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October 13, 2004Democracy: A government by the peopleGreater Democracy was formed, in part, to explore the roots, goals, and intentions of democratic governance. I love democracy, from Jefferson, to Wilson, to others who have fought for and written about democracy that I don’t yet know about. Yet democracy is a fairly broad concept, a government by the people. How do the people decide to govern themselves? To they require consensus? Do they elect people to represent them in a governing body? To they use Robert’s rules of order to suspend Robert’s rules of order? Democracy can take many shapes. And where does Democracy take place? We think about Democracy for governing the country, but to what extent should families, small social groups, or even an online community be governed democratically. Years ago, I was part of a group that was committed to social action, but would only act when they had consensus. The group ended up being ineffectual. One person could block consensus, or they would debate long enough for the opportunity to pass. In online groups, I’ve acted unilaterally to block spammers. I’ve been criticized for this as being undemocratic. Yet in many ways, I was acting as a representative of the group in the moment and we have addressed the issues afterwards. I’ve known site administrators for group blogs that have had to make changes to the site because of technical issues who have been accused of acting undemocratically for addressing the problem and then discussing it afterwards. I believe in representative democracy, which includes the right of site administrators or group moderators to act unilaterally provided that there are adequate chances for informed discourse to determine if the unilateral action is in fact what the community as a whole supports. I believe we need to look at how we promote this understanding in different online groups we are part of. The problem that we face with representative democracy is that too often, we don’t have a true chance to determine if the actions of our representatives are in fact acting in the way that the community supports. In Connecticut, approximately 30% of the state legislative races go unopposed. In online communities, too often, the leader of a group acts unilaterally and there isn’t a chance for discussion about what the group really wants. Greater Democracy was formed in part to look critically at what might work much better, especially in the interest of facilitating more and better citizen participation. I hope this helps all of us think a little more about what democracy can and should look like in all aspects of our life. Comments
Aldon, This is a very useful post and a great and positive result of today's emails. As we just discussed on the telephone, we can extend your post slightly to include the following ideas: 1] The community needs some basic rules of the road that are arrived at by a negotiated process. The fewest possible is a good goal; 2] posts are expected to conform to the accepted rules of the road; 3] The "moderator" is recognized as the representative of the group who has the authority to take special actions in emergency non-conforming situations; 4] The moderator is expected, however, to first attempt to reach the poster with the problem post and give that person 1-24 hours to respond based on the severity of the problem. Only if there is no response will the moderator take special actions to enforce and restore the existing rules of the road. 5] In general each poster is expected to be responsible for their own posts. I think this about sums up our conversation. Please make any changes or additions in a comment on this comment. I suppose that makes this a recursive process. Thanks, Jock Posted by: Jock Gill at October 13, 2004 6:12 PMMy thoughts: I dislike rules. Rules are about the past and make change a difficult and cumbersome process. Change is hard enough without having rules to deal with. However, I understand the need for a structure, having found myself clueless on more than one occasion about what goes on here. But I think it's the process we need to focus on, rather than the rules. We have a great example of how to do that in our Constitution. I think one reason it has stood the test of time so well is that it offers structure and direction rather than rules. For example, our structure could include a mechanism for dealing with posting problems without setting up a set-in-stone rule about it. We might say that a moderator has the authority to deal with certain types of posting problems, but must take responsibility for his/her decisions and be respectful of other posters. If further discussion is then necessary about what that would look like in practice, we could talk about it until we reach a shared perspective--which means, not that we have to agree on specifics, but that we have to come to a conclusion that reflects our best guess at the best choice for the common good. And that could change. If this sounds harder than making rules, it probably is. But I'm a process person, and believe that the optimal outcome is a result of focusing on the journey, not the destination. That's how I'm thinking about this right now. I wonder whether Jock is still glad he asked me to respond :) Posted by: Elissa at October 15, 2004 8:00 PMElissa, Always glad to hear your point of view. I repsectfully disagree in part and would offer up the interstate highway system as an example, It requires a set of basic "rules". Birds require a basic set of rules to flock. What I think you missed is my suggestion that we look for the least number of rules that allows "goal seeking" to emerge. This is NOT zero rules, nor is it 100 rules. With zero rules goal seeking is not likely to emerge -- there is no metric for evalauting the N possible goals. Regards, Jock Posted by: Jock Gill at October 17, 2004 5:42 PMNot only will Sinclair have done disservice to the media in general, the maker/producer of the film "Stolen Honor" will have committed the worst kind of atrocity upon a nation of "BY THE PEOPLE AND "FOR THE PEOPLE". They have lowered themselves to commit the worst kind of crime against a nation that holds dear the demotratic process. I am former public relations person whose job it was to engage the media and to inform people with the facts, not fiction. Post a comment
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