[Air-l] epetitions

[Dominic Pinto]

x-posted from mysociety.org

Tom Steinberg says: 

Dominic,

You quoted me from that list, but I think you missed
the core question I posed for everyone there, and
anyone reading this:

“Do you consider it possible to design deliberative
discussion system on a site as sensitive as No10 which
will generate debate sufficiently mature as to merit
the sizeable public spending on moderation that would
be required? If so, how?”

In my view, that’s what’s at the heart of your three
posts above


Tom 

written on November 24th, 2006 

Dominic Pinto says: 


In a representative democracy there will (or perhaps
that should be) be multiple fora for ‘deliberative
discussion’ for ‘debate’ that is ’sufficiently mature’
to justify the cost of moderation. I paraphrase, and
slightly distort, as I’m not aware of any means that
meet your tests 

 the Houses of Parliament don’t
(slight qualification that the second chamber does
probably do more mature things than the junior one).
Judging by the quality of what this government in
particular, and other governments generally, have come
up with in the recent Queen’s speech, and the pitiful
‘japes’ of their spin machines, rubbishing of
individuals seem as ‘not one of us’, and the general
paucity of real debate, and the impoverishment of our
archaic form of government, I see little justifcation
of the No 10 site.

The petition system exposes people concerns and
interests, and enables ‘my’ support to be
made public also. So perhaps these will reach a wider
audience, and delivered ‘direct to Downing Street.’
The publicity and exposure of a mass petition
delivered publicly reaches (or potentially reaches)
vastly more than any of these do. A suggestion to try
and measure reach would be to record site hits and
naviagtion to individual petitions, and show this, as
well as the actual signees.

Friends are highly dubious about this petition system,
and that the support of say the repeal of the Hunting
Act is representative.

And at the end of the day, it is still a matter of
what significant impact or effect these have. Surely
you don’t envisage Blur or Broon acting because the
highest number counted support the repeal of the
Hunting Act? :-)

Dominic

x-posted to Air-l 

written on November 28th, 2006 


Dominic Pinto BA MIEEE MCMI MRi FRSA
http://www.ecademy.com/user/dominicpinto

e-m: dominic.pinto at ieee.org
M: +44 780 302-8268
Ph: +44 207 379-8341

In the U.S.
M/Cell: +1 215 667-3001