Back in 2016, post Trump and Brexit, I found a new political party in Australia based on the notion of real-time, blockchain based direct democracy - the Flux Party. Flux was premised on the notion that elected representatives in a parliamentary democracy would be human proxies for continuous real-time votes on individual policies. That is, representatives would vote on every single policy according to the outcome of daily blockchain-managed policy votes held amongst their electorate, and with each member of the electorate holding a different number of votes for different policy issues, based upon their qualifications and authority. It was intriguing. But it hasn't caught on. Like, not at all.
I love the idea of direct democracy. Input on issues you care about. My ‘what if’ brain throws out a whole bunch of scenarios where things don’t go so well. Who can become ‘trusted advisors’? How might people use AI bots to skew the feedback/votes/comments? As Ros mentions, what if the trusted experts are steeped in conscious or unconscious bias with authority on their side? Could it become yet just another social media type place where people hurl insults at one another? Maybe we can mitigate against these things. And maybe it would be better than gerrymandering rep democracy for the wealthy.
The problem I see here is that as soon as there are economic and self-interests at play, those with a lot of influence but the wrong agenda will impose their beliefs on others, buy their acceptance with social and publicity campaigns as any other politician does today. We need to restructure our society to make this work at scale. We need to rethink our values.
That could very well be true. Theoretically we could mitigate that if it was only the most trusted editors included their input. It wouldn't matter how rich you are, just how trusted of an editor you were. But overall you're right. We'd need to mitigate that (just as we do now!)
Now this is what I'm talking about! I'm all for expanding on current crowdsourcing models, imperfect as they are, because they help us see so clearly what we have to solve for it to work at scale.
Unfortunately Wikipedia is a terrible model, based on what I have seen on certain pages in which I am an expert. Those pages appear to be controlled by the same dysfunctional males with too much time on their hands. Basement-dwelling incels, I suspect.
As prone to their own biases as anyone, it is bad enough that they are left in control of the narrative of what is factual, let alone the narrative of society.
Hmmmm super valid objection, but can it not be mitigated against? I feel like the overarching concept of crowdsourcing from general populace + key experts is solid. Maybe it's about better definition of key expert, so we don't get basement dwellers.
Because they don’t let you. You end up in stupid energy- and time-consuming battles on the ‘talk’ page and you can’t win against established editors who don’t have jobs/families/lives outside of Wikipedia. I have books to write and real work to do; pointless power-struggles with limited thinkers is not a good use of my precious life.
I edit Wikipedia all the time and I have only ever had good experiences. I highly recommend the book Governable Spaces which goes into detail on the Wikipedia governance model and how successful it has actually has been. There may be some anecdotes where it isn't great, but compared to the other models it might be one of the more successful governance models we've ever seen!
I used to be involved editing Wikipedia too but gave up because the pages I was involved in were not healthy democratic spaces. The problem from my perspective is that it rigidly enforced the orthodox view on certain contentious subjects and misrepresents the plurality of what’s actually happening in the field. I’m glad, of course, that you are having a better experience!
That's a really interesting insight Ros. I never realised! I was pretty sold on this model too, but perhaps it's not as good as it seems. Thanks for sharing!
It seems much the same as other society structures -- those who seek power are the worst people to have it -- but with the addition that this is not a meritocracy. Key pages are controlled not by experts in the subject, but by those with the strongest opinions, and/or little kingdoms to maintain, and/or acres of time because they're not actually doing anything useful with their lives (beyond editing Wikipedia).
Back in 2016, post Trump and Brexit, I found a new political party in Australia based on the notion of real-time, blockchain based direct democracy - the Flux Party. Flux was premised on the notion that elected representatives in a parliamentary democracy would be human proxies for continuous real-time votes on individual policies. That is, representatives would vote on every single policy according to the outcome of daily blockchain-managed policy votes held amongst their electorate, and with each member of the electorate holding a different number of votes for different policy issues, based upon their qualifications and authority. It was intriguing. But it hasn't caught on. Like, not at all.
I love the idea of direct democracy. Input on issues you care about. My ‘what if’ brain throws out a whole bunch of scenarios where things don’t go so well. Who can become ‘trusted advisors’? How might people use AI bots to skew the feedback/votes/comments? As Ros mentions, what if the trusted experts are steeped in conscious or unconscious bias with authority on their side? Could it become yet just another social media type place where people hurl insults at one another? Maybe we can mitigate against these things. And maybe it would be better than gerrymandering rep democracy for the wealthy.
The problem I see here is that as soon as there are economic and self-interests at play, those with a lot of influence but the wrong agenda will impose their beliefs on others, buy their acceptance with social and publicity campaigns as any other politician does today. We need to restructure our society to make this work at scale. We need to rethink our values.
That could very well be true. Theoretically we could mitigate that if it was only the most trusted editors included their input. It wouldn't matter how rich you are, just how trusted of an editor you were. But overall you're right. We'd need to mitigate that (just as we do now!)
Now this is what I'm talking about! I'm all for expanding on current crowdsourcing models, imperfect as they are, because they help us see so clearly what we have to solve for it to work at scale.
I was thinking the same thing -- the sort of thing that's worth experimenting with at a small scale to see how it works and what we can learn from it.
Totally agree. Let's start a small Wikiocracy and try it out. 😊
Unfortunately Wikipedia is a terrible model, based on what I have seen on certain pages in which I am an expert. Those pages appear to be controlled by the same dysfunctional males with too much time on their hands. Basement-dwelling incels, I suspect.
As prone to their own biases as anyone, it is bad enough that they are left in control of the narrative of what is factual, let alone the narrative of society.
Hmmmm super valid objection, but can it not be mitigated against? I feel like the overarching concept of crowdsourcing from general populace + key experts is solid. Maybe it's about better definition of key expert, so we don't get basement dwellers.
Why don’t you edit them?
Because they don’t let you. You end up in stupid energy- and time-consuming battles on the ‘talk’ page and you can’t win against established editors who don’t have jobs/families/lives outside of Wikipedia. I have books to write and real work to do; pointless power-struggles with limited thinkers is not a good use of my precious life.
I edit Wikipedia all the time and I have only ever had good experiences. I highly recommend the book Governable Spaces which goes into detail on the Wikipedia governance model and how successful it has actually has been. There may be some anecdotes where it isn't great, but compared to the other models it might be one of the more successful governance models we've ever seen!
I used to be involved editing Wikipedia too but gave up because the pages I was involved in were not healthy democratic spaces. The problem from my perspective is that it rigidly enforced the orthodox view on certain contentious subjects and misrepresents the plurality of what’s actually happening in the field. I’m glad, of course, that you are having a better experience!
Oh that's tough. Worth looking into for sure. Thank you so much for sharing that perspective!
That's a really interesting insight Ros. I never realised! I was pretty sold on this model too, but perhaps it's not as good as it seems. Thanks for sharing!
It seems much the same as other society structures -- those who seek power are the worst people to have it -- but with the addition that this is not a meritocracy. Key pages are controlled not by experts in the subject, but by those with the strongest opinions, and/or little kingdoms to maintain, and/or acres of time because they're not actually doing anything useful with their lives (beyond editing Wikipedia).