Mapping

[Friedrich Lindenberg]

Ok, so I really don't want the resident pessimist on this list and
thus will try to contribute something constructive here. I would like
to start a discussion regarding a common definition of what we're
doing and the relevant entities in that discussion. This is in many
ways a continuation of what we discussed during the BarCamp. I'll use
V for Votorola, A for Adhocracy and LF for LiquidFeedback as well as
DP for the concept promoted by Liquid Democracy e.V.

- We're working on systems in which users discuss Proposals to solve a
Problem. Proposals are either free-form text (V, LF) or structured
Text (A). They're either part of a closed group of proposals regarding
the same issue (LF), of a non-strict grouping (A) or they're organized
in a tree (V). We can call these groups Issues, except for V.

- Proposals are either subject to a Discussion based on formalized
suggestions (LF), comments (A) or different versions of the same text
(V). In A & LF, any user can propose many Proposals, while in V a user
can only have one Proposal per topic (afaik).

- Negotiation happens either as an open primary voting process (LF) or
via a discussion based on a difference engine (V) or via group
membership (DP).

- Discussion is either considered part of a future component (V), the
core system (A) or to be outside of the scope of the project (LF).

- Delegations can either be given to a user regarding a certain scope.
In A & LF these include issues and the categories (areas, LF) that
issues are stored in. In V & A users can delegate on specific
Proposals (in V delegation is for the proposal AS the user's position,
in A delegation is for the users's position REGARDING the proposal).

- Delegations are used either in Voting (LF, A, DP) or Negotiation
(LF, V, DP?).

- Voting takes place either using preference ranking (LF) or majority
voting (A). LF uses terminated, partially secret voting while A uses
continuous and public voting.

- Authorization regarding Proposal editing is either based on group
membership (LF) or a meritocratic authorization mechanism (A) or it is
fully open (V). DP seems to do this based on open, but mutually
exclusive groups.

- Proposals are subject either to a timed process (LF, DP),
spontaneous state changes (A) or an un-timed development process (V).

I hope this is an acceptable characterization for all involved
parties. The first possible mapping that pops up here are, of course,
Proposals. In their case, mapping different addressing schemes may be
valuable, although mapping of the actual proposals will be hard to do
because of the different context in which they are understood in each
system. Beyond that, I'm unsure.

hth, Friedrich

-- 
Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich at pudo.org>