[hackerspaces] Project for an effective debate on the internet with a new kind of moderation, contributions welcome!

[Edward L Platt]

Hi Julien!

Online deliberation is such an important topic! In fact, it's the subject
of my current phd research! I know of a few projects that have attempted to
improve online deliberation. There are many possible approaches, so you may
or may not find that one of these meets your needs, but they can all give
deep insight into online deliberation.

Discourse - a "civilized discourse construction kit" created by (among
others) Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow fame.
Loomio - forum software with built in voting and polling features
Wikum, Tilda, and PolicyKit - A collection of tools from Amy Zhang focused
on collaborative summarization and governance
Consider.it - deliberation software focused on pros/cons
Hypothes.is - social annotation software

And here's a link to some of the work I've been doing:
https://medium.com/@elplatt/building-consensus-through-deliberation-in-large-collaborations-organizations-and-cooperatives-79d28c3e3acc

Also, the project is no longer live, but Charlie DeTar's work on
Intertwinkles is very much worth reading:
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/91432

Bonne chance!
Ed



On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 5:16 PM Julien Rolland <
julien.rolland.tlse at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A few words of presentation first:
>
> In France (I hope my English will be good) during the lock down I saw a
> lot of beautiful projects emerge. I said to myself "And you? What could you
> do that would be useful? I'm a left-wing activist (humanist to simplify), a
> bit of a programmer, a bit of a statistician. I had an idea: how to solve
> the problem of debates on the Internet, so that they bring out the best and
> not the worst, and that they lead to concrete actions. Ambitious? Maybe,
> but on paper it works.
>
>
>
> Abstract:
>
> Debating on the internet is unproductive. Only the worst comes out (like
> the Q-Anon movement). To reappropriate this fabulous space a new form of
> efficient and democratic moderation must be put in place. It is also
> necessary that all of this be concretized IRL by acts. To achieve these
> objectives, I propose some ideas that can be freely taken up. The heart of
> the idea is to reuse the theories on the random casting of delegates for
> the purpose of moderation.
>
> The most difficult thing would not be to develop the application system,
> but to deploy it so that it is used on a massive scale. It won't solve the
> problems of fake news, but it could give us a kind of "safe place", where
> we can get information and debate in an efficient way.
>
>
>
> 1 - State of the debate on the internet:
>
> Debating on the internet has become impossible. The trolls, the fascist
> sphere… are too numerous. Algorithms often do their job badly and bring up
> the worst of the web. And even with good will, finding and debating
> intelligently on the internet seems to me impossible now.
>
> Today a certain form of moderation is used which doesn't suit me. It
> depends on the all-powerful moderator (or impotent depending on the
> platform). And it's not the best comments that surface but the most popular
> ones; the current algorithms make it seem like a vicious circle even if
> it's crap.
>
>
>
> This is my fourth writing of this presentation, not easy because the
> subject is complex. But I think the idea is beautiful. To answer the above
> problems, I found a pretty easy way to set up a new kind of
> forum/network/application that uses something that is more and more
> appreciated: the random draw.
>
> You could say that the goal is fourfold:
>
> 1 - To get rid of the trolls, fascists, conspirators (explaining why)
>
> 2 - Emphasize the quality of the remarks and not popularity
>
> 3 - The whole thing is completely democratic, self-managed.
>
> 4 - Getting things done IRL
>
> It is a tool. A tool that could be used by everyone for a lot of things.
> To plan actions of strikes. Debate on government policy. On how to make
> ecology. To even write a new constitution even with millions of people.
>
>
>
>
>
> 2 - The basic functioning:
>
>
>
> The functioning is complex to explain but quite simple to set up and use.
> In my opinion it also seems powerful to achieve these objectives. It
> doesn't matter whether there are 100 people to debate (it's already a lot)
> or millions. So far I haven't found anything equivalent on the web.
>
>
>
> 2a - Quality of the comments:
>
>
>
> I will take the example of a user who launches this 'application' for the
> first time (it can also be a website). He registers. He can read everything
> that has been posted. However. To post a comment, he will first be asked to
> vote for other comments. The revolutionary trick of this app is that he
> won't choose on which comment to vote, they will be drawn among the
> existing comments!
>
> The vote will not be 'yes or no' but on one (or more) scale. This first
> principle allows a comment to be judged on its quality and not its
> popularity. Indeed, it will be impossible to vote 'voluntarily' for a
> 'chosen' comment on which you already have a precise personal point of
> view. According to my statistical knowledge. About twenty votes per comment
> would be enough to have a reliable score of the quality of the comment.
>
>
>
> If we start from this figure of 20, it means that on average we would have
> to vote 20 times to comment once. So, we will have to limit the size of the
> comments a little bit, so that it is not too painful.  We can imagine an
> "abstract" system like we do in scientific papers: a short summary limited
> in characters sufficient to vote, and then we put as much as we want to
> develop.
>
>
>
> 2b - Democracy of votes:
>
>
>
> 20 votes in a row is too many, I think. It can be easily solved by also
> allowing to vote (always on randomly chosen texts) without commenting. From
> time to time. Almost like a game. But beware, our voting quota will be
> limited. Indeed, a user who spends his days on the web could vote 1000
> times in a clumsy way and bias the results. So I imagine a small algorithm
> that will give a big daily voting quota to a new (and active!) registrant,
> a quota that will decrease more and more with time. This is for the
> egalitarian and therefore democratic side of the application. [to be
> improved, but the idea is to have an egalitarian voting quota].
>
> The number of comments that a user will be able to submit to the vote
> during the week will also be limited, in order to take time for thinking
> and for other users to have time to vote on them (always by random). We can
> imagine that there is a kind of parallel forum that would be unlimited in
> comments but not submitted to the vote, to the referencing. (If a really
> good comment is posted in this section, anyone will be able to submit it to
> a copy/paste vote).
>
>
>
>
>
> 2c - Anti-troll:
>
>
>
> At this stage we have a democratic functioning that is supposed to bring
> out the good things. But if trolls arrive massively, everything collapses.
> That's where it becomes really interesting (and a bit complex). When we
> vote on a text (on a scale), we can also tick "off-charter (/concordat ?)"
> boxes. So we'll have to write a charter (/concordat ?) (simply respecting
> the law would be nice). This idea of application is indeed obviously
> intended to bring together people of good will, humanists, etc... and not
> the extreme right which already has facebook and company.
>
> We can imagine 4-5 boxes for reporting 'sexist remarks', 'xenophobic
> remarks', 'conspiracists remarks'.... And here comes my basic idea: let's
> say that 60% of the users are from the extreme right. Logically the shitty
> comments will come out. But the remaining 40% will flag it as 'off the
> charts'. So, it will be easy to see if the user votes for crap. Then the
> user identified as off-charts (/concordat ?) will have all his votes
> cancelled, the site/application accessible only in read-only mode, and will
> be redirected to texts or sites to try to make him understand why he's
> blocked (we can redirect a conspirator to anti-conspiracy sites for example
> that exist and are of good quality).
>
> For example, right-wing extremist comments will be buried at the bottom of
> the page or even deleted. And the interesting comments at the top of the
> 'quality' ranking.
>
> It is not quite foolproof at this stage. But: already, this application
> will first be deployed, communicated, in left-wing circles obviously, so we
> should start on a healthy basis. But we can imagine all kinds of
> retro-control. The 'off-charter' reporting of members who have shown good
> faith could be stronger than that of new members (the 'quality' votes
> remain totally equal).  All this is a bit technical but very easily done
> and will close the door to offensive comments. (Without closing access to
> the application).
>
>
>
>
>
> This was for the basics. All this is very easy to do, a small team of
> motivated developers can do it very quickly. Of course, in open-source,
> non-commercial, reusable everywhere, in all countries...
>
> Well, there's one last point, it's all very well to have an idea that gets
> a good grade/notation, but then people have to be willing to get involved
> in it. And with random votes it's not easy. So:
>
>
>
> 2d - Efficiency for struggles:
>
>
>
> In addition to the main classification by quality of the remarks, will
> come other tabs (one or more, to see). We will be able to vote freely this
> time on the comments exceeding a certain quality rating. As a 'like'. For
> example, 'I like this idea, I want to participate'. Thus, it will be a form
> of petition, an idea of struggle for example (organize a big mobilization
> on such date for such reason) can be voted on a lot, commented, debated,
> etc. And there will be a ranking of these most popular ideas/projects.
>
> A little bit of statistics (moving average of “like per days”) and even a
> new idea, if it is well noted, will be quickly found in the first results.
> It doesn't matter who you are, new user or not.
>
> Then you can imagine any kind of ranking by keywords to distinguish
> comments ('action', 'economic debate', 'ecology', 'writing a new
> democracy', etc...).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 3 - How to participate, the to-do list :
>
>
>
> I hope you like the idea. It is a real reappropriation of the internet
> tool that I propose. Effective, democratic debates that lead to something
> concrete.  Nothing like this seems to exist at the moment. It is however
> very simple to set up. There are three stages, and you are cordially
> invited to participate in them to your measure:
>
> - Comment and improve this project, on the political or technical side of
> things.
>
> - Find developers willing to do this quickly.
>
> - Share as much as possible massively on all networks as soon as it's
> available.
>
>
>
> That's it! That was pretty simple! No? I did everything I could to make it
> happen.
>
> To be improved....
>
>
>
>
>
> Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) (and some
> personal adjustment !)
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>


-- 
Edward L. Platt
PhD Candidate, University of Michigan School of Information
he/him | https://elplatt.com | @elplatt | @elplatt at greatjustice.net
<https://greatjustice.net/@elplatt>

Tips for stopping email overload:
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