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

["David Bray" <David_Bray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good thoughts. I'm enclosing two articles re: the biases present in
digg.com and slashdot.com; to include "astroturfing"

Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg - it explains how a few users control
Digg, and that it's not really the 'Democracy' that they claim it to be. 
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/20/1538256

Users on Slashdot Commenting on the Community's Bias - the comments
themselves may obviously be biased
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=63164&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=5906746#5906939

... in the end, both of these represent distributed problem-solving
networks as information systems that involve humans; the technology may
not be biased but humans will retain their cognitive and social biases.
The question then is how to construct the interfaces and processes such
that (to paraphrase The Federalist No. 51) "...Ambition must be made to
counteract ambition..." of the human participants. 

[ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962283 ]How
Information Systems Research Can Inform Current and Emerging Government
Institutions: Two Views

Hope this helps! 

-d. 

Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx>,Internet on Sunday, August 12, 2007 at
11:01 PM -0500 wrote:
>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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