Netdemocracy



This project is designed to improve the democratic process by combining voting, polling, and publishing with the ability to differentiate users by their opinions. The goal of the project is to communicate public interest, opinions and preferred solutions to the community and to elected officials.  The premise is that you can exchange anonymity for political power. 

Netdemocracy is an evolving experiment in using the internet to better understand each other and how we live.

Using Netdemocracy

The general visitor to NetD uses it like an interactive newspaper. A user takes polls on topics of their interest, follows community activity and votes on community issues. Authors also write on their interests. Representatives are like authors except they have minimum requirements to become representatives. They must vote on predefined percentage of issues, and write a minimum amount of reports. This allows general users to adopt those representatives to vote for them in community or topical issues.

The tool built to identify a user's political opinion is the Yesnometer. The Yesnometer color-codes an author's name by the percentage of votes that you've agreed on, that you have in common.

For example:

You vote on 20 items. An author has voted on 10 of those same items. You have 10 votes in common. Of those 10 you have the same answer for 4. This means the author agrees with you 40% of the time. This percentage is color-codes the users name, and writes out the percentage of agreement. Colors are split around a color wheel. One half of the wheel is female, the other is male. The color chart is available in the demo.

In addition to these functionalities, each user has their own homepage to post their own web logs, and display all activity they've authored in the system. This is the page that users visit when clicking on an author's name.

Membership/Privacy

In order to use the Internet as a tool for governance a person needs to authenticate that they are a member of a community. Membership of one community often denotes membership in others. For example a resident of New York City is also a resident of New York State and the United States of America. With a simple zip code this can be established. The authentication process is as follows:

1. User enters username, and address
2. That information is downloaded and erased from the Internet once per day.
3. A password is dynamically generated
4. A paper letter is sent to the corresponding address with the password. Username is not included to prevent fraud.
5. Once a user logs with that password they are authenticated.
6. The user may enter their email address to use in the future incase they lose/change their password. Email is not required.
7. One user per address is allowed using this method.

Note: the current site does not use this signup requirement. All you need to do is signup, then you can access the site instantly.

Netdemocracy is currently a members-only site. A non-dynamic version of the site could be published daily or weekly for the general public.

Internet Community

WebLoggers have their own very interesting sites on the internet.  In an effort to spread netdemocracy from its own website to others, the ability to place a badge on external webpages was developed.  Users post a line of code into their HTML that summons a link showing their NetD username and color to any other NetD citizen

Community Problem-Solving Process

Think of the site as an ongoing town meeting.

1. A representative of the community sets up a new page on the site to deal with an issue in the community.
2. The issue is examined on this page with people reporting on examples, polling for public opinion, and commenting on the issue.
3. A vote is assembled by users submitting possible actions on the issue.
4. The community then votes on a course of action.

From here, you get to a place where the community would then decide what to do with the information gathered.

Representative Netdemocracy

While representation may not be necessary in a small town, once you get to a larger community, like a state or county, there are far too many issues for one citizen to grasp. This is where representative netdemocracy comes into play. After you've read many of the posts from representatives, you begin to see whom you agree with on the issues you truly care about. Selecting these volunteers as your representative then gets your opinion inserted into a larger community. While it has yet to be implemented, here are the main rules for representatives:

- Representatives are Volunteers
- They must meet minimum requirements to become and stay representatives
   1. First must write 10 reports, and at least one report a month thereafter
   2. Must vote on topic of representation 75% of the time
- Representatives' votes are public knowledge (More public than general user)
- Representatives have one vote deadline on final votes; general users then have a limited time to remove their vote from the representative and vote for themselves.
- Citizens always have the right to override their rep's vote. And may, at any time, switch or cancel representation.

Financials

Unfortunately all these functionalities come at a price. Whilst the demo is free, the computers that run this application and the hosting services are not. So here's the theory on how to pay for it.

Option A: Classifieds

Classifieds are one way newspapers make their money. A community can have their own marketplace system where anyone in the community can post goods and services for sale. They would then pay a sales tax to netdemocracy for hosting fees. So what happens if your classified section creates more money than is necessary to run your site? The community would then receive the extra money and use the netdemocracy system to decide how to spend it.

Option B: Personals

With the ability to see where a person stands on the issues, you have a better idea of who a person is. So the netdemocracy system seems perfect to use as a dating service. A small fee would be available on a monthly basis (Say $5)

Option C: Community Subscription

Instead of the hassle of collecting fees etc, the community as a whole could purchase netdemocracy. Multiple plans from the community hosting the application themselves, to netdemocracy hosting all of it, and everything in between can be priced. Subscribing to larger communities (County/State/Country/Global) could then be decided. True prices cannot be determined until load testing is complete.

Option D: Tipping/Donations

When you go to a restaurant, you tip the Server. Servers make almost no payroll, so you know to tip them 20% of your meal cost. Writers are putting out as much effort to bring you information, as servers are to brining you food. Why not tip your writers. A system could then be set up to "Tip out the House” That way the writers are happy, and the site is paid for. It’s the "Thank You" approach to e-commerce.

All these options would be calculated electronically and a community representative would collect fees. Preferred Option: The Community Hosts it themselves. I could see single communities or associations getting the whole application for free, then subscribing to larger organizations.

Netdemocracy Development

Netdemocracy is a web-based database application written in ASP using VBScript. The Server is currently a .Net Server(hosted at maximumasp.com), but system works on NT or Windows2000. The database is SQL2000 Server. Access2000 version to come in downloadable version.

Development of netdemocracy will be run via netdemocracy.com Programmers that are interested in participating , as well as non-techies that would like to help test the application, are encouraged to signup on the site, or email webmaster@netdemocracy.com. Political scientists interested in how the system works, and how it may be improved, are also encouraged to join.

The main development site will eventually be the internet-wide level of netdemocracy. Concurrent development of local sites is also ongoing. A tiered Server system will then be developed to go from local and association servers to state and national Servers.