Re: Webizen progress and next meeting

On Aug 6, 2014 5:10 AM, "Christophe Guéret" <christophe.gueret@dans.knaw.nl>
wrote:
>
> On 5 August 2014 23:57, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 5 August 2014 23:33, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Top posting to start a thread on a related idea.
>>>
>>> Some of the Webizen input was of the form - if Webizens do not get to
elect representatives who participate in Charter review - then no point in
having the program.
>>>
>>> Some of the input we received from the Advisory Committee was of the
form - if Webizens participate in the AC Charter review, then we have
deprecated Membership to a level that the AC is not comfortable with.
>>>
>>> Part of our challenge is to find the middle ground between these two
statements - which at first glance offer little in the form of middle
ground.
>>>
>>> Here is one idea that someone presented to me.  Have the Webizens elect
representatives.  Encourage them to participate in Charter review.  The
Director will (of course) pay heed to their input - as the Director always
cherishes input from the public.  But have this review outside of the
formal W3C process.
>>>
>>> This would give Webizens a tangible value.  But it would finesse some
of the AC concerns.
>>>
>>> It also might be a little too "cute".  Maybe Webizens would feel that
this does not provide real Charter review privileges.  Maybe the AC would
still be uncomfortable.
>>>
>>> I'm just thinking out loud.  Interested in input.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for initiating, imho, a fascination discussion.
>>
>> Democracy, which is the primary governance system of the world today, is
based on the principle of "one man one vote".
>>
>> There's a certain problem in computing known as the "sybil attack" or
"sock puppets" which can also be equated to "vote stuffing".  It's where a
single entity can have a disproportionate effect on the reaching of
consensus.
>>
>> What I'd love to see for webizens is an "opt-in" situation where people
can join a community and have a say in the future of the web, but that one
person can only have a single voice in the collective.
>>
>> All members of the group would also receive a dividend based on the
commons, ie the common value creation.  In time, if enough value is
created, in a fair way, the incentives will be for more and more people to
become webizens, and benefit mutually form the process.
>>
>> Just my $0.02
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Interesting discussion indeed. I would also me leaning towards the "one
person / one vote" side and suggest we forget about this idea of having the
Webizens elect representatives that would act as ACs. Actually, I think
this is how ACs currently work. Unless I'm mistaken, their are appointed by
a member organisation following some internal (democratic ?) decision
process and consult within the organisation before giving official
feedback. In that sense, I'd says all members of the member organisation
are Webizens that already use their AC as a representative.
>
> Focusing on the individual Webizen could maybe motivate them more to
join. A "you join, you vote" would be stronger and more seducing than a
"you join, you pick up someone that can vote for you" but we may give a
collective lower value to the recommendations provided by the Webizens than
to that provided by the members in order to preserve the advantages of
being an AC. Let's say, e.g., that during a charter review AC can provided
individual feedback and block the charter whereas all the Webizen comments
are merged as one "Webizen feedback" that can not be considered to block
the charter in its review process. This global review would then have a
list of contributors to list those who contributed to it without pin
pointing to the individual contributions. With such a system, one willing
to just have a say will be able to do it via a Webizen status whereas
giving more direct, and eventually blocking, feedback will require a full
membership status.
>
> Christophe
>
>
> --
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>
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>
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>

The likelihood of change has something to do with how radical it is.  I
would suggest that this idea is considerably more radical and perhaps the
analogies with one person one vote are over-stated, pure/direct democracy
is used almost nowhere, while some kind of representative democracy has
been shown to be effective in hundreds or thousands of working systems for
a number of reasons.  Charter Review is one thing, voting in TAG and AB are
another and participation in AC conversations and fairly rare meetings are
another.  Fitting into the existing AC model seems both easier to
accomplish and more effective/manageable on both ends.  What I'd advocate
personally is simply w3c support for creating an "org" out of a minimum
number of paying "webizens" who are not members of an existing org without
the hurdles of creating a legal entity - one step being CG, perhaps using
the existing chair nomination and election process to choose an AC, this
would have the effect of giving them ML , wiki and blog too.  Doesn't seem
that complicated, costly or disruptive in a bad way.