[MG] Minimal start plan - inter-community network

[Alexander Praetorius]

The tools are not used in practice yet, so we have to figure out the
barriers that prevent people or communities from using the tools. The
solution or action we want is to remove those barriers so that the tools
will be used by other people or communities to discuss and solve their
problems.

"Discussion happens where a problem needs to be solved."

=> We need a problem to be solved. => We Discuss => We are a perfect target
community for our software.

How many people are on this mailinglist? How many do participate?
What prevents most of metagovernment community members from being more
active? What would prevent my grandma from using our tools if she would like
to participate? ...where do I formulate this issues? How can anyone who is
new to metagovernment.org get an overview about all the active issues? How
can I cast a vote for something? How can we prevent people from becoming
confused by the tool itself?

We can make proposals on what to do via the mailinlist, ..but could we make
the same proposals via a tool? Will people respond to it with the same
attention they give issues in the mailinglist?
Maybe they wont... but why?

We can optimize the tool if we start using it for all discussion related to
the improvement of our tools.

-----Original Message-----
From: start-bounces at metagovernment.org
[mailto:start-bounces at metagovernment.org] On Behalf Of conseo
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:10 PM
To: Metagovernment Project
Subject: Re: [MG] Minimal start plan - inter-community network

 On Fri, 20 May 2011 19:55:59 -0400, Michael Allan wrote:
> So this is my own plan, or the first part of it:
>
> ARGUMENT
>
> Consensus making only happens in communities of discussion.  The
> success of the effort (I assume) is strongly correlated with
> communicative competence.  Therefore the first successful attempt is
> likely to occur in a community of exceptional competence.  But it is
> difficult to create any community from scratch, never mind an
> exceptionally competent one.  Therefore success is most likely to
> occur in a community that is already well established.  In other
> words, the success of the effort depends on the prior success of the
> community.  It follows that we must develop our stuff for the express
> purpose of seeding a consensus making effort in one or more 
> successful
> communities.
>
> However, it seems unlikely that a single community could ever sustain
> a discussion for long enough to demonstrate a consensus.  Discussions
> tend to occur in topical bursts at unpredictable intervals.  When it
> happens that the talk subsides, it will appear that the effort has
> been a failure.  From this we may conclude that a successful attempt
> must extend across many communities.  When the talk has died out in
> one community, it will be picked up another, and only later will it
> return over the same ground.  In this way the overall thread of
> discussion may be kept alive, even while parts of it appear to die.
> (In fact, they would merely go underground like the rhizome of a 
> plant
> spread laterally, and surfacing here and there.)  When people see
> this, they will know that a consensus is still possibile.  They will
> only judge the overall effort a failure if it dies out in all
> communities; otherwise they will remain hopeful and renew their own
> efforts.
>
> Is there a flaw in this argument?  If not, I can suggest what it 
> might
> take to get a "rhizome" growing.

 I think this is valid and gives a good idea of what is really needed to
 exploit the new perspectives of e-democracy. Bridging all kind of 
 related
 communities is the only way. But I am not sure if the analytical and
 abstract method is necessarily the best. Maybe it would help to become
 political in some way. I am thinking of taking some (global or large 
 scale)
 issue and then bring our tools to groups who try to follow a similiar 
 plan
 and act(!). Discussion happens where a problem needs to be solved. Of 
 course,
 we can also target philosophical/academical discussions, but I doubt 
 that
 consensus is really the goal there and no action is ever needed if you 
 are
 a professional for theory. Ideas about issues would be environmental 
 ones,
 like (most prominent everywhere) climate change. What do you think?

 conseo


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Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
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