Building consensus online
From:
Michael Allan
Date:
Feb 01 11:27 UTC
Short link
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.