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Running a Non-Partisan Political Forum?
cptnHaddock asks: "The internet was supposed to give a new breath to democracy. While there has been some interesting initiatives, I feel a lot more could be done. Do you have any experience, tips to share, about running a non-partisan political forum? How to encourage well-thought postings and filter out the cynical ramblings, and how to moderate without censoring? Is there any good software that you would recommend for that task? Are there other solutions even better suited to running a policy-oriented discussion board?"
Impossible.
Next question?
Why isn't this under the Humor section?
Just ban all posts and all stories. Well, you can allow porn.
Monstar L
...and that you know will reply in the fashion you desire.
That pretty much limits it to just yourself. But it's a start!
Politics and religion are two of the hottest flame-war topics EVER. You either choose to moderate EVERY comment (you are "censoring" your own board) or you accept the fact that there will be heated disagreements and non-polite exchances.
Oxymoron... How about a forum where the partisans don't just degenerate into having a flame fest.
No this isn't troll, just an observation that all political discussions, in any forum, are partisan.
One might hope for non-partisan consensus to emerge from a forum... but I wouldn't count on it.
I started a religion forum about six months ago, and I too was worried about flamewars and intolerance. Suprisingly, we have had very little name calling at all on our forum. Most of our members have came from slashdot through my sig link, so I guess that helped us get members that were above average in terms of writing and discussion skills.
We use phpbb with a few mods, like quick reply and a captcha system that doesn't really work. Most of our top posters have mod abilities, so that really helps us control the spam posts. Amazingly, for a religious forum, we haven't censored any posts in six months. Basically, just encourage rational debate and I don't think you will have any need to censor.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
It's not going to ever look non-partisan unless everyone's posts agree with your politics. In which case, you don't really have a non-partisan forum at all, but a you-partisan forum. What's worse is politics is nasty enough that even experts cannot be relied upon to settle disputes: they come with their own biases. There's the whole epistemology problem to contend with.
I think the best you can hope for is for everyone to be civil, but even that's only enforceable if everyone's already civil: uncivil moderators would make uncivil moderations. Just look at slashdot's moderation for an example. (and it's a good system for doing what you propose.)
In short, always be wary of politicians who want to "get rid of the politics" surrounding [thing x] because what they really mean is that other politicians should conform to their partisan position. "Bipartisanship," for instance, is really just a weasel word for ending debate without really arguing one's case thoroughly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If it's an obvious troll, delete it. Otherwise let it stay.
You need maximal freedom of speech for proper discourse.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Have you not seen some of the political discussions running amuck here?
Even with the mod system, the filtering in "pref's", and the karma system, most political battles^Wdiscussions resemble fireworks on the 4th of July, only with nukes, WMD's, and hookers...er, what was we talking about?
BTW, sorry I don't have something more positive, but good luck with that anyway- it should be an interesting experience!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I'm actually doing this, and I can give you advice about some sections of it.
/. but it is a much bigger target - and even here it's not too big of a problem.
Firstly about ACs and flaming, we run it through a university society so most people who come on are from a university (and as such there is little flaming and trolling). We are open though for anyone to post on it, but I think most people wouldn't hunt out a small system on the net to try and troll. I know you get it on
I think If you want it to be non-partisan then you need to put up non-partisan stories and just let everyone have their own views and post them. You can even put up partisan stories but just try to make sure that they are fairly ballanced in number. For us me and a firend put up the stories, he's a Labour supporter (and a Blairite) whereas I'm a member of a conservative party. It's not normally that hard to see your own bias.
If you live in the UK getting access to non-partisan representations of the news is easy (because all our TV media has to be non-partisan). It might be harder if you want to do US news but you could always put up a right and a left wing interpretation of the story and then let people talk about where they feel that they are on it...
If you want to try and encourage well thought out discusion you should consider getting some friends and along with yourself post your own opinions on the stories in a well thought out way (especially at the start) so that people can see top quality examples of discusion and reason
As for moderation on the whole I'd say don't. I've had people say that they think that 9/11 and 7/7 were justified etc. and I've just left it, people can see bullshit and often don't even flame back (but can tear their poor arguements appart). I would delete something which used overly offensive language, or an obvious flaming comment (like "Bush is crap and likes to have sex with dogs and children!" - you know it's a lie and it has no point).
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
If it's an obvious troll, delete it.
Speaking as someone over the years who has been derided on political forums as both a far right rightwing extremist and a left wing nut job, when it comes to politics, trolling is often in the eyes of the beholder. What would be considered trolling in a left wing forum would be seen as a valid opinion in a right wing forum and vice versa. This is due to the different "hot buttons" partisans of different parties are programmed to have.
I'm currently struggling with just this thing myself. I'm in the process of setting up a blogsite/message board for people who refuse to dirty themselves through alignment with a political party. You are right that freedom of speech must be maximal for proper discourse in one sense, but in another, unrestricted political discourse goes like this once partisans of any major group join in:
partisan: "This issue that my political party told me is important is important so I'm arguing it."
partisanx: "Really, well why do you personally care about it?"
partisan: "for the reasons outlined by my political party."
partisanx: "yeah, I've heard of all that before, do you have any opinions of your own?
partisan: "these are my opinions, I just happen to agree 100 percent with my political party.
partisanx: "yeah, sure you do. When I want to hear your political opinion, I'll go read your parties talking points. Thanks for playing."
partisan: "This issue that my political..."
ad nauseum.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
1. allow only discussion on events that happened atleast 120 years ago in rural Sweden
2. no Swedes
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Hm...
I, too, have often thought about creating a forum where well-reasoned ideas could be expressed and debated. However, actually allowing for democratic participation usually results in the debate turing to jingoism and argumentum ad hominem. I have formulated a plan in an attempt to overcome these problems, but failed to implement it due to the amount of time required. I will describe that plan forthwith so that you might consider it as a possible answer to your inquiry.
The subject for the debate is posted on your website. Three days are allowed for people to submit position papers and arguments, preferrably with references backing up their assertions. The best four or five papers are published and the authors are invited to debate their points (with or without a moderator) for the next two days. Following the two day debate, the general public is allowed to post to the discussion. The discussion by the general public can either be unmoderated (ideally democratic) or a moderated (egalitarian). I believe a Slashdot-type moderation system could be appropriate.
Depending on available resources, there is no reason you could not post one or more debate topics each day -- a rolling series of debates, as it were. But, as should be self-evident, the effort required to read the position papers and select the conferees could be substantial.
I have seen forums come and go while certain ones stay. They have several factors, but in terms of administration:
1. I would think the first step would be to go out and attract/recruit the core group of people who share your vision and are enthusiastic about it. The core group is very important, as they set the energy and the mood for everyone else. They are also the ones you will eventually trust to place moderators when the forum outgrows your oversight.
2. Set clear and simple policies and rules that encourage the atmosphere/cooperation you want in place and enforce them consistently. Be fair and explain the actions you take and have the moderators explain themselves to the group when they make a decision, don't make decisions that are arbitrary. People can see when you are being fair or when you are taking sides due to varying factors such as cronyism, partisanship, etcetera.
3. No censorship of purely political speech. It may see like "no duh!" but enough political forums decide to censor views that are not compatible with the moderators/leader of the board. Even over objectionable views, there are ways to win over them without resorting to this.
Okay, that aside, let's discuss what you want. You want a non-partisan board. The origin of partisan is of course party, like political party. The role of the political party was always to band individuals together into a force that has power. The downside of a political party is that over time a member had to trade in his individual thinking and go with the groupthink of the group, sometimes with issues that had little to do with the original goal of the group.
Political parties/movements have done or promoted some good, such as the abolitionist movement, women's suffrage, and of course our own revolution.
Political Parties have also done a lot of bad: the Communist Party in Russia and elsewhere where they have actually taken power, the National Socialist party, etcetera. In America, Political Parties have not been this evil, but have set the current political system (which I think should be unconstitutional) and climate to their advantage and have wrought the current situation.
In this sense, the way to minimize partisanship is to get in your core group of people who are for independent politicians (no party affiliation mandatory) and where political parties have little meaning to them. Meaning that your core group should be people that don't follow a party line, but decide issue by issues. People who staunchly stick with their parties will always have a conflicting interest to be partisan as a show of loyalty/teamplaying for their party.
You will likely also want people who are not afraid to blast both sides equally.
Like many social human endeavors, since politics is the assertion of one's own ego, don't expect a lack of shrill bickering though.
Check out www.essembly.com
You have to decide what's most important to you: reach or principle.
/. has, but then you run the risk of people moderating people down based on petty squabbles (as has been seen occasionally on /.).
On the one hand, many of the free discussion forums are flooded with people who spout hateful gibberish about politicians they don't like or blind lovefest for politicians they do. To keep these people out, you might want to consider charging membership fees. People seem to pop off a lot less when it costs them money to do so.
On the other hand, charging a membership fee may create a problem with reach. Some people may be the sort to engage in insightful political discourse, but aren't willing to spend money on the privilege.
You could implement a reputation/rating system like
We have had an excellent forum that has a reasonable sized user base, an extremely diverse set of viewpoints (Your standard variety of mild to hard core democrats, republicans, libertarians, but also views from communists, fascists, etc.), and consitently high quality posts.
There are rules that people are expected to follow regarding respecting those you are discussing with. While there are occasional flame wars (and people are suspended from posting for a brief period of time when it gets out of hand), it doesn't require anything particular draconian. Requiring respect in a public discussion is not censorship.
ornery.org for those interested.
LetterRip
Parent sure has a point though.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
GodGab
Arr
Oh
See
Kay
Ess!!!
Question Reason Enjoy.
I leally love the 'Gab. I am a Christian, and here I have debated Abortion, Is Bush an Idiot?, Evolution, Heaven, Hell, Karma, Is Bush an Idiot?, Hugo Chaves, the Pope and Islam, Is Bush El Diablo?
Atheists explain why they are here, Christians actually mull over evolution in Schools, Pastafarians float by on some cloud once in a while, and spammers start discussion.
Partisan?
You bet!
Civilised?
Yes.
Fun?
Oh.
Heck.
and
HOW!
So there. Check out what goes on here, and take notes people.
GodGab is breaking new frontiers.
(Yes, we discuss star trek futures as well.)
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
You have to find a way to prevent high-traffic, partisan political sites from sending large numbers of their members to your forum. Maybe have a quota for the maximum number of new members who can register in a day?
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum. Make it so new threads on the non-partisan forum can't just be created by anyone, but on specific debate topics pre-arranged by "community leaders" from the partisan forums. This will hopefully cut down on the amount of moderation work that needs to be done by you.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
The internet is the most remarkable device ever invented for allowing idiots to find each other. Good luck!
Also, the following penny arcade is apropos:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
http://whatswrongwiththe.us/
Very interesting (even if I'm not american myself and the site focus on US issues). It is slash-based, so provide the moderation system you know can help filter the comments. However, the site does not have that many comments yet.
Animoog.org
Instead of focusing on parties or current (cliched) discussions, start with first principals and try to steer discussion toward principals upon which people agree on, THEN apply the reasoning to current events.
For example:
Abortion - pro or anti? -- Wrong!
To what degree should the law force dependency on a person? Can the law require a person to allow the use of their body to host another, even if it means the other may perish? Could we force a person to donate blood or an organ? -- Discuss the principal, then work up to 'abortion' - the specific application of the principal.
This will probably still backfire, so you will have to moderate - there are a lot of asshats out there with axes to grind.
Good luck and post a link - I'd welcome a positive political discussion.
Yes, and the Pope is infallible.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I was thinking about this issue recently ...
If you have a large, public forum, and use a moderation system, it seems that partisans would mod their side up and the other side down. They may balance each other out; in fact, the flames that provoke outrage should attract more negative mods, and those that can make arguments that appeal to the other side would be left alone (or modded up).
You could also hand out many, extra, '-1 partisan drivel' mod points, maybe 1/day/user, to filter out the remainder of the flames.
Hmmm. Interesting. I didn't see anyone suggest that your forum should provide the tools that help participants understand the issues. e.g a political search engine. A Wikipedia and dictionary of political terms and thoughts through the ages. I'm certain others could think of other tools that would help people understand politics, and understanding is the first part of any discussion.
I'm curious - how do you/these people act on their political views
I don't know how the forum will turn out. It has not been launched yet. I have secured a server for it and am in the process of configuring the software and choosing a layout. My plan is to attempt to draw independent minded people to the forum and then see where the chips fall.
but, I can tell you how I handle this so far...
Direct action, single issue stuff (pro/anti GM, etc), industrial action (strikes/ direct confrontation, etc. All of these, none, some I haven't mentioned?
If my own reasoning tells me that I should take part in a boycott, then I will take part in a boycott. If my reasoning tells me to take part in a strike, then I will take part in a strike. My reasons will be my own.
My personal issue with partisans is not that they work together towards common goals, doing such is the backbone of a healthy democratic republic, a form of government which you could say I am a true believer in. It's what has become of the political debate as a result of the partisans spreading the message on "issues" with memes and cult like group think.
For example, I don't ever take part in a group movement because some partisan friend of mine emailed me to sign a petition. How many people do you know who are like that? Be honest. They get a petition from someone they know who shares their partisan views, then out of reflex, without any type of real thought, reason, or seriously considering the other sides views, they sign the petition and become diehard supporters of it. Those are exactly the type of people I'm not interested in talking to because they have nothing of value whatsoever to say. If you want to hear the opinions of people like that, simply read what their partisan group has to say or tune into their favorite pundit. In my experience, such people make up the majority of partisans who argue politics online. That's why the majority of political forums are usually nothing more than echo boxes, or echo wars.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
I would also think that someone from an edu domain would have a low tolerance for idiots anyway.* Anyway I'll give Fark a try. Ars technica also appears to be above average. Then I can ditch my Slashdot habit. :)
*The sad part is that Taco doesn't care about the "brain drain", or the "bad" influx.
Republican posters will ruin it for everyone.
http://www.knoxviews.com/
I could see that it might not be too bad if there were no anonymous posting.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
First off, I think you're bound for failure. However, if you really want to do this, there's a feature you should absolutly not impliment. Friends. Nothing like a /. zoo. Friends will be people that agreee with you. Foes will be people that disagree with you. Soon it degenerates into killfile.
Some say don't censor, but that's wrong. You should. Too often the shrillest voices take over the discussion. Be fair though. Five years ago Jonah Goldberg fired Ann Coulter from the National Review Online, for her notriously shrill and childish name calling. He said that there was no place for that in a serious political discussion, and he was absolutely right. (Five years later, he's realized that playing Coulter's childish game is what makes money, so he's done a 180 and wrote the self-paroding and hypocritical "Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton," but that's for another discusssion.)
If we weren't called ReTHUGs even before we talk about anything. Talk about censorship.
Maybe what you're trying to do is to set up a centrist blog.
There is no such thing as nonpartisan polical discussion, but there are a surprising number of centrist blogs, running normal blog software, that succeed in perpetuating a culture of thoughtful comments, rather than paranoia or personal attack.
Spam's more of a real problem than trolls.
It was started by a couple of people of centrist inclination getting together and recruiting a initial core. That's since changed drastically, but it's still going strong.
I post at one called Centerfield. It also includes a blogroll of other centrist blogs.
A few reasons :
If it's a US-centric forum, you can't avoid partisanship. One of the very cornerstones of US political practice is partisanship - the system has largely been warped from a rational discussion of issues and direction into an "us vs them" argument ("this isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!" "No it's not..."). Of course, there'll always be a few truely non-partisan people around - the people you want to attract - but they always seem to end up being attacked by both sides.
And that's another point: you will be attacked. Trolls, swarming, astroturf, DoS, legal threats - anything and everything, every dirty trick, will be used by one or the other to destroy you. Because you threaten their beliefs, because you threaten their cosy bipolar system, and sometimes just because they need to rile up their army of like-mided followers to attack something.
(A little aside: every organisation of any power or size has some sort of hidden master/slave structure. In left-wing organisations, the two parts are sometimes called "members & militants". The militants are, well, militant; they make policy, choose targets, etc. Members exist so that (a) the militants can point and say "look, we have 30,000 supporters, so we must be right!", and (b) because 30,000 members turning up at a rally is much more impressive than 10 militants...)
Finally, it's impossible to keep it non-partisan. Gradually, in 100 different little ways, the group will show a consensus biased towards one side or the other. Even these little biases will attract one or two like-thinking members, and discourage one or two others. Eventually the tipping point is reached - and in these things, that point is almost invisible - and the bias becomes unrecoverable.
So, nice idea - and one I applaud tremendously; I can see my own country's political system becoming more and more party partisan every day because that's what the parties desire. But, ultimately, doomed to failure. It'd be a nice windmill to tilt at for a while, though...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
and run all the posts through it.
. homeland.ws.html
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept06/Cardie
I've modded on several large forums with a lot of political activity. The best you can do is an occassionally delete when it gets to an actual illegal act, a personal threat of violence against a poster or some public figure, etc. Short of that, you can't, and it destroys the entire nature of discussion and debate-you ignorant skunk!;)
Seconded! Ornery.org rules. Possibly another reason it works so well is that Orson Scott Card (who owns the site) tends to attract thoughtful people of all political stripes. This keeps it from getting bogged down in any particular ideology.
:D
By the way, nice to see you here, LR. This is PS.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the Ornery forums, you should know what you're getting into. The standard greeting there is "Welcome to Ornery. You're wrong."
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
There is such a word as alot, and it is roughly a synonym for allocate.
"Nonsense, the vast majority of slashdotters are well aware of the differences."
Have you ever heard the saying "actions speak louder than words"? Claiming "the vast majority" understand the difference (let alone demonstrate continued education) doesn't match the evidence shown so far. Of course you'll just accuse me of "moving the discussion" without actually addressing the problem. So your no more a solution than anyone else around here.
Assuming you're American, you need to remember that a NON-partisian organization needs to include ALL political parties and ALL voters. This includes independents, Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, Communists, and all the other 'minor' ideas. Non-partisian doesn't mean just democrats and republicans, do you hear me League of Women Voters?
As for the moderation issue, make it clear and make your users agree to a 'debate not argue' concept. By example, I was at a political rally for PeirceForOhio.com last week. A Green supporter, a Blackwell supporter, and I were having a discussion about poltics. We disagreed, but we were amiable and making points all around. Another rally-er came over and started ranting while we were having a nice conversation, irritated all of us.
Your users need to be reminded that a discussion forum is for DISCUSSION and is not a pulpit.
See also issues arising from Godwins Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
A strategy that I use on a non-political board is NEVER to delete posts. I move, split, and edit and every time I have to moderate I make it clear why the thread was moderated. I and the other admins also listen to and respond to issues with moderation, but not in the moderated thread.
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum.
That's a bad idea because it provides two nurturing pools for partisan extremism to let people gear up for battle before going all out in the "non-partisan" forum. People can argue with a "public" face and then bad mouth in the "private" partisan forum. Unless you restrict access to the partisan forums, then they'll just become battlefields as well. If you let moderation filter out people in the "wrong" area, then they'll quickly become two camps that accuse the otherside of close-minded censorship.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There is only one ruleset for moderation specifically of political debate, and it specifies pretty clearly you have to use wikis, not threaded media:
"open politics in force"
The reason is obvious: threaded discussions dilute into dissension with no way to hide things proven to be wrong or mis-spoken, while wikis allow only the consensus to be visible, with the discredited or withdrawn positions off the topic page.
You might also want to look into Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) and the politics around that, which is severe. Their rules are somewhat less strict and allow for things like removing stuff because no one likes the author, however. You could not ever tolerate that in a political setting. Casual bullying, equivalent to gagging someone and throwing them out of the town hall, goes on all the time in politicsal forums.
It's a lot tougher than you think. Politics necessarily admits ad hominem to a degree, rhetoric and metaphor, and you need appeals mechanisms and some way to genuinely punish systems administrators who do not follow the rules strictly. Expect to be removing sysop powers extremely often under this regime.
Think about it: How many people are qualified to be judges? Speaker of the House? Not many. Don't expect your chief moderator to be anyone with less skill.
If you do some web searches on "open politics" and "political wiki" and even "troll-friendly" and "sysop vandalism" you'll find out a lot about politics via the web.
The only reasonable role of money would be to fine people who misbehave and pay people disadvanted by misbehaviour, or reward people for moderating the situations that arise. Membership fees only discourage participation badly.
"Reputation" systems are very bad in political forums since they will simply reward larger factions which rank each other's stuff up, and rank minority factions down. You'll quickly end up with a partisan board based on whatever troll minority (in the real world - say, Republicans) got there first and managed to make itself a majority in your little simulated world. Likewise "Ratings".
You need some ruleset that discourages lying, repetition of questionable tales, logical fallacy, but lets people pretty much be as harsh with each other as they feel like they need to be. Politics is the way laws get written so don't expect everyone to be nice. You aren't running a social club.
THIS is pedantic.
You mean something like this? The openpolitics.ca "issue challenge" is more or less exactly what you're talking about. I think. Though it relies inherently on wiki versioning, not threaded media. Probably wise, as there's no value in reading through a lot of refuted points.
It's obviously quite important in any debate that each side has about the same resources and notice to get their arguments together. So focusing on an issue at a known pre-announced time and having it end (and perhaps also be judged) also at a pre-known time is pretty important to overall fairness.
In so much as I try to encourage political debate on the forums for my politics game here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/forums
I think I've been ok so far, even though the discussion is fairly sparse. One reason for this is that the nature of the game is entirely about politicl policies and actual implementation, rather than rhetoric or 'principles', so possibly that skews the discussion away from the more flamebait related areas.
One thing I suspect helps si that if I start a poll or topic, I always try to rpesent both sides to the question within the question itself, in order to get the principle of balanced debate there at the very start.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
It's a GREAT idea precisely "because it provides two nurturing pools for partisan extremism to let people gear up for battle before going all out in the "non-partisan" forum. People can argue with a "public" face and then bad mouth in the "private" partisan forum."
This is exactly what political parties do. And there is no real democracy in the world that doesn't have them. They must therefore be necessary for democracy.
Quite possibly, they are training camps so that each side can identify wing nuts and people who will fail to convince the public or be easily caught out by the opponents, and steer the wing nuts into things like recruiting or stirring up the base - not running for office or publicly debating on TV or the other nonpartisan forums. Woops except FOX "News"!
See some intelligent definition of the idea of a faction, which is similar to this idea but more general. Factions needn't match one to one to parties - a large party is a "big tent" with many factions.
Think of it this way: someone presents a detailed Marxist economic argument about the trade deficit. Obviously the Republicans all think he is a troll. The Democrats don't know, and if they hold a vote on it they can't possibly be informed enough about such a specialized type of analysis. It would take a formally recognized faction of Marxists, maybe even Marxist economists, to declare whether the argument was acceptable within a Marxist mode or not. Without formal differentiation of factions, you just can't hold legitimate debates because you have no way of differentiating epistemic modes.
There is a detailed discussion of this in the United Nations University Millenium Project report, 1993, where they are called "epistemic filters". Anyone find a URL?
It proposes that you can most readily get (for instance) Shia fundamentalist clerics into dialogue with Marxist feminists by giving them a system that can filter out definitions and links each opposes ideologically, but using the same fact database. Eventually they can negotiate "neutral" epistemics and so come to agreements.
Interestingly, there is no credit on the text in the UN document, only a long list of contributors at the end. Some of whom are slightly famous.
I will say this is impossible.
Oh, the board will stay fairly-civil -- at first. But political boards suffer from a decay effect: over time, the conversation decays and devolves into mindless ad-hominem attacks and factless "IMO, this is what we should do" ideological partisan squabbles.
The problem is one of regression towards a mean value of quality. On any given board, as the population rises, the ratio of insightful, intelligent commenters to moronic, idiot blatherers widens. The behavior is very much as if you were traveling leftwards from the right tail on a Gaussian (normal) curve of quality (where quality rises as you go rightwards).
This is because your board will start out being frequented by people closest to you in your social circle: your friends, maybe family, and whoever you make aware of your board online (e.g. people reading your sig, if you put a link there). But over time, word-of-mouth -- viral marketing -- ensures that word of your board will spread from person to person, and like a disease, if the board is considered worthwhile by enough people, you'll see exponential growth, and with it, a rising number of people who don't know you, who have no connection to you, and thus who don't have any incentive to behave the way you would like them to (i.e. civilly and by your definition of "reasonably"). Thus, the amount of crap you will believe yourself to be seeing will rise.
You can try to filter out trolls. But they will always exist. By employing a small group of trusted moderators, you can filter out cynics and anything else you like -- but in so doing, you will run the risk of being called an opponent of free speech (and rightly-so, although, being a privately-run board, you are perfectly within your rights to do so. But I really don't understand why you would want to filter cynicism or anything besides spam or legally-questionable or off-topic material).
I have argued for years online. Even when there are intelligent, worthwhile people to talk to, it is a pointless venture: 99% (and I don't believe this is an exaggeration) of the people, whether participating or lurking, will *not* be convinced by your arguments. You, in turn, are very unlikely to be convinced by somebody else's arguments.
(Personally, I *did* change once due to online debate: from what amounted to basically an Americanized version of a European social democrat to a libertarian/classical liberal that I am now (with only the issues of free speech and gun control remaining constant throughout my various political transformations). And before that, I changed once due to real life debate too, from a somewhat-libertarian Republican to that Euro-like social democrat.)
If you want a classic example of what happens to argumentative quality over time, look no further than Slashdot. All the users with low UIDs (4 digits or less) tend to be very smart, well-reasoned people without a trollish bone in their bodies. The same cannot be said for most of the rest of us in the 6-digit UID range. (Oh sure, the occasional worthwhile poster will appear every so often as more people learn about the board. But they are the exception, not the rule.)
Remember the Pareto Principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 Rule): 80% of your board members (given a sufficiently-large population) will be worthless, while the other 20% make it worthwhile to you and those considering the board...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
"a political search engine"
e.g. the "open politics web" which defines some conventions making it easy to reliably search, for instance by requiring people to use a single version of their name with underscores as spaces.
"Wikipedia and dictionary of political terms"
e.g. the "list of policy terms" most of which cite Wikipedia and add information critical to poltical purposes
"and thoughts through the ages."
e.g. this "list of political thinkers with summaries of what many of them have to say
"I'm certain others could think of other tools that would help people understand politics, and understanding is the first part of any discussion."
Follow the links as above.
As for the virulence of debate:
"It's all trolling, really." - Hayley Easto, a founder of openpolitics.ca and free speech defender
Just to make sure you get your facts right,..
I'm being OUTRAGEOUSLY pedantic!
I do not think this is the best place to ask your question HEIL HITLER!
http://outcampaign.org/
If you want something seriously useful, then you need to consider various scenarios that a toy site can ignore: e.g. what happens if Karl Rove hires a few dozen people to get on your site, and pretend that they're several hundred different people, who all just happen to be presenting a similar spin?
Myself, I think the only reasonable answer is that you have to abandon anonymity. Every user account needs to be tied to an actual person in meatspace.
(All of which means that I think both slashdot and wikipedia are essentially toy sites that are on their way down the tubes.)
I know this is probably never going to be read, but I'll have a quick say anyway.
:)
I believe the best and most civil forums have roughly 5-20 active participants. Any more and you just have fools who join strictly to post "all liberals hate America!" or "all conservatives are Nazis!" With a smaller community its much simpler to run because the extremists can always be bashed back into line (ie. www.tdtalk.com)
Anyway, good luck
Neutral point of view ideology just won't work in politics. NPOV is about moderating out extreme opinions and leaving only what can be stated in some mutually agreed terms. There's no way a political debate could work that way, you need contrast and dialectic tension between the extreme positions.
Accordingly a Multiple Point of View (MPOV) convention like metaweb.com or openpolitics.ca or some of the pages at dkosopedia.com use, is required. There can be a neutral issue statement but after that everything is a "position" that can be stated the way its supporters want it stated.
A political party needs a sympathetic point of view convention something like wikinfo.org uses.
NPOV is made into a religion by some of the Wikipedia cultists, who refer to Jimmy Wales as their "GodKing". It sounds like they're joking, but they are not. NPOV always tends to a dictatorship of the most powerful administrator.
No, really, why do you hate our troops so obviously and so much? WHY???? Somewhere in Alabama, a sargeant's little girl is crying in her room now - she knows how much you hate her daddy and want the terrorists to kill him. She even knows that you want pedophiles to kidnap her and sell her on the vile Internet to the highest bidder, and her dollies and her little dog too (puppophiles?). It is so sad that there are people like you allowed to speak and vote in America. So very sad. We lost our way somewhere. Like oh say after Salem, MA, 1690.
(hmm someone could start a new ask.slashdot on Why do you hate our troops?)
The MPOV sounds like what I was thinking about. I used wikipedia's NPOV only as a well-known example.
:)
:) No offence?
The important part is having simple, clear guidelines (that work) and respecting them.
The problem is the "that work" part since I can't see any set of rules without its problems. Especialy since in a debate it's expected to use whatever means to win. How long will neutral issue statements resist? Either they'll lean towards a POV, or they'll be contested as leaning, or both. Anyways, I promise I'll take a look at the links you provided. Right now in my timezone it's early morning and I have to go to bed
Also I'd like criticise you a bit about hitting on wikipedia. I realise it's not perfect, but it's not supposed to be. It *is* however very useful, and the world is a better place because of it. And yet almost every time it's mentioned it's about a flaw or another. Sounds a bit like "XP is a bad OS" and "Microsoft is evil". None is true, but makes people feel good saying it.
I'm sorry about saying that, especially when your post is way more useful than mine
Oh, and I'm not a wikipedia cultist or anything. Lately I've just used it for finding anime reviews...
If you want to shift the debate at issue on the fly, look at debatepoint.com, it lets you shift the point under debate as a basic function. However, issues tend to stabilize based on certain principles people think are important and persistent briefings on issues are important.
So once you have gone over the issues a few times you may discover you have to stabilize them into something like an openpolitics.ca type issue statement. If you want to do this on American issues right now try looking at the FrameShop methods from dkosopedia. Looks like it's based on the George Lakoff model. The issue organizing is from work dating back to the 1970s.
However, there are asshats there too. For instance, people just trying to enforce neutral naming conventions have actually been blocked by jerks who think they "own" pages or issues and can control their presentation. How such people are mistakenly given sysop powers on a political site, hard to say, but all such sites have growing pains.
There are also pretty serious biases just because of American media and the people who participate in English. It's hard to find a single political service in America where you can question Zionist occupation of Palestine without some form of harassment and exclusion by technical means. In Arabic of course it would be the other way around. Probably you have to debate in French to get anything like a neutral treatment of that issue, and the French would have strong feelings on things like Algeria and Lebanon. In any political site the systemic biases of who participates are going to rule what is said. Any "majority rule" system like rankings will drive off any minority however outspoken. So most of what is done on commercial sites and in software like slash just doesn't cut it.
Go look at wikitruth.info if you want to swap stories about how Jiminy Wales is the new Bill Gates and Wikipedia is the new Microsoft. There's lots of good examples of lies becoming fact there based on who Jiminy Wales personally believes and decides will have their views reflected in Wikipedia. There is obviously no definition of a "troll" there other than what Wales himself personally considers one. And as a rich, white, middle-aged male living in the USA of avowedly libertarian views, that puts him in a very small category of people worldwide. Most of the world would not consider him "neutral" in any way, shape, form or test.
You can say this for Wikipedia though: the pages documenting genuine vandalism and telling troll stories about sysop vandalism and other sysop abuses are among the funniest things ever written. If you think pettiness, small-mindedness, self-certainty, ideological rigidity, absolute refusal to examine one's own behaviour, self-sabotage, logical fallacy, misquotes and paraphrases as a way of life, and a deliberate ideological commitment to the strictest definitions of stupidity are funny, that is. Wales is all that and more, but there are clowns around him who make Wales look like Socrates.
Threaded media are useless for political debate, for exactly the reason you suggest: any worthwhile question will be crapflooded by those who consider it against their interests to discuss.
The kind of post-by-post deletion or moderation you have to do for a debate thread necessarily becomes censorship when you have to decide if a post that contains a few relevant sentences and a few irrelevant, can be retained or not.
Accordingly, you need third person statements and the kind of contract that prevails in a wiki: version control is sacred and attribution is strict, but no one has sole control of any sequence of words that will appear to the reader, that's only collective.
In other words: absolutely no one other than the administrators who create the buttons, frames, form prompts, has sole control of even so much as a full sentence on any topic/issue page, even if they created it and solely authored it. All they have a right to is accurate attribution and quoting, just as they would if a third party journalist had written a story about the topic.
So the wags who say "impossible" are correct that it's impossible with slash or civicspace or yahoogroups or opengroups or newsgroups or mailing lists. If it is possible at all (not saying it is) it would have to be on a wiki base. And that's borne out by all the good meaty political stuff that's on wikis now: dkosopedia, sourcewatch, wikocracy, anarchopedia, openpolitics, Living Platform, consumerium. And quasi political wikiscience like embodimentwiki and administrative gurudom like let.sysops.be.
Threaded media are useless for political debate, for exactly the reason you suggest: any worthwhile question will be crapflooded by those who consider it against their interests to discuss.
The kind of post-by-post deletion or moderation you have to do for a debate thread necessarily becomes censorship when you have to decide if a post that contains a few relevant sentences and a few irrelevant, can be retained or not.
Accordingly, you need third person statements and the kind of contract that prevails in a wiki: version control is sacred and attribution is strict, but no one has sole control of any sequence of words that will appear to the reader, that's only collective.
In other words: absolutely no one other than the administrators who create the buttons, frames, form prompts, has sole control of even so much as a full sentence on any topic/issue page, even if they created it and solely authored it. All they have a right to is accurate attribution and quoting, just as they would if a third party journalist had written a story about the topic.
So the wags who say "impossible" are correct that it's impossible with slash or civicspace or yahoogroups or opengroups or newsgroups or mailing lists. If it is possible at all (not saying it is) it would have to be on a wiki base. And that's borne out by all the good meaty political stuff that's on wikis now: dkosopedia, sourcewatch, wikocracy, anarchopedia, openpolitics, Living Platform, consumerium. And quasi political wikiscience like embodimentwiki and administrative gurudom like let.sysops.be.
"I could see that it might not be too bad if there were no anonymous posting."
Wrong. Turning off anonymous posting makes almost every problem worse:
1. Politics is about serious bodily harm and greed-guaranteeing opportunity. Worldwide, even today, it's very common in politics for people to threaten others or kill them or their family members over political issues. Yes, anonymous death threats can happen but they are near zero in credibility - who'd believe one? But anonymous criticism of the powerful is an absolute necessity. Three points of evidence for this:
1a. the secret ballot - why do we hide who votes for whom, in every democracy?
1b. letters to the editor and the call-in radio show - it's pretty easy to fake who you are or keep your name invisible in these media, why are they still the two most common media for political debates in our TV/net society?
1c. Publius and the Federalist Papers: why were those written pseudonymously?
2. People will adopt fake names and constantly change them instead, whether or not pseudonyms are "allowed", you will certainly have lots of them anyway.
3. Flame wars erupt mostly because one person won't stop bugging another with the implications of some comment. If everyone has the right to disappear, or at least COULD HAVE stated their point anonymously and then disappeared without response or further harassement, you can't be blamed as the sysop for any future harassment. And the motivation for flaming anonymous trolls is near zero, since everyone knows the troll will only respond if they see a way to inflame you further. So anonymity dampens this effect.
4. If, in a heated political argument, someone doesn't want to give you their name in a town hall or street or cafe conversation, do you grab them by force and bind and gag them? Or do you grab their wallet and insist on seeing their ID? Or eject them for life for resisting these power grabs?
If you would not do these things, you would also not enforce non-anonymity.
CONCLUSION: The belief that politics can be done without anonymous input is not only wrong, at this point in history, it's plain stupid. All evidence is against. Most of the blogosphere gurus consider anonymous comment a RIGHT. And there's a whole wiki troll culture devoted to making it very difficult to track down who wrote what. Entropy says they're going to win in the long run, so build your systems of credentials and identity around voluntary disclosure, not stupid rules that try to force people to "give your real name".
Also, consider that someone who can happily and freely engage in a debate about homosexual teachers, and reveal they are themselves gay, in the USA, without (much) fear or reprisal, could be travelling through a homophobic country some day and arrested just on the grounds of what they said in your forum. So that's another very solid reason to support blind credentials. And crack down very hard on "outing" (the involuntary disclosure of real or supposedly real names of persons who have posted anonymously).
:) See? this is exactly what I meant! Any of this may be true but guess what?! i don't care. The only reason you get to say this shit is because wikipedia is famous and wales is a celebrity. Why? because wikipedia is something useful, to lots and lots of people.
You know what I do care about? That I can find the Naruto list of story arcs there. Yes, even the fillers. And it's pretty up to date, too.
"Censor anything that deviates from logical discourse. Discover a contradiction, belittle the poster for their failure to argue critically and objectively, attempt to correct their pseudo-syllogism, and applaud yourself for making the world a better place." This suggestion is laughably stupid. While you can point out seeming logical fallacy without taking power-grabbing action, you must offer at least the chance to rephrase and/or reply so that malformed arguments with differing assumptions can be restated.
This is not an opinion of mine, it's a basic epistemic error well known to all philosophers: There is no objective way to define objectivity, nor frame an issue so some "logical" method can neutrally apply to it. Framing choices reliably invert causality and make logic useless: this is called Simpson's Paradox. In any situation with incomplete or changing information, i.e. any real world social or political situation, the rules of logic simply do not apply. You can build machines with logic, but you cannot argue political debates with it alone. Rhetoric and imagery play the central role in bodily decision. Of all political philosophers probably only Hobbes thought logic could be actually objective and bodies reduced thus to axioms. Aristotle did NOT believe this, contrary to Ayn Rand's nonsensical over-interpretation of the law of excluded middle. In fact he considered rhetoric the highest art: the wise choice of metaphor/imagery/framing. Descartes considered the imagination to be the link between the body and mind, he saw no "duality".
"An easy way would be to also allow the community to modify words by adding hyperlinks to support or deride premises." This is by far the better way, it's been strongly advised in all serious literature about this since 1960s.
It's astonishing that anyone who would offer something so stupidly colonial as the first suggestion would also offer this perfectly good correct answer. But politics is by nature astonishing, so don't be surprised when you get astonished.
Also read this, it helps explain why sysop and business types make very very poor political leaders and rulers: they come from domains where planning seems to work, as opposed to the domains where it's known not to work very well, and where dissent always has the truth wrapped up within it.
"Myself, I think the only reasonable answer is that you have to abandon anonymity. Every user account needs to be tied to an actual person in meatspace.
(All of which means that I think both slashdot and wikipedia are essentially toy sites that are on their way down the tubes.)"
Nothing like obvious hypocrisy to discredit stupidity. If it's not worth posting on sites that thrive on anonymous posting, then why did you post here?
You are stupid, and your own behaviour is the only required evidence of this. You are wasting your time doing things that you yourself say are pointless. How then could anyone take any comment from you seriously?
Aside from the obvious problem that elaborate login procedures very greatly discourage participation and are proven to arbitrarily cut your group of posters to near zero;
Others have posted reasonable analyses of the dangers of trying to attach every post or opinion to a killable human body. No doubt those who love to be able to track down and intimidate their opponents with violence wholly approve of an all-outed, everyone-exposed forum. People who believe in truth however know that it's often stated by the most powerless, those least likely to attach their name. Or be most harmed if their name is revealed by unethical types like yourself, who would probably consider it their "right" to "protect their forum" from "anonymous trolls" and so on.
"the site's owner doesn't use it to push his own agenda."
But the "site owner" can't possibly KNOW what his or her "own agenda" is. It would be hard, for instance, for someone raised as "an American" to identify much with the advocates of say Hawaii sovereignty or Alaska separatism. That seems like a clear bias but it wouldn't be, it would come disguised as dozens of other subtle biases. And just the expression of the site owner's personal preference would be (correctly) taken as a license for open attacks by the sycophantic sysops on those who opposed them.
So the only answer is that there CANNOT BE a "site owner" but more like a dispute resolution process and neutral board composed of people from quite extreme factions who agree ONLY on how debate is conducted, and have as little else in common as possible. It could be great fun to recruit such a board. Imagine:
- a noisy spokesperson for Hizbollah who often appears on Hizbollah TV
- an official spokesperson for the Chinese government who's in the Communist Party
- an Internet troll chosen in a sort of reality show or contest to determine infamy
- Ciccolina, leader of an Italian federal political party and former porn star
- Ann Coulter
- Spike Lee
- Larry Flynt
Now that's "fair and balanced"!!! Because not one of these people (trolls, all of them) would even bother to try to claim that they represented some large group of people's opinion. They all start from the premise that they are unusual, know it, and have to create relatively fair argument playing fields in order to get anywhere.
In any case AC, to address the substantive points buried in your post:
Yes, but once you get beyond the "toy site" level, encouraging participation is not the problem. There's no shortage of comments to read on slashdot -- there is however a shortage of people who know what they're talking about. Discouraging frivolous activity would perhaps not be such a bad thing.As far as new sites are concerned, it could be that the solution is to gradually ramp up the access barriers; except that then you have to watch out for regular users feeling betrayed by changes in the ground rules.
I can see how this is a concern but (1) for slashdot to know who each poster is is different from the readers knowing this -- admittedly there would still be risks to a brave AC from government demands for identity, for example. (2) I think that these concerns are usually exaggerated -- our culture is drowning in fear at present (don't give that guy who cut you off the finger, he might have a gun!) and we really need to get over it.It's possible that there is a compromise system that would be workable for slashdot: currently there's a three tier system: ACs/logged-in/logged-in-with-karma-bonus. A fourth level for people with verified identity might be a good-enough fix that doesn't completely do away with anonymous voices. (Note: paying customers would automatically be in the fourth level, a point that you'd think would appeal to the SlashMasters...)
Now now, you're letting your rhetoric run away with you. It's all well and good to delicately suggest that I want to sneak around in a black hood gunning down fine upstanding ACs such as yourself, but if you start acting like you've proven the point you just end up looking nutty.You can only be aware of part of your own agenda, since so much of it comes from prior conditioning and ideologies and linguistic norms you accepted since youth.
If nothing else, your tolerance for dissenting opinion will be quite different for topics where you have a personal interest or strong values conflict, and this will tend to select for people whose tolerances are like yours. The more you insist you are immune to your own systemic biases, the more certain you are to be ruled by them.
You cannot know the limits of your own limits. You could only recruit others to share the power that any one of you would necessarily abuse. There's a reason that Supreme Courts consist of seven to nine individuals (depending on jurisdiction) chosen for life by different administrations. Something similar is required to limit systemic biases of anyone involved in making major decisions in a political forum.
Start with three.
Ah, excellent. You pass the intelligence test: respond to provocation by de-escalation. The Chinese characters for "troll" are those for "Internet", "provocation" and "learning" in that order. We are now down to the learning:
1. We agree on "how easy it is to game the moderation system" - it's just useless, as are all ranking systems that don't take account of people's varying reasons to rank things, or their varying loyalties. A factional ranking system where one could rank posts as "more Republican" or "more Communist" or "geekier" IF ONE IS ACCEPTED AS ARBITER OF THOSE VIEWS would be OK but trying to pretend that everyone's rankings should be mashed together is just more idiot TV-like thinking.
2. We agree on "the obvious problem that elaborate login procedures very greatly discourage participation and are proven to arbitrarily cut your group of posters to near zero" but not that it discouragse comment by the people you actually WANT. I say the people you want are busy and don't want to log in, waste time on verification procedures, and certainly don't want to be bugged by idiots who make it their life's duty to annoy people who post contrary opinions on major websites. The "shortage of people who know what they're talking about" can only be addressed by making it incredibly easy for busy fly-by users to participate. And making it easy for useless fly-by users and spam to be quickly made invisible.
3. Certainly "you have to watch out for regular users feeling betrayed by changes in the ground rules" if you're going to raise access barriers, but worse, you have to be sure you are not just empowering a clique. In wiki troll culture there is the idea of the "new troll point of view" meaning that the new users have more power than the old ones.
4. Regarding the "dangers of trying to attach every post or opinion to a killable human body", it may be worse to empower a group of administrators only to know this - it would tend to empower their friends. As for whether "these concerns are usually exaggerated" that is a culturally specific statement, and Internet communication can be read in all cultures and all countries. Surely it is valid concern in many countries. "Outing" a Falun Gong member who happens to live in New York is no big deal, but what if he happens to live in Beijing? You may have sentenced him to death.
5. The "three tier system: ACs/logged-in/logged-in-with-karma-bonus" isn't enough, and if you want "a fourth level for people with verified identity", great, if you want only to read what they say, or what another verified person recommends, fine. Not sure why "paying customers would automatically be in the fourth level" necessarily, some may choose to remain anonymous and pay via some anonymous means. Another possibility is to have people pay to create initial scores like 10 cents to create a default score 1 and a dollar to create a default score 5. Then very strongly held views could be seen by others but downranking is still possible.
6. "No doubt those who love to be able to track down and intimidate their opponents with violence wholly approve of an all-outed, everyone-exposed forum. People who believe in truth however know that it's often stated by the most powerless, those least likely to attach their name. Or be most harmed if their name is revealed by unethical types" who "want to sneak around in a black hood gunning down fine upstanding ACs". Or just randomly outing people and causing harm they don't even find out about. Political sites are kind of like dating sites.
Anyway, some good and useful ideas above.