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

Martin Stolze pirate.martin at stolze.cc
Wed Jun 4 00:55:44 CEST 2014


Hello Michael,
This is quite off topic. But I can’t resist because I believe that you have
actually come up with some awesome contributions and I wanted to ask anyway
why you dropped the GPL license.

On a bigger scale, the gist of what the pirate party is up too is finding a
way to moderate a bigger discussion. Voting is only part of it,
facilitating discussion, moderation, identity and trust management are
other parts. Think of an old light bulb that only converts 2% of the energy
intake into light. -The assumption is that we can reduce this loss by
applying software that translates the cognitive surplus of all pirates into
efficient decisions.
I think you are much deeper into that then most around here. Hence my
surprise that you think this won't matter!

Anonymous voting is a snooze. //I disagree on ideological grounds.
>

As for the Aggregator, frankly - No, it doesn’t make sense to me. I believe
you are onto something but I am not quite able to grasp it.
Votes won’t be public, maybe opinions. If you wanted to aggregate them you
could simply use google news and filter a bit. Certainly you will have the
fun stuff that draws in users.

But that doesn’t help us. All we need is one implementation that doesn’t
suck and gets a little traction. Once people are hooked to the idea they
won’t turn back. The developed world is packed with old people who have too
much time on their hands and know everything better, think about how happy
they will be!

If you want to leap forward on a big scale you will have a better chance by
predicting the outcome upfront. The failed intrade.com comes to mind, they
let people put their money on elections and events and obviously given
enough participation they were incredible accurate.
On the other hand, rumor has it that the intelligence community is
factoring their forecasting on aggregated opinions that can easily be
qualified by reach. -Show me a Facebook profile and I tell you what’s on
the ballot.
I don’t think we have the capacity for any of this - but if that’s what you
are aiming for you may want to leave a copy of your CV over here rentec.com
:)

Meanwhile, how about you help pushing a viable platform? It’ll make later
aggregation even easier because you know all the details!
Martin


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 8:02 AM, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:

> Hello Martin and others,
>
> > 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'd say vote aggregators, aka "vote mirrors".  How would Facebook work
> if the users were anonymous and hiding behind pseudonyms?
>
> Answer: It wouldn't.  And digital democracy?
>
> Same answer.  Anonymous voting is a snooze.  That means the votes of
> digital democracy (DD) are going to be public; at least the fun ones,
> the ones that draw in the users.
>
> But that means anyone can copy the votes from different voting sites,
> translate them, and then aggregate them to show the big picture.  The
> aggregator would be a useful service because it's the sum of the votes
> that matters, not the place at which they're cast.
>
> The upshot is that individual voting sites don't matter enough to
> worry about.  There's no need to wait for a viable site to emerge from
> the pack and take the lead.  Instead we just wait for the first
> aggregator to start scraping from the pack as is, levelling all the
> contenders in the process.  That'll be the shape of the future.  All
> eyes will shift to the aggregators.  Add a simple "me too" voting
> interface to an aggregator, and the voting-only sites are doomed.
>
> Does that make sense?  (I'm keen to start coding the first aggregator,
> if anyone else is interested.)
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Martin Stolze said:
> > ​​​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​
>
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