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david.is.farrar

User Profile Image david.is.farrar
Member since : May-23-2009 (Verified)
4 Ideas, 16 Comments, 42 Votes

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Ideas Posted

When you say you delete "duplicate" posts, what criteria are you using? I see lots of duplicate posts here, some even by the same authors as far as I can tell.

Secondly, when you delete posts, do you publish a notice of removal in its place, and state the reasons for its deletion? It's a matter of transparency that the public is made aware that a certain post has been removed, and why.

ex animo
davidfarrar
I may have missed it, but if the owners/operators of this website have the ability to match IP addresses with their voting record, they should come forth with that information. It's called "TRANSPARENCY".

ex animo
davidfarrar
Once you remove a post, you become responsible for that removal. I would suggest you simply remove the offending post to another OGD webs page, entitled "OGD Off-Topic" site" and provide a link to this post where their original post was posted on OGD. In this way, OGD is not abridging anyone 1ts Amendments Rights should they apply now or later. Secondly, it will give all an opportunity to judge the voracity of the claim of removal, while preserving transparency.
I have been recently shocked to learn that not all of the protections we presently enjoy against the federal government in the Bill of Rights have never been fully incorporated into state law. Meaning, some of the freedoms we assume we all enjoy under the Bill of Rights may be taken away from us by state law. This is totally unconscionable. What good is it to have a federal right to bears arms, only to have them taken away by state agents?
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Comments Posted

david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Well, this kind of online deliberative meetings can be used by many, many local, state and federal governmental committee meetings presently held in one place at a time certain. If Robert's Rules of Online Order could be adopted for online use, these governmental deliberative committee meetings could now be held online and attended by many, many more people from all over the country. This is the real value of developing Robert's Rules for Online Order. Virtually every governmental committee meetings presently used RRs. These are public meetings but who can go due to time and distance limitations? Once these governmental committee meetings are held online now the public can attend from all over the United States...thereby increasing citizens' participation in government tremendously.

ex animo
davidfarra
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Yes, it was certainly helpful. Thank you.

For the record, I agree with the proposal. With all its shortcomings, the process of holding randomly selected citizen's deliberative councils(focus groups)should be undertaken. Although, I am not sure they should be held in a private setting. As I have suggested, with the advent of the internet, conference video, streaming video and efficient online archiving of same, there should be no reason NOT to have our cake and eat it too.

Randomly select your committee members from all over the country. Insure each has a computer, bandwidth and a web-cam. Thus equipped, they can hold their deliberative meetings online, in full public view and with full public participation, both before the online video conference deliberative meeting is held, as well as afterward, for fact-checking and other follow-up purposes. The advantages of this procedure is that it would truly provide the basis to suggest these proceedings will "tap the wisdom of We, the people," as well as create a compete record of the proceedings.

One added note, if structured correctly, committee members, as well as the public, could, theoretically, attend the meeting at any time, day or night, over the course of a month, several months, or years, depending on how long it took the committee to make a motion to call the question. Have it seconded, and supported by a majority vote of the committee. In essence, once provided with the necessary online equipment, there would be no need to physically hold a deliberative council meeting at a time and place certain at all. All can attend and become part of the process of tapping into the wisdom of We, the People.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Nope.

Someone has lied to you. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(Bill_of_Rights)

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
And now all we have to do, gentlewo/men, is move this whole Town Hall meetings process online, using Robert's Rules of Online Order -- which hasn't actually been invented yet, but is being worked on.

And here is a scoop known only to this group, it soon will be completed.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Yes,

You can, of course, experiment with the rules, or even adopt a set of your own. The point being, you establish some sort of deliberative order which will allow all to speak and to be heard along the linews of RRs. Robert's Rules have over time proven themselves to be very effective in bringing order to a deliberative meeting. And there is certainly nothing inherent in RRs that would prohibit them from being re-written for online use. It would be a real break-through for public participation in governmental affairs if they could also participate right from their own home computer at any time in real deliberative government meetings. If a particular CDC meeting was online and the public was given a chance to participate, although unofficially, the CDC members themselves would be able to see where the public was heading on an issue, read their comments, questions and concerns, and move the CDC meeting towards those ends, address those concerns, answer those questions. Whatever the outcome of a particular CDC meeting, it would be considered far, far more valuable if 13,000 people also agreed with their conclusion.

Sadly, this is a point Obama's Organizing for America hasn't fully appreciated. Rather than simply turn his 13-million member group into a rubber stamp committee, give them their own voice, allow all to speak and to be accurately heard. In this fashion, their collective voice would be far, far more effective if people realized it was coming from them and not simply dictated from on top.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Thanks, Tom.

I will certainly read your suggested literature,as I am sure others will, as well. I certainly appreciate your effort. But I remain sceptical. I remain sceptical because human nature being what it is, the process WILL be manipulated. To me, and this is just my feeling on the subject, it would be far better to acknowledge the fact that the process does have inherent biases and prejudices, in every aspect of the deliberative process, from selection of the CDC members, to picking the facilitators, in the facilitation process itself, to the experts invited, to the experts not invited, to deciding when and where to hold the CDC meetings, and so on. It is to these structural shorcomings Suroweicki's THE WISDOM OF CROWDS would be able to overcome by seer numbers.

Let me just take a blind stab here and ask you at what time during the day are these CDC meetings generally held? Where are they generally held? How many people from the public usually attend these meetings?

I ask you these questions, as you may have guessed, because they are factors that directly effect the CDC process and one that the online deliberative process can directly impact.

In terms of addressing your Point(c): using powerful co-creative processes like Dynamic Facilitation which deeply hear all perspectives and translate violent disagreements into concerns that are then well heard. (I have a hard time imagining how this would be done online, but that's another subject...)

If a CDC member requested -- or more specifically, if a CDC member made a motion, and if the motion is seconded and a vote of the entire CDC is taken in the affirmative) a request to further explore an area of concern with a dynamic facilitator's would be generated.

The dynamic facilitator would respond, in writing -- I would suggest in a certain color -- and the dynamic facilitator's post would become part of the record for all to see and carry on from there. There would be any number of ways to approach this function, from simply adding a "Dynamic Facilitator's Response" hyper link, leading to a full web page, to placing the dynamic facilitator's response directly under the CDC request.

Under the "Public" section, of course, there will be an opportunity for the public to respond to the dynamic facilitator's post, as well as a voting function, as to whether the public agrees with the facilitator's choice work or not, or have no opinion one way or there other, usually represented by the horizontal thumb position, as opposed to a thumbs down or a thunbs up icon -- your basic deliberative groupware function. In this manner, all voices will be heard, not just that of the dynamic facilitator's.

But, as I said, I will read your material, as presented, and, again, thank you for your effort. If you have any specific hyper links as to how CDC members are chosen, by whom, and by what method, et cetera, it would speed up the process considerably -- another unique function and power of the internet at work.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
bidwell2,

I agree. Many public issues have opposing views and provisions must be made in this "Use Randomly Selected Citizen Deliberative Councils to tap the collective wisdom of We the People" suggestion to deal with creating a CDC in an adversarial setting. At present, I have seen very little literature from the links provided acknowledging this issue, let alone addressing it.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Edward,

I couldn't have said it better myself. Holding a deliberative meeting without following Robert's Rules is not a deliberative meeting at all. It's just a means for those in power to wrap their agenda in a cloak of public unanimity.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Good point, in-box.

"Ad hoc, randomly selected, well-informed citizen deliberative councils"..."cii" suggested that the process would be likened to a jury selection process. As everyone knows, a judicial process is an adversarial setting. So I suppose the filtering process has a set of written criteria, together with two representatives of opposing points of view, each appointing members one by one, and opposing others on stated grounds, all watched over my an impartial judge, who is bound by the written criteria. This deliberation would be, of course, recorded and accessible to the public, with an adequate appeals mechanism available to those not chosen.

How ever the CDCs are created, holding their meetings online, accessible to millions, if not the whole world, would be vastly superior to holding their meeting face-to-face, where only a releative few would be able due to time and distance limitations to participate, is my only point.

My only other point is to raise the consciousness of people who still think in pre-internet terms, that a new day in effective communication has, indeed, arrived. And that to not take advantage of it, where possible, would be a disservice to We, the people.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
d1doherty,

With all due respect, you don't think city officials, corporate CEOs and farmers haven't thought of that? I am sure the challenge is how to achieve that goal and still be cost competitive, or within a city's budget, or the cost of the farmer's produce within a price range what will sell to in their markets.

I think perhaps a few experts would be advisable here. In fact, there is already a very, very wide amount of material already created that could address this particular issue. All we need is James Surowiecki's "Wisdom of the crowds", guided by informed experts to find the right answers. But to do that we new a communicative tool that will allow all of the experts, with all of their material and We, the people's wisdom brought to bear on this problem at a cost we all can afford. My. friends, that tool is the internet, deliverative groupware and Robert's Rules of Online Order.

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
cii,

I apologize if I spoke too bluntly. But in terms of creating a CDC that actually represents We, the people, a wise attorney once said...your case is either won or lost during juror voir dire.

If the goal here is to invite more citizens to "that" party, it just seems to me small, face-to-face meetings would be a self-limiting factor in the pursuit of that goal.

Danniel,

Unless a face-to-face CDC is charged with implementation as well as consensus-building, I can't see your point. Implementation is a whole new enterprise, once the consensus has been form and the decision has been made. But here, again, because the Internet is such a powerful communicative tool, there would be nothing preventing the invitation of We, the people, i.e., the public, from participating online in forming the rules and regulations of any successful implementation as well.

Guys...we have to start thinking out of the box here! There is not a minute to lose!

david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Agreed. But if you are seriously talking about We, the People, there is really only one way to achieve that -- by inviting We, the People, to participate. Anything less is at best, a distraction, a deception at worse.

Moreover, there is absolutely no way you can ever handle a Citizen Deliberative Council made up of, lets say, 15 decision-makers, reviewing expert testimony from 150 experts and 10,000 public comments, together with reams of background material in a face to face setting. And even if you could, the cost would be astronomical. But to construct a Citizen Deliberative Council meeting online, using good deliberative groupware and following Online Robert's Rules of Order, it can be done, and done routinely, with everything from your local city's garden's club meeting to pending Congressional legislation on cap and trade.

The Internet has been called the most powerful communicative tool since movable type. It would be sheer folly not to take advantage of its power now. It would be like someone hitching up a team of horses to pull this new fangled invention called the Model T -- sheer folly!

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Use Randomly Selected Citizen Deliberative Councils to tap the collective wisdom of We, the People, is a great idea. But why not really raise the bar by setting the whole deliberative process of "Citizen Deliberative Councils" online, complete with "Public" input, and using the newly adopted Online Robert's Rules of Order?

ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 9 months ago
Great idea, Doug. That Evergreen State College was never finished, was it? I remember going to their site and it didn't seem to be finished. To date, I am not aware of any efforts being undertaken in this area. If there are, I would very much like to kn ow about them.

davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 10 months ago
If these rule making meetings could be held online, and if we had a set of commonly adopted Robert's Rules of Order specifically designed for online use, many, many more members of the public could participate, providing for a much broader and richer record from which the rule-making decision-makers could avail themselves of in basing their decision.
ex animo
davidfarrar
david.is.farrar 10 months ago
But there is no better set of rules to insure that all have an equal chance to speak and to be heard than Robert's Rules of Order in a deliberative setting. I do hope you understand what I mean when I say a "deliberative" setting.
A deliberative setting is where a problem is stated and a decision must be made that will best address the stated problem. This is not a meeting where a group of people all gather around and group-talk with each other and somehow come to a commonly shard conclusion.
Under a deliberative setting there is a set number of decision-makers (usually government bureaucrats or elected officials). At present these decision-makers depend on a ridiculously small number of "experts" and "public" input to help them make their decisions. But if we could have a generally adopted set of cyber Rules of Order, the "public" could be vastly bigger, encompassing James Surowiecki's vision of the benefits of the "Wisdom of the Crowds" effect, with many, many more "experts" participating as well. All because they would no longer have to take the time, incur the expense of traveling to where the meeting is actually taking place to give their input.
Even if you don't understand the point, you must see that "collaborating online will be vastly more efficient than collaborating in person, at a time and place certain.
All we need is a set of rules that will allow everyone a voice, allow all to speak and to be accurately heard by the decision-makers -- which is all Robert's Rules of Order has guarantied for over two hunderd years.
So please re-consider your vote and help move this issue forward.
Thank you for your consideration.
ex animo
davidfarrar