Tag Archive for 'Dialogue'

Open Government Dialogue: 26 Tips for Improving Phase 2

Published by Tim on June 10, 2009 in Events and Research. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

While working on the previous post, I couldn’t help but think how valuable it would be for participants, researchers and everyone else interested if these high-level participation metrics were readily available in real-time on the site that hosts the discussion, rather than having to dig them up manually and deal with incomplete information, assumptions and more or less wild guesses.

Some of the numbers I usually like to track over the course of an e-participation initiative include the following (these are all pretty straightforward and a number of tools recently used by the transition team and the new administration already expose some of them by default):

  • Number or registered users
  • Number of posts (or ideas, questions etc.)
  • Number of comments
  • Number of votes
  • Number of flags
  • Total word count
  • Participation per participant (e.g. average number of comments, median)
  • Leader boards (where applicable)

Others — both participants and observers — have pointed out other issues with the site that make it harder to use than necessary.

Based on their feedback and some of my own observations, I’ve compiled a list of 26 enhancement ideas that would considerably improve the participation experience during phase 2 of the Open Government Dialogue and increase the overall quantity and quality of participant input.

Some of these refer specifically to the tool used for phase 2 (Wordpress blogging engine for threaded discussions and a plug-in for comment rating) but most should be generally applicable across other tools as well.

I’m sure the list is far from complete. Please leave a comment below if you can think of anything else that could be improved.

Registration

  1. Improve the usability of the sign-up process (including a better fall-back solution for CAPTCHA, which a lot of users apparently can’t seem to figure out).

User profile

  1. Add a prominent link to the user profile self-management page, where participants can edit their name, contact information, password etc.
  2. Add a public user profile page that allows participants to voluntarily reveal more background on their real identity (e.g. by sharing their name, affiliation, a brief bio, photo/avatar, link to their personal blog etc.).
  3. On each participant’s profile page, list some basic participation metrics for that user and link back to all of her comments (this also makes finding one’s own comments a lot easier than, say, having to browse the entire archive).

Commenting

  1. Allow participants to edit or delete their comments for a reasonable time period after posting (e.g. to correct typos or remove duplicate entries).
  2. Consider imposing smart limits on the maximum number of characters allowed per comment to avoid overly lengthy submissions.

Navigation

  1. Add permalinks to comments for easier referencing and sharing across the web (e.g. using email, blogs, Twitter etc.).
  2. Highlight staff contributions more prominently.
  3. Display posts and threads in chronological order.
  4. Provide a more robust tree structure, one that properly associates replies with the comments they refer to (even if one or more comments from a thread have been hidden or removed) and which supports better browsing and sorting of comments and threads (e.g. show most recent posts or most recently active threads).
  5. Highlight recently added comments.
  6. Allow tagging of posts and comments.
  7. Add a tag cloud.
  8. Add a searchable directory of all registered users that supports various filters (e.g. sort by most active users, most recently joined, most highly voted etc.).

Notifications

  1. Add a prominent link to the general comment RSS feed as an alternative way to follow the discussions: http://blog.ostp.gov/comments/feed/
  2. Enable email notifications for new or updated blog posts, comments and replies.

Comment voting

  1. Allow participants to correct (take back or switch) their up or down votes on comments.
  2. In the meantime (and at a minimum), make participants better aware of the fact that votes cannot be changed once submitted.
  3. In addition, improve the usability of the voting (vote up, vote down), flagging and reply buttons: the icons aren’t clear enough and the buttons are fairly small, both factors that can lead to accidental mis-voting).
  4. In addition to net number of votes, expose the total number of positive and negative notes for each comment.
  5. Expose controversiality (the ratio of negative to positive votes).

Moderation

  1. For comments that have to be removed due to a violation of the terms of participation, leave a note that references the type of violation.
  2. In case a comment is removed, notify the original poster of her offense (we don’t know for sure if this is done consistently but judging from user feedback it’s not).

General

  1. Add an FAQ or help page.
  2. Add a statistics page that shows the number of registered users, number of comments, number of votes and number of flags over time.
  3. Add site-wide search (currently comments don’t seem to show up in search).

That’s all I could find over the past week. Please expand on this list as you come across other stumbling blocks.

Quality Participation Doesn’t Waste Participants’ Time!

Published by Tim on June 2, 2009 in Community, E-participation and Events. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Over the past few days, the site that’s hosting the Open Government Brainstorm has been overrun with off-topic ideas and spam (most noticeably, there has been an avalanche of requests to “release President Obama’s birth certificate in order to prove his US citizenship”). See this snapshot of the tag cloud I took yesterday:

Open Government Brainstorm: Obama birth certificate spam attack

Steven Clift just posted an idea that suggests a tried-and-true way of how to better deal with this situation:

Move Off-Topic Submissions – Add an Out-of-Scope button to move off-topic posts to their own space

Since a few people seek to dominate any public space hosted by government regardless of the topic, re-establish some equity by allowing participants to flag submissions as “off-topic.” With 10 off-topic votes, instead of deleting such posts, simply move them to a proper tab for all *who wish to see* can view them. An online consultation should make engagement more efficient. The online consultation manager should be able to freeze this feature should a minority of users attempt to game the system by flagging clearly on topic posts as off-topic.

Why Is This Idea Important?

When government spends tax dollars (or lends their support to partners like NAPA) to host structured sessions to gather online input, it is a waste of resources if relatively few individuals seek to hijack the public space for their pet issue which is clearly off-topic from the promised theme or agenda. Such submissions should be channeled rather than deleted (which would be a potential violation of the first amendment in what appears to be a legally public forum).

Here’s the comment I left:

Leaving off-topic ideas and spam unmoderated also forces those participants who come to this site with a sincere intention to contribute to dig through layers and layers of unrelated material. This makes participating more cumbersome and a lot less productive (and less fun). Any convener of e-participation effort of this kind would be well advised to being more mindful of their participants’ precious time. In that sense, moderation and community management become a courtesy.

Aside from off-topic discussions and spam, I’ve also noticed an increased use of foul language, general rudeness, and name calling.

I’d argue that taking a hands-off approach to managing an e-participation effort such as the Open Government Brainstorm (especially in light of these spam attacks) is a violation of a couple of rules laid out in the Core Principles for Participation that were released a few weeks ago (see the  expanded text for reference). For example, the third principle advises to avoid “hostile, disrespectful or stilted conversations,” (which, of course, doesn’t usually happen on its own without any management).

In my view, it is the convener’s responsibility to design and manage a process, online or offline, that maximizes each participant’s chance of having an impact, and there’s a cost involved in not doing so: By tolerating abusive behavior and by allowing the quality of the conversation to degrade, a large portion of the participants’ overall time and effort (which in large-scale efforts such as this one can easily exceed tens if not hundreds of person months) will be spent on low-quality, low-impact activities (e.g. browsing duplicate entries) when the real opportunity lies in enabling participants to share the best they got.

1771

Published by Tim on March 18, 2009 in Ideas. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I feel like sharing a few of the ideas that have accumulated on our wiki over the past couple or so years.

Most of these are related to the hosted e-participation service we’ve been working on, and hopefully some will see the light of day very shortly.

First, though, one general note on what has been driving a lot of our thinking. Public participation can often be fairly dry, especially when it boils down to a public reading exercise where participants are required to work their way through tons of briefing material. And while the work aspect is probably something that’s not entirely avoidable, I believe better efforts need to be made to make participation fun and entertaining and to create a more engaging user experience.

Let’s assume for a second that you’ve already figured out a process that allows you to conveniently split up a larger group into smaller teams, define a certain time frame, and assign specific tasks and deliverables related to the issue at hand that these teams can then collaborate on.

Now, if you also captured some basic demographics (e.g. age or age group) then that would allow you to assemble some teams according to certain demographic criteria. In the case of 1771, the idea is to bring together the fresh views of participants who are still young and foolish (17 years or younger) with the life experience of those wise and of old age (71 years or older) while leaving out everyone in the middle.

The outcomes from a 1771 team dialogue or deliberation could be nicely juxtaposed against those from the other, more randomly assembled ones.

Used in the right context and for the right purpose this could potentially provide quite a bit of community insight (and be entertaining at the same time, depending on how you phrase it).

National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation: October 3-5, 2008 in Austin, Texas

Published by Tim on July 2, 2008 in Events. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Intellitics will attend this year’s National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation, October 3-5, 2008 in Austin, Texas.

Here’s a quote from the NCDD email newsletter from today that gives you the details:

1.  Latest on the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation: Creating Cultures of Collaboration

We know your budget is tight this year, but if you are only able to attend one conference in 2008, we think it should be this one. Many people have told us our conferences are the best they’ve ever experienced. I just got an email from Larry Dressler saying the last NCDD conference (his first) was “probably the most innovatively designed meeting of this kind that I’ve ever attended.”

Our conferences are highly participatory (no keynotes and no traditional, dry panels), highly innovative (we try new things each year that are often imitated) and highly accessible (regular registration is only $375, which is about half of what comparable events cost). But the best thing about our conferences, by far, is the people. NCDD events draw the most intelligent, kind-hearted, positive, and thoughtful people I’ve ever encountered, and they’re what make our gatherings great.

So here’s what’s new…

a. The preliminary conference schedule is up at www.thataway.org/events/?page_id=113 – it’s shaping up to be our best conference yet. Confirmed workshops will be added shortly.

b. Our featured speakers are pictured and described at www.thataway.org/events/?page_id=156 – the stellar line-up includes D&D stars Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Bill Isaacs, Frances Moore Lappe, David Campt, Jim Fishkin and Hans-Peter Meister.

c.  At NCDD Austin, we’ll be tackling 5 of the main challenges facing our field. Check them out at www.thataway.org/events/?p=106

NCDD 2008 is co-sponsored by the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University, the Global Facilitator Service Corps, the Forum Foundation, the Democracy Imperative, the Bluebonnet Hills Christian Church, the LBJ Presidential Library, and Regis University’s Institute on the Common Good, and Everyday Democracy and Hal Saunders are Partners of the conference.

Learn more about the 2008 NCDD conference, which will take place October 3-5 in Austin, Texas, at www.thataway.org/events – or register at www.thataway.org/events/?page_id=136 .  Hope to see you there!

Their 2006 conference was held in San Francisco and a truly spectecular event, in terms of both content and people.

If you’re interested in doing something at or around the conference that focuses on the online component to dialogue, deliberation, or public participation, make sure to drop me a line or simply leave a comment.

14 Facebook groups for the dialogue, deliberation, public participation, e-government and e-democracy community

Published by Tim on May 9, 2008 in Community and Resources. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

The following are a few Facebook groups we watch that deal with various aspects of dialogue, deliberation, public participation, e-government or e-democracy (membership numbers as of today):

  • C2D2 – Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (18 members)
    Community of interest on dialogue and deliberation. Conference held every two years.
  • Conversation Cafe (308 members)
    Conversation Cafes promote community, democracy and wisdom world-wide through generating millions of open, respectful public conversations.
  • e-democracy (346 members)
    For those interested in e-democracy, especially the efforts of E-Democracy.Org.
  • E-Demokratie.org (in German, 12 members)
    E-Government oder E-Verwaltung beschreiben die Darstellung von Regierungs- und Verwaltungshandeln. E-Government wird aber auch häufig synonym mit dem Begriff E-Demokratie (eDemocracy) verwendet. Im Detail muss dabei jedoch stark differenziert werden: so geht es bei E-Demokratie nicht nur um elektronisch gestütztes Regieren. Es geht um viel mehr, es geht um Legitimation, Partizipation und Öffentlichkeit.
  • ePractice.eu (97 members)
    epractice.eu is a good practice exchange scheme with a web portal, weekly newsletter, country factsheets, online library, practitioner profiles, events calendar and monthly workshops created by the European Commission for the professional community in eGovernment, e-Inclusion and eHealth. epractice.eu involves practitioners from all 27 Member States, EU-member candidate states and EFTA countries but others are welcome to join. The portal combines online activities with frequent offline exchanges: workshops, face-to-face meetings and public presentations. A large knowledge base of real-life case studies submitted by portal members is freely available. The Facebook extension is provided in order to bridge the gap between Facebook’s social and epractice.eu’s professional touch.
  • Everyday Democracy (53 members)
    Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center) is a national organization that helps local communities find ways for all kinds of people to think, talk and work together to solve problems. We work with neighborhoods, cities and towns, regions, and states, helping them pay particular attention to how racism and ethnic differences affect the problems they address.
  • Government 2.0 (205 members)
    A new governance construct is possible… Create it
  • I support participatory democracy! (395 members)
    This group is for people who believe that democracy only becomes meaningful when it involves its people in participatory decisionmaking processes.
  • ICT4Democracy (192 members)
    Gathering of citizens from across the world believing that Information and Communication Technologies can help in providing us with more and better democracy and are willing to do something about it … in their lifetime …
  • International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) (20 members)
    IAP2 is an association of members who seek to promote and improve the practice of public participation in relation to individuals, governments, institutions, and other entities that affect the public interest in nations throughout the world.
  • National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) (348 members)
    A group for those dedicated to solving tough problems with honest talk, quality thinking and collaborative action. Join us if you agree with Einstein, that the problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
  • Participatory Budgeting (158 members)
    Participatory Budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. Participation may take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget. This is a group for exchange of information among those interested in practices of participatory budgeting.
  • POLITECH INSTITUTE (European Center of Political Technologies) (112 members)
    POLITECH INSTITUTE is a not-for-profit international association (AISBL) and a European Center of Political Technologies located in Brussels, Capital of Europe, bridging public institutions, international institutions, governments, regional and local authorities, universities, research centers, think tanks, civil society and political leaders with technology actors for a better use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) towards the advancement of modern public governance and democracy.
  • The World Cafe (249 members)
    A group for practitioners of/people interested in the TWC.

Needless to say, most of these organizations maintain resource-heavy websites of their own.

It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but should give you a head start if you want to connect with people in this community via Facebook. If you happen to know of any additional Facebook groups in this area, feel free to leave a comment.

Announcing Project Z

Published by Tim on April 22, 2008 in About and Events. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

These are the slightly modified slides from a quick presentation I gave last night at Web Monday Silicon Valley in San Francisco. It’s a first high-level introduction to our first product, a web application for problem solving and decision making in large groups.

We hope to have the initial pieces of an alpha version in place some time over the coming weeks.