[MG] Tunisia and activism in general

[Alexander Praetorius]

"As I have already said in the Spigit example, the most relevant thing is to
have content. Content is king."

Thats a wish. Combine that wish with a plan to make it happen so it can
become a goal. (writing to people in tunesia sounds daring, but maybe it
might work? ...but I doubt it)

"You have mentioned viral marketing, but "viral" means nothing else but
socially propagating content. This will happen if we can get people excited
about what we do,..."

Yes, thats true. ...so how do we do it?
You say that screenshots will not do it...
...what might do it is the dissemination of the concept behind the tool. how
to use the tool and in what ways and for which reasons...

"You need to be able to point them to an existing community to explore it."
You don't need to do that. Just integrate some kind of "FEEDBACK"-Button
where real users might complain about the software and maybe integrate a
"Support-Forum-Button" into the tools that link to a metagovernment-wiki or
whatsoever.

Instead of a complicated frontend, there is need for an interface that
allows users to explore the tool by themselves. there must be plenty of
hints and they should not look ambiguous.


We don't need screenshots or videos of the tool in action... we need videos
or articles and stuff like that about the concept behind the tool and how
thing work. In such articles or videos you use a specific naming. The
frontend of the actual program has to stick to that naming so the users can
recognize all the elements of the concept within the software tool.


"The concepts are far too complex to understand in a quick screencast imo."

If that is true, your tools are worthless.
Dont explain the software architecture. Explain the concepts from a users
perspective.
What kind of actions is he able to execute while using the tool and which
user needs do they fullfill.


"What would help us much more imo, is some community which has serious
content/resources to manage and wants to do that in a consensus based way or
even only wants to loosely connect with another community in common
positions. "

You will never get one at  the moment, i guess.
I tried to talk the german ngo "Mehr Demokratie e.V." into using "Votorola",
but it was hopeless.
People just did not understand how to use the tool. They did not get the
concept and the user interface does not promote exploration by the user.
There also is no "wizard" that guides you through all the options that you
could possibly choose while you use the tool.

It is absolutely essential to explain the concepts behind votorola or other
tools supported by metagovernment to potential users, because if they dont
get the concept and the benefits it might give them, they wont use the tool.

"already a web-interface, have a look at
Adhocracy/LiquidFeedback/Vilfredo... to get a nice-to-show-off dedicated
solution. "

I know, but the concept of votorola is different and i dont think we need
fancy interfaces that look nice, we need functional interfaces. we need
visualizations which convey the concept behind the tool.

Maybe the software and the frontend is constantly changing, but the concept
in its core does not change or only in very rare cases. So i think it should
be possible to come up with intuitive names for all aspects of the concept
and explain them. The frontend in return has to stick to the chosen naming,
and every button or element with a name that is not part of the fundamental
concept should be removed from the frontend.

For example, look at "adhocracy". There are many groups that already
registered accounts and use adhocracy. (http://www.liqd.net/instance)
So, a good starting point would be to allow people to register accounts for
their social group to start discussing their problems.
Why do people jump to "adhocracy", register an account and start to use it?
Becasue of viral marketing... and why does it happen? Because the frontend
tries to be self-explanatory.

Using adhoracy can be frustrating too, because the concept behind adhocracy
might not be perfect and people might not know how to use it in the right
way or how the process of finding a solution actually works... but the
interface of adhocracy promots user exploration.

--
Alexander Praetorius

-----Original Message-----
From: conseo [mailto:4consensus at web.de] 
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 6:19 PM
To: alex at twister11.de; Metagovernment Project
Subject: Re: [MG] Tunisia and activism in general

Hi,

> Describing use cases is a nice thing to start with, but it also should be
> illustrated using some pictures which visualize the described process.
> I think the use case that is chosen
> (http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Crossforum) is improvable ;)
> It just doesn't make sense to the average person. You need examples that
> might be relevant to the average person.
> 
> So instead of talking about poll Y or poll Z or whatever...
> ...it might be better to find examples that make sense to the average
> person and that shows all the functionality of the solution that is being
> exemplified.
> 
> I believe  the average person is not good in deriving an interesting
> particular case from the general one, but I believe the average person is
> much more skilled in deriving an intuitive general concept from a
> particular case of interest.
> 
> After this intuitive concept is acquired, it is much easier for the
average
> person to transfer this knowledge to other particular cases of interest.
> 

Hmm, honestly there is no such thing as an average person. Even if the
concept 
of consensus building is universal, I don't think it is likely that we will
be 
able to address some random youtube/facebook/... user for the beginning. I 
don't have anything against improving the reachability of our projects and 
concepts and I'd really appreciate if you would do so Alex, but my
perspective 
was a bit more focused. Showcases also might get very quickly outdated when
we 
change the integration with current web platforms in the near future.

As I have already said in the Spigit example, the most relevant thing is to 
have content. Content is king. On current social web platforms you usually 
have already ways to rate content and users and they are well integrated. It

is no so likely that youtube-/facebook-content is interesting for building 
polls/positions around of it (although I'd like to target media stuff as
well 
with Votorola later on). It simply is not worth the time, since these media 
are quick-post/quick-forget aka. cheap and dumb content. They will recognize

us as simply some more advertisement for some new web 2.0 product when we
post 
there and they will very likely neither take the time to understand the 
concepts nor even try to use them on platforms like this.  You have
mentioned 
viral marketing, but "viral" means nothing else but socially propagating 
content. This will happen if we can get people excited about what we do, but

not by some screenshots. You need to be able to point them to an existing 
community to explore it. The concepts are far too complex to understand in a

quick screencast imo. If you can come up with a good example though, it
might 
help in showing already interested persons a place to start, which would be 
likely very helpful. But don't try to get into the details like a polished 
interface too much yet.

What would help us much more imo, is some community which has serious 
content/resources to manage and wants to do that in a consensus based way or

even only wants to loosely connect with another community in common
positions. 
Many people don't even see the reasoning of building consensus when you can 
also make a quick compromise by majority building or even simply stick to 
their camp for example. So instead of explaining why they should use our 
software, I think it would be better to go to people who already thirst for 
proper tools to act consensus-based. Tunesia is maybe the best example atm. 
They have very serious content to manage including economic structures.
Just improving our tools for an average user will only create an UI and 
integrational features which we project into an "average" user, but is not 
really seriously founded by any experience or application. And we really 
pioneer here, not only in e-dem, but in general in the future integration of

an open-web. Most projects involved in metagov have already a web-interface,

have a look at Adhocracy/LiquidFeedback/Vilfredo... to get a
nice-to-show-off 
dedicated solution. But Votorola or in general the cross-forum approach has 
further-reaching needs and tries to plug-in whereever possible. 
Therefore Michael has already pointed out that for him atm. the most
important 
thing is to find some people who want to integrate the tools into their
setup 
(which ideally does not need them to change any of their tools). And to do 
that we obviously need people helping us with telling us what they need and 
where they need what integrated. We cannot answer that in the first place
and 
Michael's approach is the FOSS approach with release-early-release-often and

digest all feedback inbetween, which I also do prefer. We don't write a
whole 
new platform, but rather pieces to integrate current platforms with
Votorola, 
so you can only show that partially without a community. On the other hand 
once we can integrate it somewhere it would be awesome to document and
present 
that where ever possible.  So I think you are one-step further than our 
current status. Please don't conceive that as negative criticism, I'd rather

hope that you could help to integrate our approach somewhere first, before 
starting to lobby it. Any candidates?
If nobody opposes I will write messages to major parties/communities in 
Tunesia and see what happens. I will point them here.

> --
> Alexander Praetorius
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas von der Elbe [mailto:ThomasvonderElbe at gmx.de]
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 4:17 PM
> To: alex at twister11.de; Metagovernment Project
> Subject: Re: [MG] Tunisia and activism in general
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> (I haven't been active for a while, because I changed my pc from Windows
> XP to Linux/Ubuntu. What an adventure! Right now I feel, it was very
> much worth the effort. But in between I had some really doubtful
> moments! LOL ...)

Welcome in FOSS! It has taken me half a year to get a DSL connection running

when I first installed linux on my old-pc-router in 2002, but it was really 
worth it. Go to the Ubuntu forums or #ubuntu on freenode if you need help, 
they are really nice people and answer dumb questions as well. Most problems

are also quickly answered by Google of course.
Btw. I am now on #metagov and try to keep it active. I think I will register

it if you are ok with it? Ed any notes, you haven't answered to my last 
request on IRC?

conseo




Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org