[Ag Meinungsfindungstool] (SMVcon) Developers cooperating withAG Meinungsfindungstool

[marc]

Hi Michael,

You wrote:
> Frauke and Alex,
> Frauke said:
>> The first question must be: in which case is it necessary to bring
>> different tools together and why?
>> If you can answer this question, we can go on.

> We answered this already.  Cooperation is necessary in order to level
> the playing field among platforms, prevent the formation of a de-facto
> monopoly, and thus maintain the user's freedom of choice.  (See also
> the German translation below.)

Yes, most of AG MFT are on this track, therefore our work is mainly towards 
cooperation!

But I am currently more describing the position of the "Prototype Core Team" 
(PCT), that is part of the working group AG MFT.

> Alex said:
>> I'm ALL IN on (1), and I think that's what the "Ontology" is all
>> about. Its a way to map one plattform onto another, ... where
>> plattform is called a plugin when it comes to AG
>> Meinungsfindungstool.  But as mentioned in discussions way earlier,
>> these plugins do not necessarily plug into something, but instead
>> into each other, ...which means a plugin is just a plattform that
>> uses ontologies for "Vote mirroring" :-)

That is also my understanding.

The PCT don't want to encourage one special implementation. Instead we want 
to enable all participating implementations to collaborate. Indeed this 
needs an agreement on a common understanding of "something".

I would like to refer to this little "something" as the Common Discussion 
Standard (CDS). We want to describe the CDS with the help of an Ontologie to 
picture the "data" part and a Web API to cover the possible "workflows".

Finally the CDS is what enables plug-ins to plug into each other.

> Yes, it could be.  Let's see if the AGM engineers agree about (1) in
> regard to all platforms, including non-AGM platforms such as Votorola.
> Unfortunately they're confronted with a language barrier owing to my
> lack of German.  Here's a Google translation:
> [snipped]
> I hope that makes sense.  If not, please correct the translation
> errors.  Here's the original English:

> It's often difficult for competitors to understand each other. But we
> must be clear on this issue. A platform cannot succeed without users.
> There are two ways to obtain those users:
> (1) Eliminate the network effects between platforms, thus levelling
> the playing field and enabling the users to range freely from
> platform to platform.

That's what I think we would like to achieve. Even if there is no chance to 
eleminate the networking effects between individuals, the PCT focus more on 
the interchangeability of individual implementations.

> This is the right way.

To be honest, I don't know if this is the right way. But it's the only one I 
am aware of right now ;o)

> Let's wait for the answer, as cooperation necessarily depends on it.

I think most of the members of our working group AG MFT are towards (1).

At least the Prototype Core Team fully agrees. So far our solution is not to 
build yet another discussion/voting/collaboration/networking tool, but to 
define an environment where tools can plug in and share data and extend 
workflows. The working title for this is "d!sco" (Discussion Ontology) 
Framework.

The PCT don't care much about distinct methodologies of 
discussion/voting/collaboration/networking as far as they don't influence or 
concern the overall process of decision-making. The idea is to achieve an 
agreement between all participants on the Common Discussion Standard. This 
standard consists of an ontology and a web api to enable communication 
between all implementations.


Our goal is to enable cooperation by defining a standard. This is how the 
internet succeeds. Defining a standard that everyone can implement to gain 
benefit from it. The main benefit of CDS is to obtain users and to preserve 
data.


Does this make sense?

Cheers
Marc