XRepublic Design

Zero LevelDemocratic Objects & Methods – Representation & Expectations, Whys & Wherefores

Citizen
The citizen is conceived of as an individual who seeks to express opinions, inform their opinion, restate and reform their opinion in the context of a finite universe of contextual information.

House
A House consists of a great number of individual Citizens contributing to a number of threaded discussions known as Threads or DialogThreads.  Each House has its own character and style which may change over time. But in my experience, any discussion group finds a level and tone at which it stays. This tone and level attracts certain people and it discourages others. In order to facilitate the widest diversity of opinion, and gather opinions from third party websites, each House is independent. Note about third party houses. The XRepublic will be designed to accommodate the largest discussion groups on the web, specifically those created by The Well, Salon’s Table Talk, Café Utne’s and Caucus systems.

Common House
Joining a republic for the first time requires one to be a member of that republics's Common House. Every Republic has at least one Common House. Each Republic has at least one house. This is the CommonHouse of the Republic. Everyone registered at any republic is automatically a member of that republic's common House. As discussion tends to a particular direction and people feel that they could be more effective in a different setting, they may elect to create a new house.

House Creation
Citizens who elect to create a new house must sustain at least 50 votes. These will be the people who would join a new House and remain active participants. Although House membership is mutually exculsive, all members of every House belongs to the Common House of the Republic.

House Closure
Some majority of House Members must agree to self-destruct. Citizens who are members of the House determine, via the usual methods, what is required to close the House.

Citizen Sleeve
The object was called a Sleeve. A Sleeve is a color coded set of positions which are generated through responses to litmus tests. A citizen will have a full sleeve which may be revealed in full or in parts. By parts, these sleeves will indicate affinities which are designed by the beholder. For example, if I have ten interests, I can select several Litmus tests and then map out a position. I can also pick out an individual and then compare his sleeve to mine. For the moment we can say that an individual has an 'affinity template'. A partisan group will also have a composite affinity template of its membership, as well Houses can have composite affinity templates.

Caretaker
A Caretaker functions as a technical advisor to the maintenance of the Republic. There are no special priviliges accorded to a Caretaker with regard to standing in any of the areas involving resolution. Nor can a caretaker, via his administrative priveleges affect the outcomes of votes, change the properties of Citizens or otherwise disrupt or cheat the deliberative processes of the Republic.

Federation
The XRepublic system should be designed to federate multiple Republics into one network. But this introduces a level of hierarchy and abstraction which I believe will not be useful. It is more desireable to scale up the number of user in one Republic and add Houses.

Partisan Group
A Partisan Group is a self-selected group of Citizens organized to take collaborative action within the various Houses. They may act to assist in the organization at a high level as suits their interests, energies and concerns. A partisan group is generally created for the purpose of Wonking in areas specific to their interests or expertise. Membership in a group is strictly voluntary. Individuals may wonk if they want.

Point, Talking Point
In the course of discussion, it often occurs for an individuall to say,"You have a point there." It is precisely this commonly understood method of consensus that is a basic building block of the higher abstracts of consensus that the Republic is designed to support.

Republic
A Republic is a decisional entity that covers an entire population. It is the highest level of abstraction for collaboration. Another way of thinking of it is the net decision space of all members. Republic
A Republic is the highest level of organization under the scope of the Agora System.

Reputation Management
Another key function of the XRepublic is to support the idea of 'karma'. As each citizen engages his fellows in debates, they are by and large accorded some level of respect, deference and authority. The XR seeks to quantify this in a clear way for people new to a discussion.

20030105 - Reputation management should come in several dimensions. Reputations will be established by the number and quality of citations of statements made by it's citizen author. Partisan groups may inherit reputation based upon its membership, but this is not explicitly called for.

Speech Restrictions
On rare occasions individuals get so carried away that they become disruptive. In order that these people can be regulated without endangering the credibility of the forum, they can be subjected to peer review. All matters of peer review depend entirely on actions initiated by citizens and not by Caretakers.

Bozo filtering.
This is the first There is one level of peer review. If a particular individual becomes worrisome, he can be filtered in such a way that his comments do not appear to the filtering party. This is done on an individual by individual basis as is widely recognized in major contemporary Web Conferencing systmes.

Censure
If a person proves himself to be a bozo of sufficient dimensions, then within a house, this citizen can be Censured. Censure involves a vote of Citizens. Censure is a very strong punishment requiring the consent of 20 citizens of a house. These 20 citizens must be members of atleast 2 unaffiliated Partisan Groups. The result of Censure is that his speaking privileges (ability to write statments) are suspended for a period of 30 days.  Any individual who is Censured cannot be Censured again for 60 days after regaining speaking priviliges in the House.

PNG
PNG is a bit more serious. It means that a person is essentially expelled from a House. He becomes Personna Non Grata in that House. He may remain active in another house, but the PNG remains permanently on his record. In order to PNG an individual citizen, 25 House members must concur that he be expelled from that House. PNG however requires a 'standing writ'. This means that those Citizens who PNG'd him must remain active in that house for as long as the PNG stands. The standing writ is established by the active status of 10 of the original Citizens who voted for PNG.

Ouster
Someone who is Censured 3 times, or PNG’d from a second house is Ousted from the Republic.

Under no circumstances is a citizen's voting privileges to be abridged. A person who is restricted from speaking can still lurk.

Speech Restrictions are the only types of resolutions which are to be passed in the XR which revolve around the participants of the Republic itself. All other matters of standing are ajudicated through the standard ways and means of establishing credibility.

Thread
Each Thread can be found within each a web of Master Topics. If there is to be a strict hierarchy, then it must be maintained by the administrators of the XRepublic. This insures that threads which get created in each house are held somewhat to a minimum. This requirement is not fixed because a good wonk can find the multiple topics and link them dynamically to master topics. We may have to establish linking requirements such that affinity searches retain meaning. This is a difficult question to resolve.A provision can be made for unlinked topics. This might suffice for the purposes of the Yak Pool in which no particular structure in encouraged. Until a topic is appended to a Taxonomy, then no further deliberation can take place. This barrier is sufficient to insure that individuals who might be willing to do dilligence cannot propagate Threads in Houses.

Thread Creation
In order to create a new thread, certain conditions must be met. The objective is to focus the author and readership onto what has already been said. Tangents should be encouraged but this is a natural function of discussion and these can be noted as ‘exchanges’ but thread bloat is to be avoided. So there is a gauntlet of requirements which must be passed for a thread to be created. The first is based on simple keyword search. If fewer than 5 hits are registered, then Thread creation can proceed. If there are more, other considerations are made. The prospective author must review the threads and contribute there or get a second.

Thread exchange
In the course of a discussion on a particular subject, threads tend to drift. New related and sometimes unrelated subjects become the focus of discussion over time. These may often give rise to insights which are unappreciated but recognized as unique. Wonks will have the ability to give greater visibility to these exchanges within threads through an annotation method. The system may also monitor dense activity by counting the number of posts in any period of time. This is a kind of ‘autowonking’. Other candidate names are {fibers, subthreads, exchanges, hotdebates}

So we can look at it this way - Object / TemplateOne of the major performance hits we are going to take is on ranking. Most everything will be ranked within their class. For example, Citizens will be ranked by average cred and by number of comments floated.

Resolution
A Resolution is a the most important document created in the XRepublic. All discussions are designed to generate text and ideas for the Resolution. The expectation is that a Resolution will be that thing which best expresses the collective voice of Citizens of the XRepublic.

Resolution Scope
Resolutions should only implicate themselves. Resolutions must be tied to an issue or Master Topic. There may be any number of resolutions, some which may overlap, assigned to a Master Topic, but resolutions should not be so broad that they attach to more than one. It makes no sense, for example that a Resolution's adoption should imply the adoption of other resolutions which might suggest a particular orientation to a Taxonomy or MasterTopic. The resolution's scope should be explicit and clearly stated. For example, if a Litmus Test is created by a partisan group to test belief in God, then a Resolution (God Exists) should not imply acceptance of any other resolution. That implication, if it is to be made, will be done by a careful scrutiny of statements. Certainly it is possible that a statement made in the context of one Thread may imply one thing in one Resolution and something else entirely in the context of another.

The Sidebar
The Sidebar is the first level of promotion of arguments leading to consensus and resolution. It is a ranked list of individual posts which have been first Floated and then subsequently Weighted by Citizens. Each discussion thread has one sidebar. Any post which has been floated to the sidebar becomes a Talking Point.

Statements = Posts
The basic element of speech in the XRepbulic is the statement. Statements are authored by Citizens in the context of a Thread. Since all threads are public, a statement speaks to the world. Since all Threads are attached to some Taxonomy, every statement

Taxonomy
When a thread is created, it must be associated with one or more taxonomies. Taxonomies help identify a thread in a fixed context which makes it easier for citizens to find areas of interest. StatementA statement  is authored by a Citizen within a topic. The topic may or may not be linked to a Master topic. Statements are initially authored in raw form. A statement may be modified, polished or withdrawn. A polished statement becomes the joint property of a Partisan Group and the author. A Thread is comprised of a list of statements most of which will be in raw form, some of which will be polished. In order for a statement to be polished, it must be nominated for flotation by an author or a traveling wonk.

20020414
A Taxonomy should be thought of as a HouseTaxonomy, which is to say that every House may have a different way of organizing DialogThreads it will contribute to. A DialogThread thus exists independently of Houses, nobody owns a DialogThread. It just is the way that individual Citizens gain access to facts about a subject.

Master Topic
A Master Topic is a ‘standing’ bit of controversy or a decision space in which many different arguments can be brought to bear. It is a seed Taxonomy for Threads. The idea is that tangential discussions can be corralled in such a way as to minimize redundancy.  The point of a master topic then is to establish a context in which many related topics can be organized. MasterTopics are an elementary Taxonomy which will guide the premier implementation of the XRepublic. As more sophisticated and/or formal taxonomies are understood, they will be appended

Wonking
Wonking is the process of gathering statements in support of a Resolution. It is one of the fundamental processes in which Citizens engage. In fact, it can be said that the structure of the republic is designed to be conducive to and encouraging of Wonking. While the concept of democracy is often conflated with the process of voting, it is a purpose of the XRepublic Agora System to make transparent those processes by which ideas are generated that would cause a Citizenry to call for votes.

Wonking involves a different sort of browsing of the subjects within the Republic.

Wonking should happen in an announcement area such that people can be aware of activism that is going on. (Wonks can alternately be called Activists). It would be preferable if this activity were automatically generated.

Voting
The XR seeks to establish familiarity with several different types of voting.

Statement Thumbs (Maybe Not - See Salience)
The simplest and most accessible form of voting is that of a thumb. A thumb is basically a thumbs up or thumbs down expression which is attached to a statement by another citizen. This is the fundamental unit of agreement or disagreement at the elemental level of discourse.

Litmus Tests
A Litmus Test is a single question multiple choice poll which is crafted singly or as part of a questionnaire. These can be used to generate affinity templates.

Resolution Weigh In
There are three ways to support or oppose a resolution. The first is indirect which is accomplished automatically by voting in favor of various

Voting
Weigh in may require a Statement for certain votes. If we allow Referenda, then these can require only a vote up or down.

Level One
Usability Presentation
This is best done by navigating the mockup of XRepublic which can be found at http://www.mdcbowen.org/p5/cmd/xrep/index.htm

Wonk View vs Standard ViewFor Resolutions, Master Topics and Threads there are two different views of the material. The Standard view is designed for Citizens to understand the current status of the Democratic Object and to facilitate input and feedback. The Standard View should be provocative and inviting to contributions.The Wonk View is designed so that wonking can take place. It is generally an abbreviated view with special indexing which allows a wonk to see the maximum amount of related material.

In general, the UI for XR will consist of small [in]visible tables in a three wide or two wide configuration.

Columns & Blocks
Pending the discovery of something wonderful in CSS, the main style of the XR will be that of Columns and Blocks.

Three Wide
The Three Wide configuration is used for the general presentation of much data. In this case the Left column will be used primarily for navigation. The Rightcolumn will be used primarily for actions which are directly or indirectly related to content presente in the wide Middle column. Colum

Two Wide
The Two wide formate is used primarily for the display of detailed data.

Level Two

Template Object Mapping

XRepublic Home Page – Standard View (only)

Resolution Homepage – Standard View

Master Topic Page – Standard View

Resolution Homepage – Wonk View

Section Four - Database

Citizen Class

• id
• name
• status
• partisanMembershipList
• wonkResolutionList
• statusHistory
• bio
• comments
• votingRecord
• sleeve
• houseMembership
• authorshipList
• messageVisitationList
• resolutionWeightList

Citizen Registration

takeApplication

CreateNewCitizen

status = applicatnt