At 07:04 PM 8/21/2006, Jan Kok wrote: >Any recommendations? Sure. Start a yahoogroup for cheap tools. Yahoogroups have polls. Sure, it's limited, but you can do a lot off-line. I.e., you can collect data with a poll or database and then analyze it the way you like manually or with outside tools.
Beyond that, you can buy domain space. The whole lomaxdesign family of domains, including beyondpolitics.org, is based on a reseller account at hostvector.com. Many different kinds of open source tools are available with easy installation, including wikis (phpwiki and tikiwiki), plus other open source tools can be installed. I'd be happy to provide domain space to start things up, as you know, where there is some possible connection with FA/DP concepts, as there is with the Boston Tea Party. >Anyone know how to reach someone at Yahoo, to try to get them >interested in providing more polling methods? There is a mailing list for mailing list managers. It seems that yahoo monitors it (the part of this "organization" which is on yahoo), or that some people on it have some level of privileged access to yahoo management. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EmailList-Managers/ http://www.emaillist-managers.com/ http://groups-beta.google.com/group/emaillist-managers http://groups.google.com/group/EL-M-ComputerHelp But my opinion is that there is a great deal which can be done *without* sophisticated tools, and when an organization is doing what can be done, and it finds that it needs more sophisticated tools, *then* it will know much better exactly what is needed. If, for example, one is analyzing a proxy list by hand to expand votes, and it becomes cumbersome, there is then a need to be filled, and nature abhors a vacuum. Instead what we see, in particular with delegable proxy, is that software types argue endlessly about exactly how a system should function, should there be restrictions on proxy counts, should there be special-focus proxies, should there be alternate proxies, and a lot of questions which I think would become moot in actual practice. I.e., how many proxies can dance on the head of a pin? When we are actually using delegable proxy, the tools will follow. We don't need tools to use DP; all it takes is a proxy list, and I'm quite sure, Jan, that you could write a program to take as input a set of votes and expand it with a proxy list. But the software people want secret ballot, which they think is necessary. I'll just note that a New England Town Meeting functions totally in the open, there are no secret ballots. Direct democracy, actually, and secret ballot are relatively incompatible; the cornerstone of direct democracy is the ability of people to communicate and compromise. You can't compromise with a secret ballot. Votes in Congress aren't secret. You know who favored a motion and who opposed it. You can talk to these people to find out why, at least theoretically. I keep saying that DP is most easy to implement in a Free Association, because there are no assets to fight over, and thus practically no incentive to attempt to coerce votes. FA members can be anonymous, assuming the rules allow it; because, again, power is not concentrated but remains with the members, there is little harm to the association if people set up pretend memberships in order to gain proxies, since they will be grabbing a handful of sand: FAs function by coordinating efforts, and the false proxies don't have any power to exercise, they can only pretend to vote. Want to use Range Voting? Yahoo polls allow multiple answers. Yahoo isn't going to average the results, but the results can be downloaded and averaged independently.... Or use a database, with each record corresponding to a member and each field to a "candidate." The voter can add his or her own record and then fill out the fields, or a registrar can set up all the records first. Voters just fill in the numbers. Then anyone can download the database into Excel and analyze it.... From the original Free Association: Keep It Simple, Stupid! ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
