One-line Summary

Concepts from (Open Source Governance + Slashdot + Digg + Wikipedia) + Content from (Malaysian News + Blogs + Commentaries + Videos) => OpenPolity.Org

Introduction

Around 1439, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the movable type printing to Europe. For the first time, documented information could be disseminated rapidly to a wide audience. With new knowledge, people's mindset was altered and radical changes took place in the forms of the Renaissance and Reformation. Significantly, in representative democracies (such as ours), printed information influenced the outcome of elections. It was, however, a unidirectional communication medium controlled by a few people with power. Therefore, it was difficult to counter disinformation and propaganda that have either placed or maintained ill-intentioned people in power. The invention of radio and television later made it possible to broadcast information instantaneously. Yet again, all forms of mass media were dominated by the few people with power, elected or otherwise.

At present, the Web not only allows any of us to spread information instantaneously, it also allows us to receive feedback immediately. With such true bidirectional medium that is accessible to anyone, it is possible to immediately counter disinformation. We can once again expect radical changes in the way our country is governed. In fact, we have already witnessed some of these changes in the last general election. To me, the most exciting potential outcome of the Web access, at least for the governance of Malaysia, is to establish a direct democratic system with well informed citizens. In a direct democracy, everyone can participate directly to create, amend and ratify policies and laws. Most obvious advantages of this type of democracy are sustained impartiality, transparency and elimination of corruption. Moreover, almost all the drawbacks associated with direct democracy, such as limited scalability, impracticality and complexity, can likely be overcome by applying the principles of Open Source Governance with the technological tools of the Web.

OpenPolity.Org aims to be one of such tools.

Objectives

To be realistic, it could take decades to implement direct democracy in Malaysia. The majority of the population still does not have access to the Web and is dependent on the mainstream media for information. Nonetheless, we know that eventually most of the population will be online and in the meantime, we can begin laying the groundwork for direct democracy.
Our immediate objectives are:

1. Be well informed and create awareness about alternative news and ideas among Malaysians, at least among those who are online.
2. Act as a knowledge base and use our power of citizenry to influence the representatives in the parliament and state assembly.

OpenPolity.Org can be used to achieve the above objectives, the details are given below.

Methodology

OpenPolity.Org consists of four types of interlinked content:

1. Wiki, called Wikiop
   Wikiop stores aggregated information and serves as a centralized reference (like the Wikipedia) for everything related to the governance of Malaysia. It also stores the most promising ideas or arguments suggested by users in the comments section of an article or a poll (more described below). A page entry in the Wikiop is called a wikiop. As an example, a wikiop can contain continuously updated records of the things a minister has promised and implemented. A user is required to login to OpenPolity.Org to create or edit a wikiop. All Malaysian languages are supported by Wikiop.
2. Article
   Articles bring in new content to stimulate thoughts and to attract visitors daily to OpenPolity.Org. An article can be a news story, an opinion letter, a blog post or a video link submitted by a registered user. Each article is linked to wikiops through several keywords describing the article. The links, found at the header of an article, are created automatically from the tags provided by the submitter. In addition, the submitter is also encouraged to manually hyperlink relevant personalities, objects or issues found in the article to the corresponding wikiops. Such links encourage users to regularly refer, update or add new content to wikiops to reflect the current information available in the articles. Articles can be rated (like Digg) by registered users and will be published on the front page after receiving a critical number of positive votes. The purpose of this feature is to filter spam and uninteresting articles.
3. Comment
   Articles and polls have a comment section. Registered users can moderate a comment by assigning one of 12 predefined descriptors to the comment, an approach similar to the successful Slashdot comment moderation system. Each descriptor has either a negative, neutral or a positive score. The maximum score of a comment is 5, while the minimum score is -1. All poorly moderated comments in a page can be hidden by setting a minimum score threshold. Anonymous commenting is allowed because of this ability to hide poorly moderated comments. Comments which is good enough to be entered in the Wikiop can be assigned a special moderation descriptor called "Wikiop this!". Only comments obtaining the maximum score with this descriptor, i.e., "Score:5 Wikiop this!", are encouraged to be wikiopped. If a comment is wikiopped, a reference link to the comment is provided to credit the author. Such moderation-with-crediting scheme is hoped to encourage users to post quality comments that can be wikiopped.
4. Poll
   A poll can be created when a referendum needs to be held about an issue. Polls appear persistently on the front page to allow maximum visibility. In order to prevent abuse, only the administrator can create new polls. A poll is usually linked to a wikiop which contains current arguments about the poll topic. A link is also provided from the wikiop to the poll. Users can change their mind and recast their vote when newer information or arguments become available. Also, in order to reflect the most recent opinion of voters, polls are never closed. In the future, registered users will be required to authenticate their account once by sending an SMS. The sender's phone number will be used as a unique identifier to avoid multiple accounts by the same user. Alternatively, the PayPal service could also be used to authenticate accounts. Such authentication could lend credibility to polls, comment moderation and article rating.

Users are given karma points each time they submit or rate an article or a comment. The points, which show each user's level of participation, are publicly accessible. To avoid spamming, karma points are reduced when a user's comment or article is poorly rated. In the future, if the Wikiop suffers from content abuse, the karma points can be used to determine a user's edit access.

Assuming that we have a critical number of active users daily, we can expect the Wikiop to gradually grow with information from both alternative and mainstream views. If the quality of the information is maintained, we can expect users to be better informed and thus, achieve our first objective.

Some of our political representatives fail to grasp the magnitude of every decision that they make in the parliament or state assembly. Many lives could be affected if a decision was made without adequate research. Lets take the decision to subsidize fuel for example. The Member of Parliaments (MPs) have not disclosed in detail the long term repercussions of fuel subsidies. Instead of depending on our MPs for such information, we could debate and document the arguments ourselves using OpenPolity.Org. Arguments can be recorded on a wikiop for public reference, as shown here. As usual, arguments in the wikiop can be updated using comments and other published articles. Based on these arguments, we can formulate our informed opinion about fuel subsidies and let others know about it through a poll, as shown here. If we have enough poll participants, the MPs will start to take notice and may reconsider their decision. Using similar strategy, we can also influence our MPs in other decisions that they make.

We can also create a wikiop for each representative and continuously update his/her promises, actions and accomplishments. A poll, linked to the wikiop, can be created which shows the up-to-date approval rating of the representative. During elections, we can also endorse candidates espousing our ideas. In the long run, OpenPolity.Org aims to create a win-win situation for us and our representatives -- the representatives will know what we want and we could formulate informed opinions and get what we think is best for us.

Concluding Remarks

OpenPolity.Org hopes to borrow the successes of Digg, Slashdot and Wikipedia by using their well established methods to generate, filter and store quality ideas from users. We hope to use these ideas to make ourselves well informed and as a collective voice, influence our representatives to improve the governance of Malaysia. Since this is the first such attempt, there are bound to be some problems that need to be resolved before we can see tangible results. We can, however, adapt OpenPolity.Org along the way to overcome these problems.

If you have any comment about this article, please write it in the comments section below. If you have a specific suggestion to improve OpenPolity.Org, please write it in the Request Features section. All comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.

Acknowledgments

Some of the main concepts behind OpenPolity.Org were taken from Wikipedia, Slashdot and Digg. The author acknowledges the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University for the hardware support.

OK, it looks interesting but how can I get involved?

Several ways:

1. Submit latest news stories, blog posts, opinion letters or videos (YouTube or Google Video) which you think can stimulate discussion
   Do not worry about accidentally submitting duplicate articles because OpenPolity.Org will let you know if it is. You can also write an original article and post it here. All submitted articles will appear in the upcoming section. Other users will decide if it gets published on the front page by rating it.
2. Discuss by writing a comment about an article, a poll or another comment. Say what is on your mind and be open to others.
3. Create entries in the Wikiop or maintain existing wikiops
4. Rate articles (+ or -)
5. Moderate comments
   If you disagree with a comment, do not moderate it down. You should reply to the comment instead and explain why you disagree. Only moderate a comment down if it really is either offtopic, flamebait, overrated, repeating arguments of other's (i.e., redundant) or making arguments without adequate evidence (i.e., unsubstantiated).
6. Vote in polls
   Understand the existing arguments about the poll on a wikiop (a link usually provided) before voting. If you have an argument that has not been recorded in the wikiop, write it in a comment as a reply to the poll. Other users will moderate your comment with the descriptor "Wikiop this!" if they think your argument deserves to be in the wikiop.
7. Spread the word about OpenPolity.Org
   The success of OpenPolity.Org is largely dependent on the number of active users. We will also need a large number of users to make our voices heard. You can help by introducing OpenPolity.Org to your friends and family and in your blog. Word of mouth is the best form of publicity.

Check the FAQ for more details.