Responses to the devilish advocacy:
The whole point is to *go to the people who are producing news and information already* and help modify their processes and software - especially if it's open source software - to enable them to effortlessly publish to the PWGD News site at the same time.
On PWGD, their content takes on a second life as it is seen by more people, can be contextualized (used in other ways with other content) by others, or can have ideas or actions associated with it.
fact checks, on both new and traditional sources, can be done by the community. Screeds and flames aren't censored, but will be rated below the threshold display level so most users will never see them.
Different viewpoints won't be isolated in news sources you don't read. And when you do come across a different viewpoint because it was voted important, it will be a little bit harder to dismiss as the view of a single reporter or editor.
The problem with a Digg-style system is that it relies on a relative few, privileged with time and inclination, to read through all the stuff that isn't voted on.
The result isn't a community vote of importance, but heavy users' view of what's interesting.
PWGD will use (possibly in addition) a petition for review process in which one person, or a person with co-sponsors, can propose that an item is important and should be on the front page or e-mailed to everyone.
This is 'time-share democracy' - we can't all decide what we all should see, because then we've all seen it - but we can divide this task among ourselves. A dozen people can make the call for 100 people, a 1,000 people, 10,000 people, a million people. This dozen is not an elite, but a random 'jury' drawn from the users for each quick "send or don't send" decision about how widely a message should be distributed.
There have been studies into democracy done by deliberative panels not of experts, but of citizens drawn from the population at random. Some people feel that this ability for a small number of people to study an issue at depth, without
The Zapatista good government councils similarly refresh from the population regularly.
PWGD News is not going so far as any of this, but it is a small step toward drawing people into participating in democracy.
We propose that one reason people are paying frighteningly little attention to news is because we are given many reasons to believe we can't *change* the news. Why spend time on something very possibly depressing, upsetting, or boring when the dominant message is that you can't change it.
The message may be the same - 'Town to cut library funding, hours' - but the context is different. You know you are able to immediately reach the thousands of other people already affected by this news.
Already associated with that article may be someone's proposal for gathering to discuss, or suggestion for action, with the ability for you to join that group that has a life of its own, rather than the only outlet being comments.
Another person may simply feel it's important to fill in the background of the article, with information on past budgets which may well come from another news article or town information already on the site.
Someone else may point out the access points people have to government to change this decision: town meeting, committee hearing, citizen initiative.
The same newspaper article that in the weekly newpaper might generate a few ineffectual letters to the editor could become a small campaign.
A company newspaper web site won't do this. Just as newspapers hardly ever post 'action meeting Thursday 6 p.m.' notices, even in letters-to-the-editor, so will most newspapers be resistant to hosting other people's agenda on their site.
More people may even subscribe to the paper-- because they know anything they read over their morning coffee will be a living (Some people may prefer the presentation on the newspaper's site to PWGD News, but similarly be more likely to use the paper's site because they know they won't be alone in reacting to the news.)
and seen by thousands more people.
The general goal is to bring most everybody into one communications framework. Even the stuff that does make the newspaper front page probably rarely gets to more than half the population. Very grandiose, but the idea is that if we go to the people who are producing content now-- rather than the typical internet forum case of 'come to me' we can get the ball rolling on what will become a dominant local communication media...
Democratic moderation will mean we can let everybody in, but that the longwinded, frequent poster (such as me) doesn't get his stuff in everybody's face.
Hey, Ben.
I apologize in advance for the pending sarcasm. Please don’t take it personally.
Okay, Ben, the longer you type, the less sense you make. Aldon made good points, but you don’t seem to have addressed any of them.
Also... What, did you get a vocabulary for an early Christmas present? You typed and typed and typed and still said nothing of any substance. For example: “The problem with a Digg-style system is that it relies on a relative few, privileged with time and inclination, to read through all the stuff that isn't voted on. The result isn't a community vote of importance, but heavy users' view of what's interesting.” Basically that means: ‘Most rating systems show popular stories as opposed to informative ones.’ Be concise. You can apologize for wordiness all you like, it still makes you sound like a bibbiling idiot.
And who coined the phrase “time-share democracy?” Who ever it was needs to be called to put down their creation.
Let me see if I’ve gathered the important parts. (I’m going to use a bulleted list, a simple, easy to read way to display just the pertinent information.)
You still need to make a list (note: list, not dissertation) of the things that will cost money and what you expect them to cost. Remember, I said LIST.
You also need to outline how your “jury” will be selected. Detail the process in words of fewer than three syllables. (Or possibly find an eight year old to write it for you.)
And you still haven’t covered how you plan to make this project sustainable. You can’t rely on donations.
Also, how do you plan to get people involved? Are you planning an advertising campaign? Word of mouth? Remember, eight year old. Get a three-line tablet and some of those big crayons if you have to.
Again, I apologize for any sarcasm, it’s not personal. I have a natural aversion to long-winded, wordy, pointless speeches.
Good luck.
-Diane
* There will not be anything resembling a panel of experts deciding what is informative.
* The problem with Digg (and Digg is great in itself) isn't that it is popular stories, but that it is stories popular with an elite user– the heavy Internet/Digg user. (Gordon Fowler suggests there is an additional filter to get to the front page, certainly the process isn't fully transparent, and relies on banning users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg)
* With fixed costs of only operating a web site ($60 a month worst case including a service plan), donations could support this once the software is developed. My original draft did talk of advertising revenue but I'm actually de-emphasizing that, since I'd rather avoid it if possible.
But mostly, yeah, I wasted everyone's time with that last e-mail. Sorry about that. Just wanted to get some thoughts down. And that was the refined version of my thought process. All my thoughts start out, on paper, as sentence fragments. I think we ADHD people should have interpreters.