Parlement

Testing

2006-06-27 20:43:41+0200

You can use the system right now:

click on the n more links to drill down into the available elements
click on the links to propose new sub elements
click on or buttons to vote against or for an element

No complex registration required, you can participate anonymously or just fill a pseudo (top right corner) in order to be differentiated. This pseudo can be password protected and email verified, or not. You choose.

I’m open to suggestions and follow closely everything said (every forum also being a mailing list, it’s easy to follow and answer to)!

Tell me what you think!

Re: FAQ? and setup

MacHiavelli — 2007-01-31 22:51:12+0100

Hi there. I am very interested in this project but am having some problems assessing what it does and doesn’t do; I hope someone can explain how i get the tool up and running in order to assess its features.

More generally, I am interested in the web-moderated participative democracy. I am a politics student at an Irish university and interested in sponsoring a project at my college to develop an open source tool that delivers the above functionality. If there are other projects out there in this sphere that you feel are worth knowing about, then please share. Hopefully this can be the beginning of a productive exchange. Thanks and keep up the good work.

<steve@youknowwhoelselovesit.co.uk>

[top-politics] How to improve communication on the list?

illegale — 2006-05-08 14:41:11+0200

Many, many talk about it, nothing has been done about it. OK, almost nothing, as long as E is doing +1/o/-1 stuff in this moment. Yet, there is no organised manner of fighting non transparency of this group. So, let me start with it on this topic.

First of all, OFF TOPIC. If somebody makes some off topic, it would be rather good to open new topic about it if there is no already topic about it.

In that way, other members who do not lurk trough every single theme all the time, will have oportunity to see that and participate there.

Another thing is that I can notice many very simmilar topics all the way, in the last time usually about lemming stuff.

This random theme promotion is NOT GOOD. If we look this group, we can not find one single topic where several members decided to solve one single problem till the moment they succeed in that.

So, my first reccomendation about this is this procedure:

Articulate the topic
Start the topic
Invite other members you find would be interested in it
All the off topic that suits to that topic on the other themes, move there.
5 If there come out the new questions, articulate them and open new topic or join it to existing topic about it.

Second reccomendation would be finding way of articulation of the procedure of how to get conclusions of the topic and conclusions themselves. Yet, first reccomendation is the first thing to do.

So, what do you think?

One more thing. If E, Mark, Magnus and Markus agree about this, Eric said he would do the same thing. So, is this a good way forward or not?

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[top-politics] Re: Definition of TOP - need to finish our goal

Serge — 2006-09-12 13:53:04+0200

Hey,

Modified the wiki over the weekend, tried to keep the elements while adding some and making it more concise overall. Any comments or reaction?

Best regards,

Serge

Re: Anonymity

JackWilliamBell — 2007-04-22 11:27:00+0200

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this subject. At this point I am convinced that true anonymity is impossible on the Internet; but effective anonymity is possible. (This has to do with the relative resources and knowledge levels of those trying to track down the identity of a person as opposed to the relative resources and knowledge levels of the person trying to avoid being outed. Obviously governments and large institutions have greater resources and knowledge levels than most individuals.)

More importantly, I think we need to have a reasonably secure way to create anonymous identities: ie identities which a person may use in forums, but only that person can use and which cannot easily be traced back to that person. That way people could speak freely about politics or expose corruption without anyone else being able to pose as them and muddy the message.

[top-politics] Re: Parlement Version 0.9

Serge — 2006-11-23 23:11:18+0100

Mark,
Your post contains no practical suggestion or constructive part. Failing that, I don’t see a point in discussing any further. It’s really a shame because your very presence on the group shows you have a similar concern to ours in bringing more participation to the political process.
Serge

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Hidden posts

echarp — 2006-11-03 16:21:13+0100

And I emailed you about this, but I was wondering why so many lines of postappear where there is only a score, ie +1 or other, is it that people actuallypropose a post with only this in the body, or is it that this is the way aclick on the + button is shown? Could we get rid of the clutter?

That’s normal. Each vote is in fact a post. Thus you can actually vote in your posts.

+1 <= here I just voted on what you said!!!

And this is an important feature, because each server can act as a node in a P2P net. The communication protocol being mails.

Trouble is, all those posts can clutter the screen.

I’m trying to change it, to make it so that a hidden post will not appear as a full line, but maybe as a dot (which you could click to open it). I don’t yet know how, css will tell me what I can do easily :)

Maybe hidden posts should just be that, hidden. No dot, no line. That would be easier to do.

Maybe posts with a score under 0 should be hidden. There is still the possibility to see them, but only if you choose not to filter at all.

What do you think?

What about sub posts with a good score. What happens if one of their parent is hidden?

Features request

shanghai — 2006-10-10 17:22:08+0200

Put into here all the features requests. I think this might be useful!

[top-politics] Re: Definition of TOP - Systematization

Serge — 2006-09-25 19:51:15+0200

Hey,

First of all I agree with Gale that defining a system as TOP although slightly redundant, leaves a lot less room for misinterpretation that “open system” would, and remains concise enough to be acceptable.

Secondly, is it right to say that we agree that the aim of this group is for a TOP system allowing for such things as proxy voting, signal amplification over noise (filters), etc to be implemented freely and easily by any TOP organization wanting to?

If yes, why don’t we start try and get more developpers involved to build on leparlement, defining the specifics of the software, and testing it all the while through using leparlement as a platform for discussion/decision/vote??

Regards,

Serge

[top-politics] Re: 20060909#parlement

Serge — 2006-09-10 14:03:49+0200

Hi,

I personally favor the very simple and functional definition of truth given by Erich Fromm. In short, truth can be defined as a functional approximation of reality. The closer to the truth you are, the better you are able to grasp on your environment. As one can see, this is coherent with the widely shared view of what illusions/delusions are, and how they affect one’s ability to deal with their environment in a productive manner.

Actually went and modified the entry about truth on wikipedia, here’s the bit on Fromm I added if you want a fuller explanation:

Fromm’s theory of truth

Erich Fromm finds that trying to discuss truth as “absolute truth” is sterile and that emphasis ought to be placed on “optimal truth”. He considers truth as stemming from the survival imperative of grasping one’s environment physically and intellectually, whereby young children instinctively seek truth so as to orient themselves in “a strange and powerful world”. The accuracy of their perceived approximation of the truth will therefore have direct consequences on their ability to deal with their environment. Fromm can be understood to define truth as a functional approximation of reality. His vision of optimal truth is described partly in “Man from Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics” (1947), from which excerpts are included below.

the dichotomy between ‘absolute = perfect’ and ‘relative = imperfect’ has been superseded in all fields of scientific thought, where “it is generally recognized that there is no absolute truth but nevertheless that there are objectively valid laws and principles”.

In that respect, “a scientifically or rationally valid statement means that the power of reason is applied to all the available data of observation without any of them being suppressed or falsified for the sake of a desired result”. The history of science is “a history of inadequate and incomplete statements, and every new insight makes possible the recognition of the inadequacies of previous propositions and offers a springboard for creating a more adequate formulation.”

As a result “the history of thought is the history of an ever-increasing approximation to the truth. Scientific knowledge is not absolute but optimal; it contains the optimum of truth attainable in a given historical period.” Fromm furthermore notes that “different cultures have emphasized various aspects of the truth” and that increasing interaction between cultures allows for these aspects to reconcile and integrate, increasing further the approximation to the truth.

Best regards,

Serge