Feature set for an open-source political toolkit

[Michael]

Here's a place to start assembling notions of what might reasonably be a set of organizational tools for political activity. Many of them probably already exist, but I hope this will be more of a theoretical discussion at this point. Let's assume all the software already exists -- what are our requirements?

I'll start:

- Deliberative framework. I see this as a very complex tool, but one which could be used in very simple default modes. Its purpose would be to come up with policy or an agenda, and it should capture the entire thinking of the community while doing so. It might allow voting on specific points of contention, with a sort of a polling mechanism that would allow "minority opinions" to be preserved in the record. If statements of fact were included to back a position, there should be a transparent mechanism to mark those statements, state them clearly and unambiguously in a context divorced from the debate at hand, and investigate whether they were true or not. Truth is important.

- Task force organization tool. This would be a sort of central point for researching an issue and recommending policy; it would include the deliberation tool for the latter.

- Action group organization tool. An action group is formed to carry out policy, once decided. Its organization is a workflow kind of thing.

- News tracker/organizer. Without knowing what's happening, you can't make policy. This would include some kind of registry of notable people and organizations -- sort of a who's who in the news and in a given issue area that could quickly be consulted, for people who need a Cliff Notes presentation.

Anybody have additional thoughts on this or suggestions for other types of tool? Sky's the limit. Don't be bogged down by what already exists -- although if you know of anything, feel free to provide references.

[Ed]

I'm not its software tools that we need, for a few reasons. Firstly, take a look at what Laissez-Faire City turned into once it turned in the direction of being a provider of software tools for freedom. Additionally, we're not an unheard voice because we lack technology. Finally, check out what the Ron Paul people have done in a decentralized and highly effective manner. They didn't need to write their own custom software to do it.

I agree that we need a platform probably bigger than what can be provided here, but if any single person spends more than 2 hours trying to set up some tool, let alone writing one from scratch, its a complete waste of time. Take a look at a good Drupal installation, for an organizing tool, or some flavor of wiki, for a document (platform) generation tool. The point is, we have all the tools we'll ever need. We just need to a) use them and b) find and connect with others who share similar ideas. We have maybe a process problem to work out, certainly not a technology problem. its all there and its all free.

I'd like to really believe that Ron Paul will be president. It simply isn't possible with the way this country operates (but it won't stop me from sending money to his campaign again this week). I think we need to recognize that what this forum is trying to accomplish isn't that far off from what the Paul people want. Given that, we should probably put ourselves in a position to harness that energy, either in preparation for a third party run for him, or as a means to organize some of his activists into a longer term campaign for liberty.

I was at the Ron Paul rally in Philadelphia that reportedly drew 5,000 people back in November. Being a long-term Libertarian means going to a lot of meetings that, on a good day, will draw 12 people. Going to that and seeing those crowds cheer and holler for a pro-freedom/anti-war agenda really drove home the notion that there are in fact plenty of people out there who feel the same way I do about things.

I don't want to start a Ron Paul thread here, but his campaign shows what kind of grass roots support there is out there that can be harnessed in a decentralized manner for the cause of freedom.

I'm using a really scaled down drupal installation here, but trust me, there are tons of modules that can be easily installed to turn it into just about anything:

http://freethoughtsociety.org/

[cRitter]

The "Deliberative Framework" should be at the top of our list, as nothing (to the best of my knowledge) exists in the open source domain for managing physical communities -- including the politics, the opinions, and the issues that matter most to a local area, what I've described elsewhere as a "Community Builder."

Other components of the Community Builder should rely on the open source or open API communities. Here are a few examples of the top of my head:

1. Elgg.org is an open source "social platform" that includes many popular features of social networking, including blogging, RSS feeds, profiles, and communities. Their code is still in point release, but the enthusiasm behind the project makes them well worth our time.

2. Drupal is one of the most popular open source CMS platforms on the net, but the only CMS to raise the bar on managing a diverse set of content on an extremely simplistic PHP framework. Many of the most popular grassroots political sites are built on Drupal (including the FreeThoughtSociety link below).

3. Pligg is the open source version of Digg, which includes the ability to recommend new articles and rate them thumbs up or thumbs down. Digg also has a set of API tools which are currently being used by the WSJ and Sony (if I remember correctly).

4. MediaWiki is the easiest to install, most recognizable Wiki of them all (thanks to Wikipedia). I do have some reservations as it takes a slight education to understand how to "code" entries into the Wiki, but then again, there should probably be some learning curve before new users jump right in.

In addition to these downloaded tools, there are a number of online tools that both connect to and enhance the capabilities of existing websites, similar to the Digg API. The only one coming to mind is MeetUp, which has helped MoveOn and the the plethora of Ron Paul supporters .. err, Meet Up with one another en masse.

[Ed]

Those are all great recommendations. I guess the long and short of it is, imho, we should probably just go with a shotgun approach. If in the early phases enough articles get written and posted to a diverse number of places, either word will spread or it won't.

You know, i see these ads occassionally about "how to make a viral video"... as in a viral video can be "made" on purpose. I think a political movement is similar. If a few people come together and voice an opinion and it has resonance, it'll spread. If it, it's certainly an interesting intellectual exercise.

[Michael]

Shotgun is always better! The key is to slap something together from a more-or-less mature group (e.g. MediaWiki), let the community start hammering on it, be sure to back up your data early and often, and add or change features as the community starts seeing needs.

[Ed]

yeah, from the reading i've done, MediWiki seems the best out there. I don't have any experience with it under the hood but it seems like it certainly has a good community behind it.

[Michael]

On Wiki-ing -- a more refined way of dealing with content could easily include an enhanced workflow for people not too comfortable with doing their own code. If somebody can type at all, they could flag their submission for editing by the more code-savvy, who'd be notified immediately and could format things better. One of the frustrating things about Wikis -- and don't get me wrong, I love them -- is their simplistic editing model.

It's one of the problems with WikiPedia, to be perfectly honest.

A deliberative framework approach would work here, too. I'll draw up some more concrete notions (and find those old notes), because I agree -- it doesn't exist, and I've been thinking about it for a long time. Time to get started on it.

Is your Dayton project more or less a Community Builder? Can I see your requirements? Was that an open-source project or is it owned by Dayton, or what?

[cRitter]

I still have the product requirements and the supporting wireframes from my Dayton project, but those differ greatly from the ultimate goal of a "Community Builder." I would feel much more comfortable working with a Project Manager on a more appropriate set of requirements, and developing a new set of wireframes from there.

To that end, we might want to set up a managed project through Zoho in order to pin down the requirements of what exactly we're looking for. I have more than my fair share of ideas, many of which are summarized by the Collaborate Democracy website, but I would hate to steal the ball and run in the opposite direction!

[Michael]

The thing I find off-putting about the Collaborative Democracy site is his loyalty pledge. "All citizens shall be loyal to their government above all other affiliations." Sorry, that scares me. Also, the "10 Commandments of Civilization". It's all too heel-clicking for my taste. Might be nice ideas, I don't know. Just not my cuppa, as far as community goes.

I'd rather keep the project planning on the Wiki, actually -- although if you want more structure, we can look at more structured ways of going about things.

[Michael]

Well, whaddaya know? There's already a Drupal extension that embeds Drupal into an existing MediaWiki installation. It doesn't do all of what I want -- yet. It doesn't appear to use the same userbase, for instance. Yet.

[Sedicious]

I'm not sure it's clear to people, here, what you're trying to do now. You say it's "for political activity", but nothing more specific. Well, there are a lot of different kinds of political activity...

It seems to me that there are at least two different kinds which need to be clearly distinguished:

Public comment and deliberation

A forum to be hosted and maintained by a legislative or official executive body or representative, to bring legislation or policy development online.

Political action collaboration

A workspace to be hosted by a party, PAC, or other private interest group, for development of positions and tactics, and coordination of efforts and resources.

Do you know which you're trying to do?

[Michael]

Both, clearly. Why should a toolset be restricted to only half of politics? Each of these situations can be seen as a possible configuration of the same set of tools.

This is a useful distinction you're making, too. In the first, the public is commenting on a set of policy over which it has no direct control. Comments will be read by a moderator, and changes may or may not be made, manually, to the object of deliberation (which is presumably either the policy of the official group or person, or the legislation in which that person is involved. Drafts will probably not be made public, or if they are, it will be infrequently, as tightly controlled versions of given documents.) The public is commenting, but the deliberation is actually in a smaller group.

In the second situation, control is vested in this online deliberation process, and the deliberation component, to me, is thus truly public. There must be a mechanism for changes to be proposed by the userbase, and for those changes to be incorporated into the "positions and tactics" being evolved. So as a deliberation context, this situation is more complicated, which makes it much more interesting.

We can also imagine there simply to have a group of editors to make the requested changes to the object of deliberation -- then they carry out changes that are approved or rejected by the body at large. Something along those lines. But the crucial difference between your two situations is where control lies -- with the public/membership, or with the "owner". I have to think of better terminology.

Coordination of efforts and resources in the second situation is a separate segment of the toolset (falls roughly under "task force organization" in my list above) and it's basically just workflow. I know workflow.

Thanks for your contribution! It's hard to get people to think about the structure of political processes.