[pp.int.general] [AG Liquid Democracy] Anybody checked out placeavote.com?

Tue Jun 3 00:01:33 CEST 2014

Hi Pirate Martin

Only wanted
PP mailing lists

Which is it?

Thanks

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Martin Stolze <pirate.martin at stolze.cc>
wrote:

> Hello Friend,
> Thanks for taking the time to elaborate on the details. I agree that this
> got a bit out of hand on the different mailing list and it’s also my last
> comment.
>
> As for the “big problems”. I am admittedly quite smug in that I only see
> them as technicalities somebody smarter than I will solve. I tend to favor
> pragmatic approaches.
> I don't want to discourage anybody and I have the utmost respect for
> everybody who is putting time and effort into any of the mentioned projects.
>
> As far as I understand it placetovote uses a pragmatic approach of
> identifying people via social security details with a bit of private-public
> key encryption probably at a too high expense of anonymity for our emacs
> fraction.
> Delegation, again another technicality. One can probably easily hack
> around it like you can today via postal ballot. It’s just not done more
> widely because elections are just too rare and unspecific.
>
> They are aiming at the primaries in the US, I don't see why they couldn't
> take some of us on board and branch it off to Europe, Canada, the local
> tennis club, … with different specs.
>
> My intention was really to find somebody who is hooked on the guys in the
> states. I am under no illusion that they will probably fail and drop it.
> However, I believe they are better in execution. I personally put an
> extreme high premium on execution.
> You'll hate me for it but I do believe that a solution that originates in
> the US has a much higher chance of being recognized, supported and
> accepted, unfortunately nothing trumps the immense concentration of capital
> and talent that is available there.
> I mean this project is just a sidekick of 59daysofcode.com and I
> do belive buying those kids would be better investmetn then, let's say,
> sending out another round of paper inviations to the GA, damn, our
> pirate-party-micky-mouse-club-membership-cards were probably more expensive
> :)
> - It was more than 590 days ago when I looked into the Liquid Feedback
> last time and I didn't notice a difference since.
>
> In fact, back in 2012 part of me thought that any pirate politian will
> just abuse his mandate to make it a 4 year coding assignment and
> disfranchise every possible resource to catapult the movement into a
> semi-operational beta status. -Wrong judgment on my end.
> My issue is that I can’t see much traction for anything that is currently
> being developed indigenously. It mesmerizes me that pirates of all people
> actually do such work on a local level that is so clearly something that
> should be developed internationally.
>
> If you hear social network you think Facebook, if you hear video playback
> you think “VLC” if you hear digital democracy you think ...?
> let me know. I would appreciate a pointer if you come across something
> that has a serious chance.
>
> Best wishes
> Martin
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Jacob Kanev <j_kanev at arcor.de> wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear Martin,
>>
>> regarding voting systems there are currently some big problems that still
>> have to be solved.
>>
>> (1) Traceability vs. Anonymity.
>> In normal elections you can vote anonymously (i.e. no-one knows who it
>> actually was that ticked that box) and the election is traceable, at least
>> to the point that tampering of the system would get noticed by the human
>> observers.
>> In an online system this is not possible. You have an either-or relation.
>> Either the system is traceable, but then it must be traceble back to the
>> actual persons who did the voting. Or it allows for anonymous voting, but
>> then traceability flies out the window and you end up with a system that is
>> prone to manipulation.
>> I don't know what placeavote.com have done in this respect and I enrole
>> to find out, so I cannot judge here.
>>
>> (2) Delegations
>> One single person cannot vote on all little minor special issues that
>> arise in a democracy. Hence the idea of being able to delegate single votes
>> to single persons (there are also many different ideas and ways of doing
>> this). I quite like the idea, but to my suprise there are many people who
>> don't. I guess a system without delegations won't work, and a system with
>> delegations might have difficulty taking off, cause so quite a few people
>> are opposed to it. This question first has to be solved to everybody's
>> agreement.
>>
>> But I guess you know this already.
>>
>> As for qKonsens, it tries to tackle the easy-vs.-complex problem you
>> mention. You can have different views on each question (depending on
>> whether you just want to spend a first glance or read into it a bit), and
>> the voting system is simple -- you click a "++", "+", "0", "-" or "--"
>> button, much like having "like" and "dislike" buttons. This is much like
>> your onion idea.
>>
>> That said, I don't see a nation-wide implementation of any of these yet.
>> Placeavote is a nice try, but I dought they will gain much momentum. Would
>> be interesing to see how they solved (1) and (2) from above. The other
>> tools are intra-German-Pirate-party tools used for research and testing.
>> qKonsens is in its proof of concept phase (aka we're still implementing),
>> noddr is a one-person project without much resonance otherwise. Even the
>> German pirate's party-wide LQFB implementation is not accepted by the
>> majority of the party members (delegations may be the main problem here).
>>
>> So, I think best you can do is listen in on the liquid-democracy and the
>> meinungsfindungs-tool teams and possibly join their discussions. The
>> meinungsfindungstool people have quite a lively email discussion, also
>> discussing implementations and ideas by other people.
>>
>> Hope I could help,
>> lots of regards, Jacob.
>>
>> P.S.: Sorry for doing cross-list posts. This was my last one, and I
>> apologize.
>>
>>
>> On Monday 02 June 2014 11:46:43 Martin Stolze wrote:
>> > Hey Jacob,
>> > Thanks a lot that is one exciting idea! I try to look at approaches
>> mostly
>> > under the aspect of whether they can work and create traction. There
>> are a
>> > few criteria that I found significant. Simplicity, is the most
>> important of
>> > them. Think about limesurvey, the only tool producing any meaningful
>> > feedback as of now.
>> > Anything "Meinungsfindungstool" is like 10 Degrees more complex and for
>> > that it seems to be not implementable right now. - And who speaks German
>> > anyway? ;)
>> >
>> > I like to think of it like layers of an onion. The first layer must be
>> very
>> > simple, not even as complex as “yes” or “no”. Just a simple "like/+1"
>> may
>> > suffice. This and a focus on seamless integration to wherever people
>> spend
>> > their time must be the priority. Once somebody is hooked we can go down
>> the
>> > rabbit whole and do all the “Meinungsfindung”.
>> > - It’s what I like about Silicon Valley and placeavote.com, they keep
>> it
>> > simple and deliver something appealing, the rest is iteration. In
>> contrast,
>> > udeci.de seems to take the opposite approach.
>> >
>> > Best Regards
>> > Martin
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Jacob Kanev <j_kanev at arcor.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Hi Martin,
>> > >
>> > > you might also want to connect with the people from our "AG
>> > > Meinungsfindungstool" [1]. They're busy implementing something called
>> > > qKonsens, an online system that combines voting and discussing.
>> > >
>> > > I'm not sure how far it is, I haven't followed the discussion in
>> detail,
>> > > but as far as I can see some good ideas have met some programmers.
>> > >
>> > > Lots of regards, Jacob.
>> > >
>> > > [1]
>> > > ag-meinungsfindungstool at lists.piratenpartei.de
>> > >
>> > > On Sunday 01 June 2014 20:49:39 Martin Stolze wrote:
>> > > > 
>> > > > Hi Together,
>> > > > I keep arguing that a lack of infrastructure is actually our biggest
>> > > > challenge. I guess, by now, it is safe to say that we don't
>> actually have
>> > > > the capacity to build something ample ourselves (Liquid Feedback,
>> shitty
>> > > > mailing lists, limesurvey you name it). The way I see it is that we
>> > > simply
>> > > > don't manage to activate the talent that would be necessary to
>> develop
>> > > > something pioneering. All the good ideas and innovations coupled
>> with our
>> > > > lofty idealism is worth nothing if nobody is pouring them into Java
>> or
>> > > PHP.
>> > > >
>> > > > The guys at placeavote.com have been gone through the news as they
>> try
>> > > to
>> > > > shoehorn direct democracy into any form of electoral system by
>> means of
>> > > > levering it out and replacing politicians with proxies that only
>> relay
>> > > > decisions made by the corresponding constituency.
>> > > >
>> > > > Of course implementation, especially in the US, is highly unlikely.
>> > > However
>> > > > using it at least internally to a certain degree or forking it a
>> little
>> > > can
>> > > > be a chance for us to move out of the technological middle ages
>> that we
>> > > are
>> > > > stuck in.
>> > > >
>> > > > It also seems not to be open source (yet?) but I am thinking more
>> along
>> > > the
>> > > > lines of sweet-talking the guys behind it into working for us as
>> some
>> > > kind
>> > > > of software consultants, maybe we can flatter them with a bit of
>> the cash
>> > > > that should come our way in form of election refunds?
>> > > >  :)
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > What do you think?
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > >    ____________________________
>> > >    Pungenday, 7th of Confusion, 3180.
>> > >    jacob kanev
>> > >      twitter: @j_kanev
>> > >      jabber: jkanev at jabber.ccc.de
>> > >
>> > >
>>
>> --
>>    ____________________________
>>    Pungenday, 7th of Confusion, 3180.
>>    jacob kanev
>>      twitter: @j_kanev
>>      jabber: jkanev at jabber.ccc.de
>>
>>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/attachments/20140602/660c276c/attachment.html>