Re: [apsa_itp] community law-making, a system based on recombinant text

[Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2007 at 05:41:32PM -0400, David Bray wrote:
> Two cents == You might want to examine existing communities, such as
> slashdot.com and digg.com, where they allow this sort of participatory
> process (but with regards to filtering news). While these communities
> generally work, there have been allegations of certain lobbyists
> "filibustering" news stories they don't want to rise to the top, whereas
> others have resulted in "majority tyranny"... you might also want to
> compare these sites with ohmynews.com and Google's automated news bot. 

"Filibustering" by negative voting, by down-voting a news story?  I
see that Digg permits down-voting ("Bury").  Maybe Slashdot too
(details are unclear from their site).  First I heard of it... But it
could not occur in community law-making, because negative voting is
not possible.  Voting in the system is only positive.  (Lobbyists
could still say negative things from *outside* of the system, but
probably that is not what you meant by filibustering.)

"Majority tyranny" has surfaced as a possible flaw in another
discussion thread.  It seems to be a general criticism of democracy.
But we have yet to identify a scenario where it would affect community
law-making in particular, as opposed to a traditional
legislature. Both are democratic, and both susceptible.  I think that
if society really wanted to tyrannize its minorities, then community
law-making would give it the means; otherwise, it would give it
tolerant laws, reflective of society's own tolerance. See:
http://groups.google.com/group/torcamp/browse_frm/thread/495cb0d9c0c08d0a
 
> I think your described problem (and potential solution) falls into a
> broader category, not limited to just politics, called "distributed
> problem-solving networks" ... Dr. William Dutton at the Oxford Internet
> Institute (OII) and several others, including myself, have just embarked
> on a six-month effort to try and develop both a typology of these
> different DPSN's as well as case study of some novel approaches beyond
> just wikipedia.org and the like... perhaps JITP might want to do a special
> issue looking at DPSN's and their research-related ramifications? 

Yes, maybe recombinant text falls into that category, at least partly.
About half its potential applications (so far) are in the areas of
distributed problem solving, decision support, and rulemaking
(e.g. community law-making).  But I have yet to fit them into a
theoretical context, or even a formal classification. I look forward
to reading your survey.

-- 
Michael Allan

http://zelea.com/

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