracy has employed the
established techniques of 'participative enquiry'
that have been used in community focused extension work. Could these
techniques be adapted for use where there is no face-to-face
interaction?
'Participative enquiry' is very much really "bottom up", with major inputs from
the community members to identify "the problem",
identify potential solutions, select the most appropriate solution, devise an
action plan and then supervise its implementation.
This differs from classical extension work where the extension agent would
usually come in with a pre-set agenda even if he/she used
various community focused techniques to spread "the message".
Also, 'participative enquiry' is different from 'participative research', in
that 'participative enquiry' is about a community being
helped to solve a real problem, not just helping a researcher to learn more
about a problem as part of a research project.
'Participative research' is valuable, but it has a different place in the
scheme of things.
James
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20:30
Hi Miles, Steve and all,
I think Miles did a good point. Consensus, decissions, actions... are usually
better reached when there exists a core group of people which are determined to
attain them. Could a group of "strangers" who meet in a virtual space, reach a
consensus on a delicate subject? Probably not or, even if they do: what would
that consensus be worth? Could it lead to sustainable collective action by the
group members, or even the general citizenry?
As part of our FOSS project Kyosei-Polis, which aims to provide a virtual
environment for municipal civic participation, we have soon realized that no
single "technical gadget", even if it is a web4.0 wonder, will be able to do
the work.
Civic participation thrives when real human beings -composed of their very
human worries, interests and capabilities- stand behind it. And thus, for the
different phases involved in taking collective action (recognizing a problem,
bringing together a group of people that worry about it, imagine possible
actions, formulate a main plan of action, share it with other interested
parties, improve it, bring citizenry into the picture, improve it further,
involve public authorities, improve it further, launch it, etc.) need a
different amount of people to carry them out.
Using a voting mechanism (as proposed by D. R. Newman) that aggregates
individual preferences and proposes the optimal compromise, taking into account
second and third best choices of the 1000 participants, and allowing to have
discussions to improve and merge the best rated options... is a good approach.
But at the end: who would guarantee me, as a participant (or even as a
non-participant), that the 1000 people casting their preferences are the right
ones? Why should I believe that public authorities behind the initiative are
not unfairly influencing/manipulating the process (as is usually the case)?
At the end, you need to be able to generate legitimacy and credibility for the
whole process, which actually started much before the 1000 people got their
hands on it. For each of the increasingly crowded discussion phases described
earlier, you need not only to provide the tools for reaching consensus and
meaningful deliberation, but also to guarantee transparency and clear
accountability.
To guarantee transparency, technical tools can certainly help but are not
enough: you also need to consider the procedural framework and even the
institutional framework that surrounds the deliberative exercises.
For our project, we have reached the conclusion that our system shouldnt try to
provide tools that do the work for the users, but tools that help the users to
help themselves to do the work. Empower those who want and need to be
empowered, with tools, procedures and institutional arrangements that are
sustainable and help them to help themselves.
What does it means in concrete? It means that the system will enable all
participants to continuously appraise the quality and fairness of the process.
It means that public authorities will not have any monopoly on public
participation: anybody will be able to raise issues and start participatory
discussions around it. It means that there will be third party institutions
whose main responsibility is to guarantee the procedural correctness of the
collaborative exercises. These institutions would have to achieve a strong
credibility as neutral players through their compromise with fairness, and
would be continuously audited. They would appoint facilitators (which we call
serenos a word that in Spanish means both calm/cool-headed/self-possessed and
night watchman ;-) and midwifes to honor Socrates maieutics). These
facilitators are also provided with tools to help the group to have inclusive
and goal-driven deliberations, which reach consensus and prepare for subsequent
actions and collaborative exercises.
For example: how would the consensus for 1000 people be reached, on a municipal
issue? Well, what would actually happen is that 1 or 2 people would first
recognize the issue, and find (with the help of our system) other nearby people
who share their concerns; they would start discussing about it, both in
cyberspace and later in meat-space too. They would draft a proposal, which they
would like to discuss with a broader set of interested parties, probably
including local authorities and Civil Society Organizations. Third party
facilitation would be called, to start a public discussion, which could combine
on-line and off-line activities, and which probably would ignite some other
independent parallel discussions. An agreement would be reached to handle the
results got so far to the scrutiny of the whole city inhabitants and the local
media. Interested citizens could, with not too much effort, provide their
perspective and criticize/improve the proposal.
If, by the time 1000 people get to discuss about the issue, you have already
had a lot of work done by smaller groups, which has been performed in a
transparent, honest and mostly unpartisan way... those 1000 people would
probably not need to go back to the basics, but concentrate on finishing off
the work and expressing their adherence to the proposal.
So... sorry for this long entry, which maybe lost track of the original threads
subject. My main message is: there is no one-shot magic bullet process for
reaching consensus. Consensus, compromise and collective action are reached
through a complex process of multi-level deliberation, where distinct people
and groups contribute with different degrees of effort and compromise.
If we want to facilitate broad citizen Consensus on relevant public issues,
using online-tools and systems... we certainly need to consider the procedural
aspects and even institutional aspects of e-Participation as much as we
consider technical aspects and consensus building gadgets. Thats why our
project will try to extend the participatory design approach of FOSS projects,
to also consider the procedural and institutional dimensions that would
surround our systems operation. For this, well try to involve representatives
of all interested municipal groups (politicians, civil servants, citizens,
CSOs, local media, etc.) in the design of the system. This is a very long term
effort, but we think itll be worth.
Best regards,
Pedro (Asociacin Ciudades Kyosei, www.ckyosei.org)
PS: Since our aim is to initially operate on the Latin-American area, our
projects working language is Spanish. Sorry for that! :(
I've been very interested in following this discussion, in light of other
things going on for me personally. I just got press credentials (as a blogger)
to cover the American Group Psychotherapy Association annual meeting in
Washington DC later this month.
Groups are powerful things. They can be used therapeutically. They can be
used to find concensus, They can be used to make disover things that
individuals might not be able to ferret out. The goals of the group, together
with the size and cohesion of the group are all important factors of what
groups can accomplish.
The online component is simply one additional factor, which depending on the
other factors may be very significant, or very insignificant.
Enough rambling thoughts for right now.
Aldon
P.S. To Miles, I don't think I'll end up making it up to Boston tomorrow after
all.
I've been thinking a bit more about this whole issue, and a couple of
thoughts came to mind while driving and listening to PBS.
Markets are a form of group decision making - particularly capital
markets, and more particularly capital markets where very large players
are butting heads.
In essence, when companies, or mutual funds are moving large dollars
around, they're placing bets on the future - for example moving money
from investments in oil to investments in wind or solar technology (as,
for example GE is doing a lot these days). Unlike votes, there's real
money involved, and if you bet right you win big, if you bet wrong, you
lose big - which sort of makes people think before casing their "votes."
In some cases, we have different players betting competitively - making
investments in different approaches to a problem. Down the road, maybe
one approach works, the other doesn't, or both don't, or maybe both do.
Or think of auction markets - such as the recent auction of C Block
spectrum. Somebody wins, and gets make money with the resource; but the
loser gets to keep their money and take it somewhere else. Of
sometimes, as in the spectrum auction, somebody (Google in particular)
bid the price up so high that a set of rules have been activated that
requires whomever ultimately wins to make the resulting network open to
all comers - which is a win even to some of the losers.
One can also envision an auction market - say involving a situation
where there can be only one winner - where the loser's money ultimately
gets combined with the winner's (3 carriers bid for spectrum, the losers
end up with their cash turned into stock in the winner). A choice has
been made, and now everybody is in the same boat.
Maybe there's something in there as a mechanism for societal-scale
decision making - as long as little players have a way to aggregate
their cash to level the playing field with big players. Somehow,
conflating dollars and votes, making it important to actually think
about decisions, and providing a return on making good decisions is a
start towards something.
Miles
p.s. You might wonder what I was listening to on PBS to spark such
thoughts. Why Marketplace, of course. :-)
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 11:33:33AM -0600, Steven Clift wrote:
> Anyway, I would love to see someone else's outline for a multi-day
> online agreement/consensus building event that provides some
> specificity on tools, timing, and resources.
>
> Or, perhaps you have a different track ... What is your outline?
PROCESS AND TIMING
Resident A drafts a proposed Climate Change Policy for Minnesota, and
posts it on the Web. Two days later, resident B reads it; copies it;
makes changes; and posts a variant draft. Now there are two variant
proposals on the table.
A day later, C posts a variant of B's draft. But C also *votes* for B
(tentatively). B learns of this; examines the textual differences of
C's document; and quickly copies them into her own. C decides to keep
voting for B, for now.
S and T have no time to draft and haggle, but they do like A's
proposal. Both of them vote for A. U and V, meantime, both vote for
B. At the end of a week or so, the situation is:
A B
/ \ /|\
S T C U V
A week later, D is studying the textual differences between A and B.
She has been following the discussions in A's blog, and the mailing
list of B's 'constituency'. She sees a possible bridge between the
positions of A and B. She drafts a compromise, and explains it to A
and B. They agree (tentatively) to vote for D's compromise draft. (A
has trouble convincing S of this, and is worried about losing S's
vote. But for now, a consensus holds.)
D
/ \
/ \
/ \
A B
/ \ /|\
S T C U V
D's draft now has a 7 vote backing. Consequently D has a measure of
political clout. Other drafters, some with 50 or 60 votes (not shown)
would like to get D's vote (and the 7 others it carries).
They are in discussions with D. This takes time.
At the end of six months, 6000 voters (including 300 drafters) are
participating in the process. The governor's office takes notice.
Approximately 40% of the participants are behind a single consensus
draft; 15% behind another; and the rest are in ever-shifting splinter
groups. The governor feels that 40% is not enough for action. His
advisors have noticed, meantime, that many of the splinter groups are
arguing over technical points of science. After some discussion, the
governor decides to release funds for scientific research aimed
specifically at the points of contention.
After two years (in which particpation has grown), a 55% consensus has
emerged. Minnesota officially adopts the leading draft as its Climate
Change Policy.
During the same period, a 30% consensus has formed on a rival policy.
The rival policy has, in turn, been adopted by a rival candidate for
the Governor's office (a continuous election for Governor having been
going on, simultaneously).
TOOLS
Policy drafts may be composed in HTML, and posted on Web sites, each
drafter posting her own variant on her own site. This requires no
special tools, aside from the usual text editor, file transfer
utilities, and Web browser. Text may be copied from drafter to
drafter by simple cut-and-paste from browser to editor.
This approach to collaboration is called 'recombinant text'. Formal
collaborative tools might be employed, such as a slimmed-down version
of textbender (optional):
http://zelea.com/project/textbender/
The voting mechanism is a delegate cascade. Votorola may be used for
this purpose, off-shelf. It is about 2 months from alpha, 4 from
beta:
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht
Extending it to cover elections for policy (integrating the voting and
drafting aspects) would be another month.
RESOURCES
At least one software developer is needed. We already have that
developer working. We post new versions of running code frequently.
The code is open source.
A systems administrator is needed to set up an electoral server in a
single county or municipality (e.g. in Minnesota). Others will be
needed, later, to extend the process to other counties and
municipalities. They will probably be unpaid volunteers (just like
the developers are), with experience in mail servers, Web servers, and
so forth.
No financing is needed, and no formal organization. In roughly 5
months (less if another Web developer joins in) a beta of the process
outlined above could commence in Minnesota. (Most likely, it will
already have commenced in Toronto.)
I agree with James.
We had recently done a bottom-up community initiative in a rural village in
India where we put together members of the community and asked them to
identify what was their most burning issues? And how do we solve them. We
could get many ideas and we zeroed in on one and got a consensus to work
together to get over their first problem and then proceed with the next.
More details offline, if some one is interested.
best,
Kris Dev
Socail Activist
India.
I think these answers might help us put this conversation in context:
-What is the largest *online* consensus ever reached?
-What is the largest *offline *consensus ever reached?
A hypothetical question: how many citizens would have to agree to a single
health care plan in a country of 300 million in order for the mainstream
media or politicians to pay attention? Are we talking 1 thousand, 1
million, 10 million, or more? Or does the mere fact that this consensus
happened on the Internet prevent any chance of credibility with "real"
people? I hope not, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.
On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 12:54:55AM -0500, Lucas Cioffi wrote:
> I think these answers might help us put this conversation in context:
> -What is the largest *offline *consensus ever reached?
> -What is the largest *online* consensus ever reached?
(I've been reading up on this, so I'll try an answer from the book.)
Offline, the numbers are large because consensus is actually at the
root of society. We agree on common frames of reference, and they
define a big chunk of our social world. What's interesting is *how*
we come to agree, because we're never forced into it. We remain free
to test the limits, or even to ignore them in favour of eccentric
alternatives. Consensus is therefore tentative, and must continually
be renewed. It is renewed (according to social theory) through
discourse.
So, our tools/media for building consensus will follow this example,
and facilitate:
1) never ending, continual discourse
> A hypothetical question: how many citizens would have to agree to a single
> health care plan in a country of 300 million in order for the mainstream
> media or politicians to pay attention? Are we talking 1 thousand, 1
> million, 10 million, or more?
Those numbers would tell more to a technician (like me) than to a
politician. We know that health care concerns are nearly universal,
so the numbers could only be telling us about the popularity of the
process/medium in which people were being asked to participate. So:
2) open to all, inviting
(The numbers that a politician would need are the proportions for and
against. She would also look for patterns of disagreement, and
ultimately the reasons. Then she'd figure out what to do, and where
to lead.)
> Or does the mere fact that this consensus
> happened on the Internet prevent any chance of credibility with "real"
> people? I hope not, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.
Right, because we're interested in real consensus, not 'virtual'. For
credibility, we'd need to bind online actions to real people.
Votorola (for example) uses authenticated voter lists, in which online
identity (email address) is tied to name and street address.
3) authentic, credible, verifiable results
Finally, in addition to the possibility of consensus, there must be an
incentive to actually acheiving it. The politician goes to work
online; building bridges, enlarging her constituency, and moving
interests closer to action. (In my last post, D plays the role of a
politician.) And the voters want action on their interests, of
course, so the politician need only show them the way forward.
4) action on the consensus
Action would naturally follow. Any consensus on policy that emerged
from an open process (and was able to maintain itself) would find
support from candidates in the next election.
I think only Steven Clift, David Newman, and now I (in my previous
post) have proposed full outlines. My own proposal is somewhat
radical, but does anyone see a fault with it? I'm open to advice and
criticism.
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 07:16:35PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Markets are a form of group decision making... > Unlike votes, there's real > money involved, and if you bet right you win big, if you bet wrong, you > lose big - which sort of makes people think before casing their "votes." Hi Miles, More perceived value in money than in votes? That would mean that people have more trust in the economic system (at a nuts and bolts level) than in the political system. No news there, I guess... I like the suggestion that the currency (votes) ought to be better tied to the goods (action) for which they are exchanged. Because the voters who pay the cost are clearly disconnected from the actors who deliver the goods. But how to connect them? Habermas sheds light on this, highlighting the differences between a consensual currency (votes) and an economic one (money). Economic transactions can proceed without any dialogue between parties. There is no need to discuss economic issues with the cashier at the supermarket when paying for groceries. The wheels of industry turn silently, under control of pricing signals. But politics is different. Political transactions involve sharing of information, learning and knowledge creation. The purpose is to discover collective goals and means. So it's deeply social. The only way to strengthen the connection between the vote-currency and the goods is to strengthen the connection between the voters and the politicians. And probably the only connector for that purpose is dialogue. That's one of the advantages of cascade voting: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/design.xht#delegate-cascade Does anyone know of an alternative?
Lucas Cioffi wrote:
> I think these answers might help us put this conversation in context:
> -What is the largest *online* consensus ever reached?
> -What is the largest *offline *consensus ever reached?
>
Good questions!
I'm not sure, but there's a good case to be made that ratification of
the U.S. Constitution might be the largest offline consensus ever
reached - what with the representative drafting of it, followed by a
huge amount of debate (both in pubs and cafes and in the media - can you
say Federalist Papers?), followed by a national vote.
Michael Allan wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 07:16:35PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
>> Markets are a form of group decision making...
>> Unlike votes, there's real
>> money involved, and if you bet right you win big, if you bet wrong, you
>> lose big - which sort of makes people think before casing their "votes."
>>
>
> Hi Miles,
>
> More perceived value in money than in votes? That would mean that
> people have more trust in the economic system (at a nuts and bolts
> level) than in the political system. No news there, I guess...
>
> I like the suggestion that the currency (votes) ought to be better
> tied to the goods (action) for which they are exchanged. Because the
> voters who pay the cost are clearly disconnected from the actors who
> deliver the goods. But how to connect them?
>
Somehow the phrase "campaign contribution" comes to mind.
A while back, there were several efforts to build tools that modeled
Robert's Rules for an on-line discussion.
Deme and e-liberate were two examples, but the efforts seem to have
stalled. They seemed like a good idea. Anybody know of any similar
efforts that are more current?
On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 09:47:49AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > I like the suggestion that the currency (votes) ought to be better
> > tied to the goods (action) for which they are exchanged...
> > But how to connect them?
>
> Somehow the phrase "campaign contribution" comes to mind.
For disconnecting people from the process, and weakening their belief
in its legitimacy? It's an efficient device. Political parties can
exchange the contributions for mass media services, to blast
propaganda at the voters. They can manufacture a 'consensus'. It's
quite efficient; it makes perfect sense from an economic point of
view. (And we can explain the sense of it in our propaganda, so that
society itself is trained to accept its disenfranchisement, and to
call it 'freedom'.)
Michael Allan wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 09:47:49AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
>>> I like the suggestion that the currency (votes) ought to be better
>>> tied to the goods (action) for which they are exchanged...
>>> But how to connect them?
>>>
>> Somehow the phrase "campaign contribution" comes to mind.
>>
>
> For disconnecting people from the process, and weakening their belief
> in its legitimacy? It's an efficient device. Political parties can
> exchange the contributions for mass media services, to blast
> propaganda at the voters. They can manufacture a 'consensus'. It's
> quite efficient; it makes perfect sense from an economic point of
> view. (And we can explain the sense of it in our propaganda, so that
> society itself is trained to accept its disenfranchisement, and to
> call it 'freedom'.)
>
well, I was actually thinking: money has become the currency of
politics, only thinly disguised as votes
big pots of money (corporations, unions, advocacy groups, ... "special
interests") -> media campaigns & campaign contributions -> votes ->
influence -> action
Miles Fidelman wrote: > Has anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building consensus among groups of any size? There are many participatory techniques which are designed to do this, some of which have already been mentioned by others things like consensus conferences, citizens' juries, deliberative polling, citizens' panels and charettes. One thing they have in common is that participation is controlled participants are either selected randomly or they are supposed to be representative of the entire interested public. That seems to be key in terms of fairness and legitimacy. On that note, let's compare the processes described by Pedro, Michael and Steven, in terms of who's involved at each stage (David was less specific about this). Steven had: Stage 1 *a few* experts draft alternative Stage 2 *1000-2000* participants take part in structured consensus-building process, initially split into *small groups, *whose recommendations are synthesised by writer/staff [BTW is this just a professional job? Shouldn't it be made more participative?] Stage 3 *broader public* can vote on the recommendations Pedro described: Stage 1 *one or two people* identify the issues, *cascading to others* via a campaign-like process Stage 2 *small groups* discuss the issues, with facilitators Stage 3 alternatives presented to *wider public* via media Michael had a more organic process of building from *individuals'* proposals to a *wider consensus* modelled on political campaigning. So in each version there's a movement from small-scale to large-scale discussion over a period of time, although Steven incorporates a temporary shift back to smaller groups during the event, partly to aid relationship-building. But who exactly are the participants? Stage 1 (bringing issues to the table) involved invited experts (Steven) or politically-active individuals/groups (Pedro and Michael). Stage 2, the consensus-building process itself involved a larger number (let's assume it's 1000 people in each case) recruited as: a representative citizen panel (Steven ideal case), those members of the public who respond to media publicity (Pedro) or a bottom-up coalition of supporters who coalesce around the rival proposals (Michael). Then in all three cases the whole of the public is invited to confirm the decision by vote (stage 3). My opinion is that a combination of the three models would be needed to ensure fairness and legitimacy. Getting the issues on the table can usefully involve experts, but it's the stage of the policy process where special interests should also be invited to state their cases if we want to get * all* the issues and preferences onto the table and to ensure greater buy-in by those groups. This could perhaps be followed by a coalition-building phase, but as noted above, the consensus-building exercises which are widely used are *not* built on this kind of recruitment, but are designed to ensure that participation is broadly representative. This a/ increases the likelihood that the consensus will reflect the real views of the whole political community, and b/ (assuming that participation is not only representative but seen to be so) increases the legitimacy of the consensus among the public. In any case, the different numbers involved at each stage implies that a combination of ICT tools might be needed to facilitate each part of the process. My main concern would be over how realistic it is to get those numbers involved in an intensive consensus-building exercise, particularly if they are to be recruited to represent the spectrum of social interests and demographic groups in the population. In reality we often have to rely on advocates for certain groups, especially deprived groups, such as the community organisations or service providers that work with them. PS I'm now going to contradict myself by citing an example from the field of spatial planning where a less controlled approach, using virtual imaging with forums, chats and online polls, seemed to produce high rates of participation and remarkable consensus over reconstruction proposals in three Dutch cities (without ensuring representativeness). See http://www.epractice.eu/cases/1033 My knowledge of these cases is only second-hand, so I'd be interested if anyone else could comment in more detail about the participation processes themselves. What I do note is that they allowed relatively long timescales for the process. Simon Smith, Centre for Digital Citizenship, Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds.
Simon Smith wrote:
> Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
>> Has anybody seen any approaches - online or NOT online - for building
consensus among groups of any size?
>>
>> There are many participatory techniques which are designed to do this, some
>> of which have already been mentioned by others things like consensus
>> conferences, citizens' juries, deliberative polling, citizens' panels and
>> charettes. One thing they have in common is that participation is controlled
>> participants are either selected randomly or they are supposed to be
>> representative of the entire interested public. That seems to be key in
>> terms of fairness and legitimacy.
>>
it also seems like these have another thing in common: operation within
some established framework that gives them legitimacy - e.g., a jury
operates within the context of the larger justice system -- some
official body is convening the jury, citizen panel, etc.
which is a bit different than building consensus among a group that does
not have an official charter of some sort
>> On that note, let's compare the processes described by Pedro, Michael and
>> Steven, in terms of who's involved at each stage (David was less specific
>> about this).
>>
>>
<snip>
>> Steven had:
>> Stage 1 *a few* experts draft alternative
>>
<snip>
>> Pedro described:
>> Stage 1 *one or two people* identify the issues, *cascading to others* via
>> a campaign-like process
>>
>>
<snip>
>> Michael had a more organic process of building from *individuals'* proposals
>> to a *wider consensus* modelled on political campaigning.
>>
>>
It seems to me that the initial question is: how does an issue get
raised, and how does that initial group get convened.
If we're talking an officially sanctioned process, as in convening
juries, this is easy: a recognized, legitimate authority raises the
issues (cases) and selects the juries/experts (or conducts polling, or
what have you) - and either mandates participation (e.g., jury duty) or
solicits and vets volunteers. If the authority acts in good faith, then
the results of the process get funneled into decisions and actions.
If we're talking a grass roots or other effort, then there seem to be
two different situations, each warranting different models, and for
which different tools might be appropriate:
A. Issues where some individual, small group, or organization raises the
issue; self-defines themself(ves) as experts, frames the discussion and
then goes public. In this situation, it seems like we're talking about
the "marketplace of ideas" - where competing ideas vie for attention
and validation/support from the broader public. Legitimacy comes from
a combination of the message, the folks associated with the message, and
ultimately how well it's presented to and received by the broader
public. The political campaign metaphor is a pretty good one -
particularly when viewed through the lens of ballot initiative
campaigns. Other models that seem to apply are: form an organization,
solicit membership, contributions, grant funding, etc. Turning an idea
into a commercial product or service is another way of bringing ideas to
the public (think about investment funds focused on social interest
investing, for example). There are probably some good lessons to be
learned here from the Dean campaign and MoveOn, not to mention open
source software efforts (Apache, and various Linux efforts are good
models for how large groups of people converge around projects and
actually get real work done, mostly mediated by software tools).
The more interesting, and challenging case - and the one I think we're
grappling with in this discussion - is:
B. Emergent issues, where nobody is driving the train, but lots of
people are starting to think about an issue - and maybe the case where
or lots of people are driving related trains, but with little or no
coordination. Global warming and changing energy use patterns comes to
mind as a good example. Here the question is: how can all this
amorphous activity be channeled toward some form of consensus, leading
to action - rather than remaining amorphous and possibly canceling out
by working at cross purposes. (Or maybe the question is: how do we move
forward rather than achieving gridlock).
There seem to be (at least) three answers, two of which are the ones
discussed above:
- a formal process and authority takes up the issue
- one or more groups take up the issue and compete in the marketplace of
ideas (and/or the marketplace), and hopefully the good ideas win out,
the bad ones die out (one can see a hybrid as well, where formal
authority creates a marketplace - e.g., the government increasing funds
for climate change grants)
> My main concern would be over how realistic it is to get those numbers
> involved in an intensive consensus-building exercise, particularly if they
> are to be recruited to represent the spectrum of social interests and
> demographic groups in the population. In reality we often have to rely on
> advocates for certain groups, especially deprived groups, such as the
> community organisations or service providers that work with them
The third possibility is creating some kind of process that forces
discussion, leading to consensus. And here's where the question of
tools linking large groups becomes particularly interesting. "Smart
mobs," rating systems (e.g., slashdot, digg), and other tools that
channel conversation toward convergence, and then into action.
Miles Fidelman wrote: > Simon Smith wrote: > > > My main concern would be over how realistic it is to get those numbers > > involved in an intensive consensus-building exercise, particularly if they > > are to be recruited to represent the spectrum of social interests and > > demographic groups in the population. ... > > The third possibility [B-3] is creating some kind of process that forces > discussion, leading to consensus. And here's where the question of > tools linking large groups becomes particularly interesting. ... This is the model I advocate. Provided it is open to the full electorate (and the consensus itself is unforced), then it's the same model as Votorola (so I have an interest). It has these advantages: * fits the theory of consensus formation in society (Habermas) * will attract more participants, and thus more legitimacy * enables communities (as opposed to a self-interested g