Direct Democracy Portal - New screenshot avaible
pether....@gmail.com
more icons..
Screenshot avaible below.
https://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=115046
Still on target to release the alpha-release later this month.
Pether
Gordan Ponjavic
Hey Peter!
Do you have public filters in your software integrated?
ATB,
Gale
pether....@gmail.com
Gordan Ponjavic wrote:
> pether....@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> Do you have public filters in your software integrated?
Not sure what you mean with public filters, but don't have any filters
implemented except security filters
for the web requests.
Only admin screens an a few others that will be protected by security.
Pether
Gordan Ponjavic
scales with no filters? Or you base your software on top-down
hierarchy?
pether....@gmail.com
question.
Pether
Gordan Ponjavic
hundreds of members. I assume your software is developed for bottom-up,
grassroots principle where elected leaders are direct product of ad hoc
group decision which is possible thanks to internet.
OK. There is probably too many assumptions, that are even not important
ones. What I find important is: Is your party based on rigid, hard to
diminish hierarchies or on fluid ones where no one can be to certain?
If your organization is based on fluid hierarchies, how do you enable
mass communication of hundreds of members without having too much
non-appropriate material which is regular when you deal with hundreds?
I understand that I have no clue what exact political model you had in
mind when you started developing this software, so maybe, if these
questions are too abstract, we could start in that way?
ATB;
Gale
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
>If your organization is based on fluid hierarchies, how do you enable
>mass communication of hundreds of members without having too much
>non-appropriate material which is regular when you deal with hundreds?
Obviously, you don't, that is, if everyone can present everyone else
with a message, and the group is large enough, everyone is
overwhelmed with traffic.
There are obvious solutions in common use, but we think that it is
very important to develop solutions that don't depend so much on a
benevolent dictator, i.e., a group moderator.
Moderators there will be, but, as it is stated in the AA Traditions,
"Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern." If the
whole group could walk and quickly reassemble, a rogue moderator
would do no harm.
So we envision hierarchies of lists, if it is mailing lists we are
talking about.
There are base lists, with relatively few subscribers, few enough
that traffic does not overwhelm subscribers. These base lists may be
moderated by proxies; there would be many of them in a large
organization. Essentially, you can name a proxy and the proxy admits
you to his or her list. And maybe even to a list above that, i.e.,
the list of your proxy's proxy. This latter list you may read, but
you don't have the right, necessarily, to post to it without approval.
There is a top level list in an organization. Actually, there can be
more than one, but I won't go into that complication. A top level
list would typically be open for subscription by any member of the
organization. It may conduct polls and any member may vote in them.
But the list is moderated; the only people who can post without
moderation are high-level proxies, proxies representing a certain
minimum number of members, directly or indirectly. There may also be
other list members who may post, having been granted the privilege by
vote, without being high-level proxies.
The point is that this high-level list is rather closely moderated.
If members with posting privileges abuse them, any member who
likewise has such privileges may object. Standard Robert's Rules
meeting process has procedures for this.... and members can lose
their privileges; they can lose them administratively (i.e., as a
decision ad-hoc by a moderator) and it remains democratic if they
have the right of appeal. Appeal is to the whole "meeting," but it
might be on a separate list maintained for that purpose. Generally,
if the organization is TOP, members would know if censorship was
going on. It is not censorship, per se, which is the problem, it is
hidden censorship, censorship without due process.
Standard democratic process exists for all this; the trick is to make
that process scalable; and delegable proxy is the only solution I've
seen which does not involve excluding large groups of people from
participation *and* from representation. In theory. We have not seen
large-scale DP yet. Soon, hopefully!
pether....@gmail.com
> I assume your software is developed for large organizations with
> hundreds of members. I assume your software is developed for bottom-up,
> grassroots principle where elected leaders are direct product of ad hoc
> group decision which is possible thanks to internet.
It's developed almost purely as a propaganda project with the main
objective to increase political awareness and increase survelliance of
existing politicians.
> OK. There is probably too many assumptions, that are even not important
> ones. What I find important is: Is your party based on rigid, hard to
> diminish hierarchies or on fluid ones where no one can be to certain?
> If your organization is based on fluid hierarchies, how do you enable
> mass communication of hundreds of members without having too much
> non-appropriate material which is regular when you deal with hundreds?
I currently don't have any issues like the ones you describe above,
normally I prefer to solve problems when I actually got them. But would
be interesting to know how filters would solve this problem ?
> I understand that I have no clue what exact political model you had in
> mind when you started developing this software, so maybe, if these
> questions are too abstract, we could start in that way?
A paradigm shift to some sort of direct democracy, and I belive that a
portal for political parties that can lets them make decisions online
can result in many different poltical models.
Kind regards
Pether
MG
pether....@gmail.com
but never had time to do it properly so decided to wait. Need to make
sure it's ok to redistribute everything I use from jboss & other third
party software i depend on, pretty sure it's cool but need to attach a
lots of licenses & credits on different locations.
Did another snapshot release yesterday anyway.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=648209
Pether
Gordan Ponjavic
> Gordan Ponjavic wrote:
>
> > I assume your software is developed for large organizations with
> > hundreds of members. I assume your software is developed for bottom-up,
> > grassroots principle where elected leaders are direct product of ad hoc
> > group decision which is possible thanks to internet.
>
> It's developed almost purely as a propaganda project with the main
> objective to increase political awareness and increase survelliance of
> existing politicians.
So, who is going to use this software? Existing politicians? The
people? If it is the people shell they selforganise, or you offer some
organisational pattern as default?
> I currently don't have any issues like the ones you describe above,
> normally I prefer to solve problems when I actually got them. But would
> be interesting to know how filters would solve this problem ?
You enable mass communication tool prone to spam/flame and in the same
time with no censorship which is good starting base for
selforganisation of the masses.
> > I understand that I have no clue what exact political model you had in
> > mind when you started developing this software, so maybe, if these
> > questions are too abstract, we could start in that way?
>
> A paradigm shift to some sort of direct democracy, and I belive that a
> portal for political parties that can lets them make decisions online
> can result in many different poltical models.
I am affraid that you will be dissapointed when you offer this tool to
existing parties. At least, that would be sure thing if you did this in
Croatia. In Sweden it might be different.
ATB,
Gale
>
> Kind regards
> Pether
Cuthbert
implement a U.S. constitutional amendment to improve representative
government by enforcable direct democracy oversight.
It looks as if it could actually work, and in any case it contains
about 100-pages of useful information.
Can you include it in the new Direct Democracy Portal?
Cuthbert
pether....@gmail.com
Cuthbert wrote:
> http://www.InitiativesAmendment.org presents a complete plan to
> implement a U.S. constitutional amendment to improve representative
> government by enforcable direct democracy oversight.
> It looks as if it could actually work, and in any case it contains
> about 100-pages of useful information.
Looks interesting, myself I belive that political parties governed by
direct democracy need to be established before any change in
government will happen.
> Can you include it in the new Direct Democracy Portal?
Will not include it in the actual portal, but added a link on the
project site since I always try to collect information about other
intiatives or project I'm inspired by.
Pether
pether....@gmail.com
Gordan Ponjavic wrote:
> pether....@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > Gordan Ponjavic wrote:
>>
> So, who is going to use this software? Existing politicians? The
> people? If it is the people shell they selforganise, or you offer some
> organisational pattern as default?
I will be using the software to run www.directdemocracyparty.net once
it in a state where I'm
happy with it, might take a while..
> > A paradigm shift to some sort of direct democracy, and I belive that a
> > portal for political parties that can lets them make decisions online
> > can result in many different poltical models.
>
> I am affraid that you will be dissapointed when you offer this tool to
> existing parties. At least, that would be sure thing if you did this in
> Croatia. In Sweden it might be different.
The plan is to offer an alternative to existing parties..
My goal is fairly abstract but still follow more or less and early
mindmap I made sometime around 2004,
sent it to a few people but it's now avaible at
http://edemocrazy.sourceforge.net/DirectDemocracyPortal_initial_version.pdf
.
After discussions with Markus I changed my mind to instead of creating
a portal for one party to create a portal more like sourceforge where
people could create there own political parties.
Pether
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
>Cuthbert wrote:
>>http://www.InitiativesAmendment.org presents a complete plan to
>>implement a U.S. constitutional amendment to improve representative
>>government by enforcable direct democracy oversight.
>Looks interesting, myself I belive that political parties governed by
>direct democracy need to be established before any change in
>government will happen.
I'll agree and go a bit further. The site above is proposing, as a
means of generating public initiatives, something which looks like
DDJ, Warren Smith's Direct Democracy by Jury, the jury being randomly
chosen. Smith got pretty far into the security issues, which are
substantial. The proposal above is to amend the constitution to
establish initiative rights, and quite a bit of detail is proposed. I
happen to consider this utterly impractical unless something else
happens first that would make it unnecessary.
That something else is the direct organization of citizens into Free
Associations, which is my term for organizations which scrupulously
avoid taking organizational positions, owning property, and generally
from coercing their members or others. This is quite different from a
political party, which, practically by definition, has a pre-defined
bias or agenda. What I'll point out is that if what you want to do is
*develop* a primary agenda, you can't start with one, beyond that of
communicating.
The problem is how to organize such an association. It's not like I'm
the first person to think of this, there have been, and are, quite a
few organizations that claim to not have an organizational bias but
simply to represent the interests of citizens. But nearly all have an
undemocratic organizational structure, they are not run by "citizens"
except in the sense that everyone is a citizen, so to speak. They are
run by a core group of people who decide on policy and if you
disagree, well, go form your own organization. I'm not naming names
because I'm not opposing such organizations, they can do quite a bit
of good. But they are not what we need.
What we need is in some ways new and in some ways old. What is old is
the informal association of people with shared interests. What is new
are two things: first, the realization that it can be powerful to
formalize the freedom from organizational bias, for if you don't
formalize it, and the organization grows, it will almost certainly
develop a bias (plus there is the natural bias of the set of original
members), and once the bias is established it can be very difficult
to dislodge it, it preserves itself. And second, a technique or
concept of organization that should make deliberative democracy
practical on a large scale: this is delegable proxy. It is at the
same time direct and representative democracy. As I've conceived of
it, there could certainly be variations, the right to vote is not
alienable from members, but the right to take up everyone's time with
motions and discussion *must* be limited if the organization is going
to be scalable, to be able to function on a large scale.
This discrimination between voting rights and deliberation rights is
entirely new, as far as I know. They have always been linked. As a
citizen of the U.S., you can't walk into Congress and vote on a
matter before Congress. Why not? It would not have been practical,
before, but it could be done now. (Actually, it could have been done
long ago, it would just have been somewhat more cumbersome. Still possible.)
It would very likely not change many outcomes, the ability to direct
vote, unless the Congress essentially loses touch with the people and
they massively intervene. That's actually quite unlikely.
(Of course, if a citizen were to walk into Congress and vote, that
vote would not be equal to the votes of those who represent, in the
case of Senators, millions of people. It would be a fractional vote,
a small fraction, and it is obvious that votes from those actually
present as citizens would be a tiny fraction of the vote cast by
elected representatives. And I don't need to go much further into
this. I am not proposing, for the near future, direct democracy in
public institutions. I am proposing it for private Free Associations
and, as well, for political parties which seek to connect themselves
with their members, such that the members correctly think of the
party as "our" party as distinct from "their" party which we suppport
or not, depending on whether or not we agree. (We still have that
freedom with "our" party, but the emphasis shifts. We are *involved*
in "our" party.)
Delegable proxy as an advisory system can be implemented extremely
easily, all it takes is a proxy list and polling mechanisms that show
who voted for what. If you want to make it all secret, that is
another story. For secret systems, I'd recommend Asset Voting over
Delegable Proxy. Asset Voting creates a peer assembly where every
member represents a defined number of members. The assembly members
don't know the identities of those who elected them, but those who
elected them know where their vote went (if it is done in a certain
way, easy to do and still secure). So you would know, precisely whom
you elected, and no votes are wasted, as they are in standard,
contested elections. With Asset Voting, the goal is the cooperation
of the public to select representatives to represent the entire
public, accurately. It is not as accurate as Delegable Proxy combined
with direct democracy for voting, but it could be very close....
Gordan Ponjavic
he is DDer with a party from Sweden?
I mean, is Magnus satisfied with your offer?
ATB,
Gale
pether....@gmail.com
I'm not into sales, I just developing open source & releasing it under
GPL se below excerpt from license below
--
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
--
Does this answer your questions ?
Pether