Building consensus online
From:
Steven Clift
Date:
Feb 01 17:33 UTC
Short link
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