Seeing the differences among position drafts

[Michael Allan]

Hi David,

I followed your links.  It's nice that the structured input ("edit
with form") and diagrammatic output (#ask, format=graph) are
integrated so neatly.  I haven't played with those parts, before.

We're actually planning to add Semantic MediaWiki to the pollwiki.  We
need it for:

  1. List views and so forth, based on properties (as you say).

     This is the most immediate need.

  2. Pulling data into the pollserver from the pollwiki.  So voter
     registration data (name, address, and so forth) can be entered on
     the voter's userpage; poll metadata (title, issue, description)
     can be maintained on the poll page; and so forth.

     So we save needlessly coding a UI for all of this data entry, and
     instead just pull it via RDF.

  3. Other stuff, we haven't thought of yet...

> ... templates (which are strongly recommended to be used in any case
> over tables for repetitive content).

(I agree.  We should replace our poll/position summary tables with
 template calls.)
 
> ... It could be used for annotation of text, however I would today
> think that the user's own comment text (I support this because...),
> followed by an actionable statement ([[supports::Budget increase for
> daycare services]]) might be a more practical way. Please take a
> look at http://www.discoursedb.org, a SMW site, for a structured
> example.

This is interesting and maybe an opportunity.  I see two approaches:

(A) We follow their example, and add their structural components to
our pollwiki.

(B) We offer them our own structural components.  So they add the
following as backbone for their discussions:

   i) Voting controls (vote for an act)
  ii) Results views (see how others are voting)
 iii) Textual diffs of positions (the stuff to discuss and debate)
  iv) Relations among positions (tree structures of vote flow, text flow)

Do I understand correctly?  Which approach seems better, A or B?

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
Skype michael_c_allan
http://zelea.com/