What NEED does this meet?
This site would allow an open discussion amongst extremely large group of people while avoiding information overload. And it would be able to do it in live fashion for short events (e.g.: thus allowing greater “real time” public input in conferences) and in a passive fashion for permanent events (i.e.: people will be able to follow discussion that occur over several months, by being notified once or twice a day of what is being said). It would answer some of the issues put forth in http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003820.html
What is the APPROACH?
The concept is similar in principle to a competition. First you post your discussion/topic/idea and you select certain tags that would define it. The members of the site who have selected some of these tags (meaning they have an interest in the topic) would be notified of the new idea. They would then be able to join the discussion and vote it up or down. Here two things would happen to broaden the appeal of the discussion,
1. Whenever someone adds to the discussion the site could add new tags (i.e.: if someone discusses a proposal to be done in Canada about civil rights, and another person adds “This could also be done in the EU�. The site would be able to add a tag “EU� and would then notify members that have the “EU� tag selected)
2. If the votes reaches a certain number of votes, the site would add tags that are similar or more generalized. This could be done with several levels such that if a discussion reaches the top most number of votes required then the discussion would be considered to be of general interest and everyone can see it. It would also be possible to give a value to comments in a discussion (so the longer a discussion gets the more it is seen).
The problem of finding relevant topics what should be done is that the tags used should not only be tags but the combination of them that matters (such that one can create logical tags i.e.: “EU�-“Italy�). This would allow members to select a certain number of initial tags, and then the site would based on the members’ decisions (i.e.: to vote a discussion up or down, or to participate in it) generate new tags (mostly logical) that would help narrow down the discussion the person sees. At any one time the person should be able to counter act this system by broadening what he/she wants to see.
Finally there should be two modes of participation, one passive that is always on and on live that can be used for public participation in conferences/meetings.
The passive mode should be non-intrusive, this can be done by either using RSS feeds or daily email that condenses the discussion. In this manner, as there is no real time component, a person will not feel rushed to participate before the discussion is over.
The live mode should be done via a website / RSS feeds were members are notified as soon as a topic of their interest is discussed.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
The main benefit is that it would allow for open and fair discussion amongst extremely large people directly (instead of through proxies). This would also allow for greater public input into international conference. And in addition there can be a constant “backgroundâ€? discussion that allows anyone at any time to share their ideas/comments/etc… which may lead, for example, to innovative new ways to improve/change an aspect of our society. The advantage of the passive method is that anyone might want to join because they will from time to time receive interesting tidbits (kinda like surprises), and at the same time avoid subjects they are not interested in.
What is the COMPETITION?
For the live events participation there exists projects like http://www.habitatjam.com/ as mentioned in http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003820.html (but as mentioned it has several limitations). For the tags website like http://www.digg.com or http://www.newsvine.com/ have a similar concept to what is proposed here. But they do not deal discussion but rather with news. For the passive concept the equivalent would be mailing lists or now RSS feeds but they do not have the tag concept (while in principal you can sort them yourself, the power comes that the site will also add extra tags automatically).
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
In terms of budget, it would be hard to give a precise idea but one can figure that:
– The code of the site should not be to difficult to establish, the one major issue would be to find the right algorithm/artificial intelligence to allow the automatic generation of tags. This may take the most amount of time and resources while developing the code.
– Hosting this might be a bigger issue in terms of resource. In the passive mode it may not require to much “horsepowerâ€? in terms of computational resources. The live version on the other hand might require more. One could mitigate it by releasing the code as an open source project where the servers can be setup for each specific event (i.e.: a conference in Brazil could setup its’ own dedicated live server).
RSS feed
April 6th, 2006 at 2:27pm
Not sure what the point of 100,000 people discussing stuff is. I believe the focus is on action. Once we have 100,000 people acting together, then we have a shared experience to relate to…
For example, I live in Edinburgh, and last year we had 220,000 people marching on the weekend the G8 got together… It was a good day, but I think that most people had the feeling that it was pointless…
Therefore, the trick is, can we think of something that 100,000 people can do, that will manifest in direct result… And if 100,000 people is too many, how about 1,000 or just 1000, or even 10… When we get an idea of what 10 people can do, then it is merely a matter of exponential growth…
April 6th, 2006 at 2:54pm
It’s not really about what the 100′000 people (or any number for that matter) can or will do. It’s a tool to facilitate discussion, say for example one could use as massive brain storm of sorts. Right now if you had 10 people brain storming it’s not a problem, if you have 1000 people doing it will create too much for everyone to be able to participate (most likely you’ll end up with small groups working together and their ideas won’t spread). Whereas this might allow an idea to be proposed by 1 person, improved by 100, supported by thousands and then be told to everyone.