Why vote mirroring?

[Michael Allan]

conseo wrote:
> schrieb Michael Allan:
> > ... http://blog.hyperarchy.com/
> 
> ... You are right, that vote mirroring helps us to attract their
> users in our open and free common place, but we should wait until
> something serious happens there. People in e- dem might be
> early-adopters, but they get frustrated quickly when nothing comes
> out of their engagement or their decisions are simply ignored (which
> is true for all of these political marketing platforms.) Even for
> the fiscal debate only 67 people dragged and dropped the predefined
> answers into place. Or am I missing something? ...
> 
> ... vote-mirroring only makes sense once they have a seriously
> engaged voter base and we can offer them more functionality then
> they get there. Atm. our functionality is still in the transition
> towards the working Crossforum UI and the resource integration,
> which is imo absolutely mandatory before reaching out for
> users. Vote-mirroring will then do the work for us :-D (It is really
> smart understanding of how e-dem is about to work and how it is
> supposed to be open, where traditional business tries to lock its
> users in).

You recommend waiting till the software is ready, but that doesn't
address the two biggest risks we face as a development project:

  1. We are developing the wrong software.  We are unfamiliar with our
     users.  We have no clear understanding of what practices they are
     engaged in, or how our software can be of immediate utility.

  2. Online voting is about to take off.  It won't be Votorola that
     succeeds or any project that is geared toward user freedom.
     Instead it will be a monopoly that fences off its users and
     exploits them for private gain.  Other projects will be sidelined
     and abandoned in a general stampede to the winner.

These are the risks.  Thomas's idea of vote mirroring is the answer to
both.  It tells us that our users are going to be candidates engaged
in campaigning across multiple, competing vote-servers.  They'll be
hoping to pull voters away and improve their standing in the polls.
(Now we know what software to develop, and for what purpose.)

By the same token, these practices and our efforts to further them
will preclude the formation of a monopoly in voting services. (Now
we'll have a fair chance to develop that software.) *

 * If anyone doubts that vote-mirroring and cross-server campaigning
   can have this effect, please see my challenge to the experts:
   http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2011-July/024104.html

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/