Since Canned Beer
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pol•i•tics |
plural noun [usu. treated as sing.]
the activities associated with the governance of a country or other
area, esp. the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having
or hoping to achieve power. |
Good technology can't salvage bad politics, but bad
tech can sink good politics. Make no mistake, the Since Sliced
Bread Idea Contest is politics disguised as a contest, and
it's being
pilloried by disaffected members due to a technical constraint. Last
time I suggested that the SSB web service had no mechanism
for the community's members to collectively filter 22,000 ideas down to
the 70 semi-final candidates which the members would vote on. This
seems backwards. The system assigned the big job to a "panel of
experts" while the smaller job was assigned to a the whole community.
So it couldn't be transparent and it had to be arbitrary.
Data point: a little digging revealed that about 14% of
complainers made 75% of the complaints. The SSB site has no way to
depict the disenchanted commenters vs. the ones who are not
complaining. So the dialogue is based on the sentiment of the
complainers, not on their voting power. If the site provided an
immediate way to put up an issue and vote on it, then someone,
including the staff, would have "called the question" as soon as the
sayers started naying. If the site were able to generate voting
analysis in real time, here's what the members could see:
Please rate the SEIU on how it
has handled the SSB Process
(21,632 responses so far: 82% of all members)
It's probable that this
capability would have moderated the dialogue if it were made available
early in the disenchantment phase*. The example here assumes that most
people are reasonable and temperate in their views (now that is
a premise deserving a real-world test). It depicts 25% of the
respondents rating the process below 50%. In fact, the SSB "outcry"
came from fewer respondents.
*Disenchantment Phase:
every project plan should include this one.
Another moderating influence
is to aggregate all commenters' posts and comments together so that
each person has to own his own words. I learned that one of the more
vocal complainer's idea was to force all women to wear chastity belts.
I'm not suggesting an ad
hominem policy, but c'mon...
Mooting the Outcry
The best way to avoid unrest
is to not give people a reason for dissatisfaction. The answer for the
SSB contest was to do what Zephyr
Teachout suggested:
If SEIU
actually wanted new, worthwhile ideas it would have structured the
contest differently. There would have been much more filtering on the
way up, much more asked for than 175 words, and more structured
opportunity for collaboration.
So we have a design opportunity. This is where most people's
eyes glaze over, but it's the real work of government by the people.
Until there's a system out there that offers the technical means to
avoid community disappointment, everybody will continue to believe that
the problem with democracy is the users, not the user interface.
SSB v. 2.0?
OK, how might the process be improved? Let's list the
requirements for the system to be
transparent and scalable. The first is a policy decision. All the
rest are technical requirements of the hosting web service.
The Policy Requirement:
Trust
Micah Sifry
says that trusting your members is like falling face first into the
mosh pit.
That's almost impossible for current politicians and labor leaders, but
trusting the members is the needle's eye that every big-time camel
needs to thread. Leadership now can engage two extremes in policy
formulation:
- Depend on a small group of expensive and career-minded
executives and advisors.
– or –
- a] Let all members reason and argue together
b] Deputize their thought leaders to forge sentiment into explicit
policies
Approach 2 has not been possible before without building a
serious web wervice from scratch. That's what our team is doing right
now, so I understand why most enterprises don't try it. But approach 2
promises to put the leaders in
front of a huge, previously unimaginable parade – one with a
general consensus on direction but uncertain routing.
It's a chance to lead an army rather than an executive
committee. Some leaders will be galvanized by the prospect.
7 Technical Requirements for Rating Members' Contributions
(including ideas):
- All members get their own blog (idea description area)
- Comments on posts (ideas) may be entered by registered
members only
- Comments on any post are also entered on the commenter's
blog as a primary post
(Commenters own all their opinions, forever)
- Every post can be quickly rated by a graphical slider
- No one can rate any entry twice, but can change their rating
- Ratings generate a text comment and the standard trackback
entry at the rater's blog
("bblaser rated this post 88%")
- Like Slashdot, every member can set the minimum quality of
entries she will be exposed to
9 Technical Requirements for turning viral conversations into
Policy:
- Encourage members to create as many individual discussion
groups as they like
- Groups have a shared blog
- Support private, unmoderated group intranets (clean room mode)
- Support public free-for-all group blogs (anarchy mode)
- Support public blogs with designated contributors (performance art
mode, like BoingBoing, Corante, etc.)
- Provide a means to convert a group from one mode to another
- Switch from anarchy to performance art when the
conversation's leaders emerge, based on peer ratings
- The new discussion leaders develop specific policy
solutions, calling on experts as required
- The members continue to vote and comment and nag and make
suggestions
Reboot?
When such a system is available (announcement sooooon),
the SEIU could conceivably ask everybody back to the table for the meat
course. And that
might be the best idea since sliced bread.
2:58:52 PM 
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