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What CMS should Metagovernment use?
by vilfredo in Metagovernment

What Content Management System should Metagovernment use?

This is a followup of a previous question: "Should Metagovernment transition from a wiki to candiwi?"

A bit of history:

At the beginning of Metagovernment we discussed and decided that we would have created a tool for online democracy, and would have tested the tool by using it ourselves. At the time we had no tool to use, so we chose to use a wiki, in general, and a mediawiki, in particular. The tool we were going to develop was at the time called Metascore. Time passed, and Metagovernment became a hub for many different projects that were generally interested in developing the software for a community to self govern. Other projects started from inside the community itself. Metascore changed name into Candiwi. But we are still using a mediawiki as our main repository.

The Questions

The question above de facto includes a series of other, internal questions which should also be answered (either directly or indirectly):

Should we transition to a tool (or a set of tools) that have been developed by us?
Which tool(s) should we use?
Should it be a single tool or a set of tools?
If we should use more than one tool, how should they be related?

Final Notes:

The format of the tool(s) used by Metagovernment will have an effect on the kind of evolution that this community will have. As such the choice of the tool is really important.

It also should be noted (as pointed out in the winning proposal of the previous question), that

"Metagovernment's data is in mediawiki format. If it remains in this format, it will still be compatible with the rest of the GFDL corpus, and would require no processing".

As such a CMS that permit to host material in mediawiki format might be advisable (but not necessarily the only option).

Decision to open this question was taken in an online meeting that happened Saturday the 23rd of January 2010. In this meeting some suggestions were also made. You can read them here.

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Should Metagovernment transition from a wiki to candiwi? by fabe in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo canderson Ananas

The question is a closed question.

Vilfredo is a system to answer only open questions (please refer on this to the Vilfredo FAQ )

Please rephrase the question as an open question;
not as a yes no question.

Thanks,
Vilfredo & C.
The question is a closed question.

Vilfredo is a system to answer only open questions (please refer on this to the Vilfredo FAQ )

Re-ask the question as "What CMS should run Metagovernment?"

This would include Mediawiki, candiwi, and other options that could be explored.

But in this question we have identified something, that "Metagovernment's data is in mediawiki format. If it remains in this format, it will still be compatible with the rest of the GFDL corpus, and would require no processing." This is good info, and should be put in the content of the new question.

How can consensus be defined in an open group of people? by Ed Pastore in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo Ed Pastore

The idea of consensus naturally suggests (and historically meant) the idea that everybody agreed with an idea. If this can be found, this is of course very good. But what shall we do when this is not the case. In some cases we can map the agreement of the people on a multidimensional space. Let us just look at two dimensions: First dimension: agreement with the idea
Second dimension: willingness to be involved (which often subsumes the perceived importance of the idea).
And they would pretty much appear as:

	I want to be involved	I do not want to be involved
I agree	A) I agree, and I will share the burden	B) In principle I agree with the idea, But I am either too busy, or I don't care enough to be involved with it
I do not agree	C) I do not agree, but I basically don't really care that much. Just don't say you are doing it in my name.	D) I don't agree, more than that, I think it is important that this idea does not pass. So I will do whatever I can to stop you. If I could put a veto I would.

Now in principle we have a consensus if we have found an idea on which everybody is in quadrant A or B. But maybe we can define a more relaxed form of consensus, where at least no one is in quadrant D. So no one is putting their veto on the idea.

This way of proceeding is very interesting, but it has a failure: if someone knows that he can put a veto on something, he might just keep on vetoing everything which is not his favorite solution. Somehow social respect and good manners should prevent that.

On the other hand we know, from psichology, that there is a low percentage of human beings who have no sense of social respect. We are speaking of a maximum of 4%-5%, in western countries, and much less in eastern ones [Martha Stout: The sociopath next door]. We can thus imagine that there is a minority of people who are not just bringing a different point of view, but have as their aim to disrupt the system. As such the system should be resiliant enough against their effect.

The exact values for these numbers to be determined as we experiment in larger and larger communities. There should be a simple mathematical expression which incorporates the number of people participating and perhaps also the number of people in the affected community.

So we should define consensus as:

Has been brought to the attention of all affected groups and they have had enough time to review and contribute (Implemented through time limits, quorum and notifications)
Not more than 5% of opposition of type D
Enough people in quadrant A to actually carry on the plan

Notice that in this way something can pass even if it is wanted by just a minority of people, provided that this minority is willing to do the work, while no one is interested in stopping them. This in short will produce not a paralization of the legislative body, but an extreme expression of it, in all that is not problematic.

Essentially we need a consensus that include every honest contributor, and eliminates dishonest ones Dishonest being people who do not have a real position, but just vote randomly.
In a Vilfredo style system, the number of solutions in the pareto front will increase a lot for people that vote in a random way.
This is, by the way, why important questions tend to reach consensus faster than test questions where people just vote at random.

Suppose we have n people that voted, we should just check not just the pareto front generated by everybody voting, but also the n pareto fronts obtained by considering the votes of everybody except for one. Trying all the (n-1) combinations.

Then we associate to each person the difference between the size of the pareto front with them, and the pareto front without them.

We then pick a threashold x, with x>1. Every person who imposes on the society more than x solution in the pareto front can be ignored. The size of x is right now still unknown, as we need to make some tests to find out, on average, a person that votes at random how much does he increase a pareto front.

What would be a good new name for Metascore? by Thomas in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo Owen Ambur

This question is now off topic.
The name has de fact been changed to Candiwi.

Please vote for this proposal to show our agreement on the decision made by the programmers.

How might a non-programmer participate in metagovernment? by jb555 in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo jb555

Ed is not a programmer, and yet is among the most active member of metagvernment. He does this by using his personal gift of ability to connect, and going around. In this he was not just very succesful but really important for the metagovernment community. So much that is often considered a spokeperson.

De facto each person has some unique gifts, and it is by using those gifts that he or she will better help the cause.

We are here suggesting some ideas, but is then the individual person that should look and find what would really fit them, and is really useful in that moment.
Working on the wiki:
There is a lot of work that always needs to be done on the wiki:
- keeping it up to date;
- cleaning it;
- in general do what is called wiki-gardening.
- More specific work can be:
Work between the Wiki and the Mailing List:
We have a wiki and a Mailing List, we need people to interface them:
- From the mailing list to the wiki
- go through the mailing list, going as back as the beginning of the list, and moving ideas from the mailing list to the wiki. Reorganising them. This should be a job that is done by a few people (at least 2 or 3) to make sure that no idea is left back, and there is no particular spin in the way ideas are presented.
  - From time to time those people should: contact the person who originated an idea to ask her for advice on how the idea was presented.
- From the wiki to the mailing list:
Diffuse the ideas:
Few people in society are aware of our ideas, and the few we are, the less help can we get.
- create a youtube video (perhaps a cartoon, or a video skype discussion) that discusses an idea or aspect of metagovernment.
- Organize a Ustream.com video convention / conference, to discuss the potential for internet technologies to radically change democracy, and ongoing projects related to that goal.
- Writing Documentation and Translations about metagovernment and spreading the word.
- Organise a metagov newspaper:
Directly help the projects:
Of course even non programmers can directly help with the projects:
- A very good way is by testing the systems, bit just a few times but consistentlyHe would then have good experience to compare the different systems, and provide feedback. He could also set up a comparative page on metagovernment, with a table, the various systems, and how what do they do.
- Join a related project (participate in, discuss, and give feedback to), and help expand the metagovernment.org wiki page related to that project. (this is present also under the wiki section)
- Writing Documentation and Translations about the projects. Spreading the word.
Other Ideas:
- Preparing tea, and giving a good back massage to programmers, that is always appreciated!
- Start a dialogue on the wiki or the mailing list: what should the agenda look like? who would we invite to speak?

What's a better name than Metagovernment? by Michael Allan in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo Ed Pastore

We should use formally the term Metagovernment. We can then friendly refer to it as MetaGov, or even MG. Like the formal name for this is Vilfredo goes to Athens, and the informal is Vilfredo.

what does the term 'metagovernment' mean? by jb555 in Metagovernment
Agreement found between: vilfredo jb555 Ed Pastore

Usually"meta something" means that you apply the term "something" to itself.
Also please look at meta (wikipedia)

So "meta-X" is "an X of X".

From this POV, a metagovernment would be a government of governments.
A metagovernment is a government (A) of one or more governments (B), such that the rules and procedures of government (B) are governed by a (A).

Note that A and B could be the same body with 2 roles, analogous to those above (let's call them A and B again). In this case it's a recursive (meta) government structure, such that body determines its own rules and procedures and thus evolves more rapidly than traditional governmental structures.

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Questions that reached unanimity

Working on the wiki:

Work between the Wiki and the Mailing List:

Diffuse the ideas:

Organise a metagov newspaper:

Directly help the projects:

Other Ideas: