I guess I misunderstood the purpose of this site so I only have myself to blame for feeling more depressed than excited about my experience. Depression translates into less participation of course. It would be interesting to take a survey to find out how each participant - i.e. did this experience increase or decrease the feeling that they were really participating in a dialogue that would be read by the President. This idea could easily serve as that survey. 'Looks promising' means you think your comments will be read (positive reinforcement); voting the other direction would mean you felt it was a waste of time and would be less enthusiastic in participating in the next state. I don't mind starting the survey off with my vote - it's a negative for me (and I'm definitely not one of the birth certificate ranters).
Survey
Tags: collaboration open government
Comments (3)
No. I fully expected to see trolls, but I expected more diversity in their mindless rants.
The only way to shut them out would also shut out people who belong here. Get used to it -- this is the best you're gonna get from your species. Now, on my planet, when someone who has nothing to say can't think of what to do with his mouth, we strongly encourage the consumption of veggies (translation, "carrots").
Trolling is common to any Internet forum, especially one this public. They're trying to drive off all the legitimate users. Despite them, there is still a lot of good discussion going on.
The survey wasn't really a response to the birth certificate trolls. After reading the ideas and comparing them to the phase II discustion it became clear that this was really just an exercise for academics to talk to academics in academic-speak. Although I can wade through the overly verbose language to reach their pertinent points it's liking reading pages of acronyms to decipher a theme. Someone should put a syllable restriction on their posts - maybe only one word per sentence with more than 3 syllables in it. That might force them to present their points in the same way that normal people speak.