Building consensus online
From:
Simon Smith
Date:
Jan 27 00:06 UTC
Short link
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