Talk:Wikicracy

The Modern Whig Wikicracy Project

What is the status of the Wikicracy project? I and other members of the Modern Whig Party are interested in developing, and utilizing Wikicracy. We have created a forum for this purpose. The url is: : http://modernwhig.informe.com/forum/the-modern-whig-wikicracy-project-f41/. Let me know how we can help coordinate development of the project. --Sparky1 00:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello, the statut for these 3 years is : sleeping !! I still think after 3 years this is a fantastic project, maybe not explained well enough, maybe people want to see something working before being interested in joining and help with development. I intend to start to make something out of these concepts, but I barely have any programming skills, so until programmers join in, it may take some time to gets on its way.Vmandrilly 02:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

See Debatepedia.org

Debatepedia is a wiki encyclopedia of debates, arguments, and supporting evidence. It's been called the "Wikipedia of debate and reasoning". It's already well underway with over 500 really substantive debate articles it migrated over from Debatabase, which was a product of 7 years of work of the International Debate Education Association (a pro/con database written by expert debaters and philosophers that has now wikified into Debatepedia). Debatepedia is now with the International Debate Education Association. Debatepedia uses MediaWiki software and adopts a pro/con splitscreen logic tree structure. Debates are driven by a yes/no question that creates the over-arching pro/con splitscreen arrangement. Then, subquestions break down long lists of pros and cons into more chewable parts regarding, say, economics or social arguments within a debate. It has alot of the pieces in place already. It has developed software that very simply allows for new-debate page creation with this simple "logic tree" structure deployed and for the manipulation of this structure, such as the creation of new subquestion sections. Now, we're trying to collaborate as widely as possible in creating a community around this effort (I'm the founder and editor). We've often thought about attempting to join-up with Wikimedia/become a Wikimedia project. Would be best to collaborate in any case. Debaterx 04:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Great work! I sincerely hope this Debatepedia will have support from Wikipedia. Thanks to all such efforts, my hope to see an efficient internet tool for organisation's decision process I could use for another personnal project is becoming more and more concrete :-)

Thanks for the kind words. Debaterx 19:35, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Name of the project debate

The name I choosed (wikicracy) is also open for debate, once a consensus of at least 10 person has been reached, I will register a domain name corresponding to our choice. Vmandrilly 16:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I prefer wikiocracy. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 18:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is probably easier to pronounce. This new name is OK for me. 'Vmandrilly 19:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)'

I'm also for Wikiocracy, though it does sound a bit like w:Idiocracy... nevertheless, I think that it's more phonetically inclined than "Wikicracy". What about the name "Wicarus"? Kind of like the mythical Icarus. It's not really related, but it'd be cool. linca^linca 07:35, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

lol, I see. "Wikarus, the project that wanted to go so high it burned so fast", well it is very possible, but let's hope we won't get to this point! My preference is still for Wikicracy, the reason is that democracy etymology (the Greek demos and kratos) makes too parts (demo-cracy = people-power), same for auto-cracy (self-power). Logical continuation should be wiki-cracy (wiki philosophy based power = participation of all in a spirit of collaboration), don't you think?... Vmandrilly 11:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiocracy for me. --69.106.74.141 05:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion Wikicracy is by far the best name. It is short, clear and simple. No need for a trivial "o". Wiki and -cracy. That's the correct form to use if we decide to go this way. Wikidemocracy is also nice, but no need to make it long. We will always explain what our purpose is anyway, and well, it is a known thing that the tool will be designed on an open-source wiki democratic principle. For the person who is involved in the project as a member of a real wikicracy community in the future, the important won't be what we are trying to reach (democracy) as we will participate to it everyday, but the action itself, the wiki-contribution. Dadasloth, 5/15/2010

Status of name vote

• Wikiocracy : 3 votes
• Wikicracy : 1 vote
• Wikocracy : 1 vote (?)
• Wicarus : (?)

Proposed links

metagovernment

see : http://www.metagovernment.org/ About the creation of a metagovernment.

(Contribution from unknown user)

Interesting link. Technical cooperation could be possible between the 2 projects. Some ideas could be taken from metagovernment way of functioning, we could discuss it (for example about the weight stuff)

The idea to understand behind wikicracy project is that it is not about new contents, but about an adaptation of wiki to decision making process. So this project is not supposed to say what is good or bad or to make any proposition or to give any knowledge, it is just about the building of a great add-on extension of wiki software that could be used by groups to discuss more efficiently and more democratically their propositions in a cooperative way, and to improve/facilitate elections/votes within organizations/governments.

Therefore, the website of the link is interesting in this sense that the tools it will develop for itself could be very useful for this project, and the tools developed by this project could be later adopted by the metagovernment.

Note (that has nothing to do with this project, but I couldn't write it on the metagovernment website...  : The following argument seen on meta government particularly bothers me - quote : Preventing the return of leaders. The use of force or threats of violence in order to establish control over others shall be strictly forbidden [...] Should a leader begin to emerge within an established open source government and be recognized as a threat by the local government's website or any higher government's website, it shall be the duty of every person to stop that leader by any means necessary, not excluding assassination.).

Vmandrilly

about the weighting system, I guess the inspiration comes from the way Google classifies the importance of websites. There is a risk that a community within all the users decide to vote for each another, just like there are websites with high ranking because they created multiple pages relating to each another... how do you address the issue ?

Vmandrilly

Hi, I work on the Metagovernment project and wanted to let you know that some of the above criticisms have since been addressed by the Metagovernment community. Additionally, Metagovernment.org is now a MediaWiki wiki. However, we still intend to run Metascore as our final software of choice... once we create it. We have yet to finalize the definition of Metascore, so theoretically it could be an extension for wikis. However, we intend for Metascore to be used in, among other things, politically charged environments where there may me significant dispute, so the wiki consensus model may not be sufficient. The point behind Metascore is to use some sort of scoring system to help resolve disputes, build consensus, and create synthesis. How/if this software will interface with other systems has yet to be determined. You all are, of course, invited to help us figure that out. — Epastore 22:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

protoforge

http://protoforge.org/ is a similar tool but meant for organizing engineering laws (requirements).

Thanks for the link. I first I was a little disappointed because it looked so complicated, and had apparently nothing to do with wikicracy project, but then I looked further. I registered as sample user to test. It is great news indeed that there already exists a similar project working, but why isn't it based on MediaWiki? Don't you think it would have done a great wikiprotoforge? (and protoforge really needs to be more easy to use, with less links.)

What I proposed is a mix between MediaWiki and protoforge, with different terminology:

• 1) It shall be as easy for users to use and to edit the pages as it is with MediaWiki.
• 2) It shall have a history with restoration possibility as it is with MediaWiki
• 3) And basically all special functions of Mediawiki.
• 4) It could adopt some protoforge innovations in structure (can you help to list main innovations compared to MediaWiki?)
• 5) It shall adopt specific terminology. For wikicracy, instead of wiki "content page", "discussion", "edit" and "history" tabs or protoforge "project", "Notifications" "Actions" "Requirements" "Solutions" "Resources", we could have "Proposal", "Debate of proposals", "Votes", "elected members" (in charge of implementation of adopted resolutions), "Follow up", and of course the "edit" and "history" tabs.

Since MediaWiki has reached a level of development far advanced compared to protoforge, I propose we shall start from Mediawiki software and add to it the protoforge improvements and innovations. We could this way build a very nice wikiprotoforge for organizing engineering laws, and with other improvements build a very nice wikicracy for organizing ans improving associations/groups/parties/countries democracy.

Vmandrilly 11:13, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

altbuzz

More than a vote away: article about the meaning of democracy

Other comments

Just a comment I previously put it in the document, but its place is probably here so I moved it:

The following is an essay on problems of actual representativity of our 'democratic' political systems.

Its analysis is one of the reason I started this wikicracy project, whose goal is to improve democratic process by allowing everyone to directly participate to the proposals and directly vote for those who will take the proposals into action:

• A group/a nation is more or less democratic than it is or not a democracy.

The problem is that the democracies are not at all democratic, in the sense that only a very small fraction of the people concerned by the decisions actually have their say: If members who elect people who vote for people who vote for proposals (as it is often the case in modern democracies), you may well in the end have a decision taken by people representing almost nothing. Example of a realistic (?) 'democracy' organization for a National vote:

• 20~30% of population is excluded (young under the age, old people or handicap people who cannot easily go to the place to vote, people who didn't get enrolled on the lists on time, etc).
• 5~10% of vote casted are refused (white papers, 2 papers, mistakes in filling the form, etc)
• For a close election between 2 candidates, with a win by 55% of votes, it means 45% of the votes are lost and are not represented. (ans this only applies when we can choose only between 2 candidates)
• Then the people elected may vote for other people (nomination / indirect elections) : again, part of the votes are lost.
• Then a small part of elected people work on proposals, and those people may not all agree about how to write the proposal.
• Then on the final vote, same : votes of the loosing party are not considered.

In the end, even if the people elected represented exactly the point of view of all issues from those who chooses them, only a very very small part of the population's point of view is respected.(People have no other choice than to go through other channels to have their say: writing articles on newspapers, manifesting, put pressure on representatives, lobbing, engaging in associations and so on)

---

A little thanks for the little corrections that have been made lately to the page. 219.137.140.151 02:35, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem of voting

The voting system used on Wikimedia is fine for its intended contexts, but for governmental election, it does not necessarily represent the whole population. Simply a list of names in support of a candidate is an inefficient ballot. Also, how would one regulate botnet usage to pad votes, or votes from outside the country (IP addresses are not enough). Nor can ballot anonymity be balanced with the spirit of Wiki. One must place identity along with ones vote. Now then, let's not get overzealous with Wiki ideals and utopian visions. I can see this being useful with lesser importances, such as ordinances. On that note, I must confess a Libertarian standpoint and a wish for less legislation; rather than more.

Also note that our current population, unwilling insofar to even watch conventional mass media, may choose to remain uninformed and technologically illiterate. This is, of course, and issue outside of the current proposal, yet deeply linked and requiring resolution prior to serious considerations of large-scale governmental Wiki usage. --69.106.74.141 05:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Before taking the idea to the complexity of a national consideration and before someone tries to apply the concept to lawmaking, I think we shall first think on how to make a wikiocracy tool an efficient tool for decision making within a small organization / association. And only if we can succeed on simple things shall we continue to develop the tool to adapt it for medium organizations, and then for cities / region / states...

You have a point about the legislation stuff. Past decisions may become outdated with time. We could address this issue by asking people who make the proposals to indicate a deadline or under which circumstances the issue is considered solved. When a decision is taken, the decision will be listed in a special page that lists all decision actives or in process of being implemented, and when the decision has been achieved (success or failure - a proposition was to have a tab to evaluate the implementation of the decision by the people elected for this mission) or deadline expired, it shall be deleted from the list of current decisions (and be archived) Vmandrilly 14:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Your project is great, except about voting. The problem is that the only levels where this kind of voting might work are the levels where Internet is not needed (family, for example). At higher levels, Internet voting simply cannot work for the following reasons:

• to be meaningful, voting should involve many people, but:
• only people with Internet would be able to vote
• it seems difficult to check that nobody votes several times
• millions of decisions are taken each year in a country. It is not feasible that everybody votes for every decision: each vote can only involve few people, and it is therefore unlikely that votes can be meaningful.

But, actually, voting is a very small part of decision-making. Decision-making is in two phases: the definition of the issue and of possible choices (with arguments), and the choice itself. The first part is much more difficult (but it is the most important one). A well organized Internet site is very helpful for involving everybody. Generally speaking, for almost all issues, there is some solution acceptable to everybody, the problem is to find it. This is possible if everybody can propose their original ideas (and arguments), and if all that is stored in the right way, and can be read and completed by everybody. I've already developed a tool dedicated to that (and my municipality is willing to adopt it, but they lack time...). It's not a wiki, because I think that a wiki is not the most appropriate tool (except, maybe, for countries or very, very large towns). But why not trying a wiki nonetheless? You may have a look at my user page to understand better which problems I want to solve. Lmaltier 17:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• "only people with Internet would be able to vote". Exact. But I bet that it is now easier to find a computer with internet access than go to the specified place for a meeting, that could be far away in the same city, or worse, in a city in another province or another country (for regional/national/international meetings)...
• "it seems difficult to check that nobody votes several times". No, it is possible. Even on large scale national elections and despites all the dangers and oposing interests, several countries organize internet voting. If you can secure a financial transaction over internet, then you can secure a vote over internet.
• "It is not feasible that everybody votes for every decision". Exact, and we got to find a inovative way to solve this issue. It should be feasible that everybody can votes on decisions they have shown interest in. If you participate in such or such association, then you will want to vote on this association decisions. If you don't care, you just don't ask for the right to vote on all or part of the issues you are not interested in. The admin could classify decisions into big categories and let user chooses which categories he wants to vote or not to vote. The set of decisions voted could then be summarized and given a general approval vote by categories.
• Challenge of developping such a tool are such that it may or may not take the form of a wiki to make it efficient, but wiki is the most advanced tool I found on the net for now as inspiration for this tool. I can't wait to see your PHP / MySQL software or at least it's detailed description :-) Vmandrilly 03:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

The only way I can think of to totally break the mold that WMF wikis have relied on in the past and that is for users to manage what really could and should be coded into the software. WMF wikis are the only widescale systems to rely on the software to do nothing more than provide text in and out of a database. Really the only way you can stop dup voting is to have some kind of personally identifiable information, for instance a credit card. A credit card is nearly everyone has and is fairly difficult to spoof. This would require working with credit card companies and maybe placing a charge of $0.01 or something like that that is refundable. Ebay currently uses credit cards for registration of new user accounts. --Nn123645 12:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

There are only a few countries where "nearly everyone" has a credit card. Beyond that, many people are uncomfortable entering their credit card into into websites as many fraud sites will claim not to charge you but do so anyways. Also, bad people have easy access to large lists of stolen credit cards and if a card is just needed for ID purposes no one will know that you are abusing it, the ID system could even be used to validate stolen cards. I sympathize with the desire but this is not a great idea. --Gmaxwell 13:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Structured debate

There are obvious advantages of structured debate, where every comment is based on logic and facts, over free debate. Is there a way to make sure posters abide by the rules of structured debate?77.49.58.27 13:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Rubrics

I'm thinking that rubrics[1] could be a useful tool to help voters decide what to vote, much like they are useful to teachers in grading exam papers. 77.49.239.15 14:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Join with Metagovernment?

Projects about collective governance come and go. But through it all has been the Metagovernment, which appears to be getting closer and closer to making it a reality. People interested in the nebulous concepts described in other projects should check out the concrete work being done by the collective wisdom of the members of metagovernment.

StringFunctions

What is the way to follow for having "$wgPFEnableStringFunctions = true;" in LocalSettings.php as explained in mw:Extension:StringFunctions. Who could do that ? To who should we ask ? Thanks. Please answer on my Esperanto talk page --Arno Lagrange ✉ 09:18, 4 March 2011 (UTC) Bonan tagon, mi pensas ke tio, ne estas la bonan retpago por via problemo.

Wikicracy vs Crowdcracy

I don't think Wikicracy is the successor of the democracy. I'd rather think that the democracy can evolve to a crowdcracy. A crowdcracy would be a system based on a democratic system that incorporates the concept of crowdsourcing. So there are still elections and elected people is still engaged to submit new laws. But any citizen can also submit law proposals. The submitted law proposal is first reviewed by a small group of elected people. If the proposal is valid, it is submitted to the government.

The idea is that in a country, there is always a person that is in the right place at the right time and this person is not always an elected person. So most of the good ideas are lost whereas someone will notice that a road is badly brightened, the garbage truck rounds can be shortened... etc Nowadays, the single way to submit a law is a petition which is too much binding and requires the motivation of too many persons at a time.

The government can approve, reject or modify the proposal. If the government reject, it should be justified. Citizen proposals can't concern any type of law. It can't apply to regulations (increasing or reducing taxes...) and all the expenses should be balanced. Little by little, the elected person is less and less a law maker and more and more an administrator. Ftiercel (talk) 17:19, 13 September 2015 (UTC)