[pp.int.general] Liquid democracy information?

[carlo von lynX]

Boris, exactly how many election programs have you developed in
Bavaria, how much practical experience do you have with alternatives
to LQFB and when did you win elections recently?

AFAICT from https://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Wahlprogramme the only
state that had a larger election manifesto than Berlin is Rheinland-
Pfalz.. and it looks like they developed it in a working group, not
using liquid democracy.

One of the reasons the Berlin campaign was so strong wasn't just
*having* an electoral program but especially because nobody in the
party felt left out - they had all cast their votes and then they
all jointly stood behind the results, accepting whenever they had
a minority opinion.

Having doubts about LQFB being a useful tool to get our ass off the
ground *is* such a minority point of view. Would be good for the
pirate movement if you accepted that. I too thought that some P2P
voting tool would be fantastic and I hate SQL web apps, but I gave
in and accept that LQFB is incredibly well architected and gets a
really good job done.

It empowered Berlin to collectively create a huge manifesto without
meeting in general assembly each week-end.

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 03:11:05PM +0100, Boris Turovskiy wrote:
>> It's not just about Liquid Democracy.. proxy voting is in practice
>> a rather secondary feature.
> If that's true then why any proposals aimed at reducing the power of  
> "delegation kings" (users who through delegation chains accumulate so  
> much voting power they can decide on issues single-handedly) are being  
> ardently opposed by the LQFB supporters?

Supporters or critics?

As far as I can tell, if you don't have "delegation kings" your liquid
democracy is broken. It is human nature to have some popular people that
get some 30.. 50.. delegations. It's still ridiculous numbers compared
to the voting power of a delegate in traditional parties. And it isn't
wrong: Those people have the job of channeling supportive power towards
actual experts in each field, and with all those delegations they are
aware of this responsability. It would be too hard for everyone to find
an actual expert on everything.. "delegation kings" route the support
to the good people. When it comes to voting, many people vote actively
anyway, so it's only the "support" for issues which is delegated, making
them important enough to discuss and vote upon, not the actual vote.
I agree that it would be a good idea to lower the quora a bit. But that's
just a setting in the admin view, we just have to decide to do this.

> On a more general level: I have to warn everybody who is thinking about  
> employing LiquidFeedback (or any other tool that aims to play a  

Yes, it's terrible. It may lead you to actually usable results and make
you win actual elections.


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