LexPop Launch
Michael Allan
Re your sunlight thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/sunlightlabs/t/61823fdf7ba1a88d
I hope you don't mind if I reply here.
Matt Baca wrote:
> Josh, ... You're absolutely right about the hazards of wikis for
> this sort of thing. We added the three phases
> <http://lexpop.org/index.php?title=Main_Page> to the wiki process to
> make it a bit more structured, but we really don't know what to
> expect. We're hoping the shared goal of creating a good bill and
> improving the conversation will gain traction on the site, but, of
> course, that kind of aspiration won't (without more) make the
> process work.
I think a wiki can be made suitable for this purpose. One way is to
retrofit it along the lines of MixedInk (which Josh mentions). It's
not a difficult retrofit. I think Thomas is already addressing this
in your original thread.
OTOH, there's more to it than drafting. The model you chose involves
deliberation.
> As of yet, we haven't gotten a lot of participation
> <http://lexpop.org/blog/?p=43>. The hope is that we'll learn a bit
> about deliberative democracy (and some of your questions) and will
> be able to share it with the gov 2.0/opengov community.
Do you have any sense of what the failure point could be? You're only
at phase 1, but already it's a deliberative phase. Therefore you must
be expecting discussion (a), and expecting it to be rational (b).
Which is lacking? What particular mechanism was designed to encourage
and support it?
> However, to get there, we need participants. I.e. we need a crowd in
> order to crowd source our bill. So, we'd greatly appreciate any
> feedback on getting people involved (and, of course, on any other
> subject). And, if you'd like to spend five minutes contributing to
> the site, that would be great too!
You suggest that (a) is lacking. In fact, there is probably a great
deal of discussion happening on the topic of net neutrality, but
little of it is located here:
http://lexpop.org/index.php?title=Talk:Policy_Drive:_MA_Net_Neutrality:_Phase_One&oldid=212
The place you offer may have attractions, but those attractions would
have to huge to overcome the difficulties of creating a community of
discourse from scratch, or of transpanting an existing community to a
new location. And since the offer only extends till March 20, the
attractions of it are much reduced. It's a one-off event, while the
most interesting and attractive discussions tend to be on-going.
Why do you require the discussion to be located on that wiki page?
Or in any particular place?
--
Michael Allan
Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/
Matt Baca wrote:
> Josh,
>
> You're absolutely right about the hazards of wikis for this sort of thing.
> We added the three phases <http://lexpop.org/index.php?title=Main_Page>to
> the wiki process to make it a bit more structured, but we really don't know
> what to expect. We're hoping the shared goal of creating a good bill and
> improving the conversation will gain traction on the site, but, of course,
> that kind of aspiration won't (without more) make the process work.
>
> As of yet, we haven't gotten a lot of
> participation<http://lexpop.org/blog/?p=43>.
> The hope is that we'll learn a bit about deliberative democracy (and some of
> your questions) and will be able to share it with the gov 2.0/opengov
> community.
>
> However, to get there, we need participants. I.e. we need a crowd in order
> to crowd source our bill. So, we'd greatly appreciate any feedback on
> getting people involved (and, of course, on any other subject). And, if
> you'd like to spend five minutes contributing to the site, that would be
> great too!
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Matt
>
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Josh Tauberer <taub...@govtrack.us> wrote:
>
> > Hi, Matt.
> >
> > Crowd sourced writing is always an interesting topic. Using MixedInk, I
> > tried having people write a collaborative letter to Congress a few years
> > back, with mixed success. Sunlight uses PublicMarkup.org to basically run
> > one iteration of the drafting process by soliciting comments on a static
> > draft.
> >
> > What I think is important and interesting about these experiments is their
> > models of how people actually do or could do collaborative writing,
> > independent of the technology. So for instance, you broke it down into
> > Hearing (lay out the problem), Markup (sort of pre-legislative writing), and
> > Drafting the final text. In MixedInk, it was draft independently, then mix.
> >
> > Breaking it down into a) the model of collaboration, and b) the
> > implementation lets you ask how to design the technology to meet the need.
> > It seems like you're strong on the model, but the question is then how a
> > wiki supports each of those goals. (I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm really
> > asking.) Are the users making use of the technology in the way you thought
> > they would?
> >
> > My sense is that with an unconstrained environment like a wiki, there's an
> > important part of the model that is usually missing, which is that the
> > participants have a shared goal. In one extreme, everyone would all be in
> > agreement on the final policy (if only they knew what it was, which is why
> > they have come together to figure it out). In the other extreme, there will
> > be edit wars down to the final second, in anarchy. In the middle, people
> > disagree on what the final policy might be, but they agree on a
> > (legitimizing) process which produces single output from many ideas on how
> > to proceed.
> >
> > Just some thoughts. Looking forward to what can be learned from LexPop,
> >
> > - Josh Tauberer
> > - CivicImpulse
> >
> > http://razor.occams.info
> > http://www.civicimpulse.com
> >
> > "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
> > falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> > Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> >
> >
> > On 03/11/2011 12:02 PM, Matt Baca wrote:
> >
> >> Hi team,
> >>
> >> Wanted to let everyone know about the launch of LexPop's first project.
> >> LexPop is a site for collaborative creation of public policy, i.e. we
> >> (the people) create actual policy. Massachusetts Rep. Tom Sannicandro
> >> has agreed to introduce a net neutrality bill created on the website,
> >> and we welcome your participation and/or feedback.
> >>
> >> We'd love if you could check it out: lexpop.org <http://lexpop.org/>.
> >>
> >>
> >> We're just getting started on creating the net neutrality policy and
> >> welcome any ideas, both on net neutrality and on the project in general.
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> >>
> >> Matt Baca
> >>
> >> lexpop.org <http://lexpop.org> | @LexPopOrg
Matt Baca
Matt Baca
Matt Cooperrider
My company Collabforge has done wiki policy projects:
- Melbourne's city plan: http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au/
- State of Victoria Parks Management Plan: http://weplan.parks.vic.gov.au/
- Southern California Bike Ped Plan: http://bikepedwiki.scag.ca.gov/
These are cases where the government agency hosts the process, and
they are all focused on regional planning.
Melbourne had the best results because of very deep buy-in and
detailed process analysis by stakeholders, and strong investment in
engagement strategy.
But the wiki model is ultimately quite limited and the space needs to
evolve through agile grassroots efforts like yours. Glad to see
someone pushing on it anew.
Best,
Matt
Michael Allan
> ... I'm not sure I know what you mean by retrofitting the wiki along
> the lines of MixedInk. Do you mean adapting the wiki so the model is
> more like MixedInk or creating software like MixedInk for LexPop?
> You're right that this sounds like Votorola, but this sounds
Yes, it is somewhat different. However it only extends the model and
only where it needs extending. Wikis are still the premiere tools for
collaborative drafting and we don't have anything better to offer. *
Is there a particular wiki-bill or policy draft that you've been
contributing to? Or does anyone else in the list have a favourite
draft to offer? We can demonstrate the retrofit, if you wish. (It's
currently limited to MediaWiki, but I checked and your installation is
compatible. I don't need admin access or anything, it's mostly a
usage model that the users can adopt, on their own.)
> Your questions about the point of failure are well-taken. Truth is,
> either discussion or rationality could be lacking ultimately. But,
> so far we've been lacking in participation, so it's tough to say
> what direction things will head. I had a conversation with Cristiano
> Faria (the Brazil e-democracy guru), and he said their experience
> was that once discussion started it was quite good. There was a fair
> bit of noise on the site, but it was pretty easy to overcome. In
> terms of mechanisms, we aren't allowing anonymous commenting and
> have changed the wiki to allow for threaded discussions. No telling
> if that will be enough and suggestions are welcome here too.
We're in the same boat, only more on the technical side. We're
looking for feedback on what works and what doesn't in the way of
supporting tools. (In terms of your non-technical provisions, I'm no
expert, but it looks like you have many of the bases covered.)
> Also, we extended the first phase through April 20 and may extending
> it again as needed. The reason we want the discussion to take place
> on LexPop is because we'd like that discussion to form the backbone
> of the bill participants draft on the site -- a sort of common
> starting point. That said, I'm guessing most of it will be links to
> research, but hopefully a healthy argument will get going. To my
> knowledge, there is a lot of discussion about net neutrality out
> there, but no central meeting place for debating it -- LexPop (at
> least during the policy drive) would like to be that place. But
> getting people there to start discussing is a huge obstacle.
I hope we can demonstrate another way of injecting a backbone of
discourse into a text. At the same time, we'll be injecting a
backbone of text into the discourse and this should (in theory) be
attractive to new participants. Discussions are rational in a
democratic context only insofar as they are focused on differences of
position. Heightening that rationality - the grounding, clarity, and
purpose of the exercise - ought to be attractive to new participants.
OTOH, what technical supports we (as Votorola) could offer are only
prototypes. We're in the same boat, as I say, and learning as we go
along. We're not really looking for users, but rather
co-experimenters.
* In theoretical terms, the retrofit extends the wiki model with an
allowance for formal, structural dissensus. As it stands, the wiki
allows only formal *procedural* dissensus in what are called "edit
wars". One of the reasons why edit wars are undesireable is because
they are mere artifacts of the tool with no counterpart in social
reality. Those aspects of society that are communicatively (as
opposed to administratively) structured do not allow for an
*actual*, procedural dissensus. All actual dissensus there is
expressed spatio-structurally. One person *here* thinks one thing,
while another person over *there* thinks another. That's the model
that the wiki must be trained (by retrofit) to follow, so it can be
of use in achieving actual consensus.