Anyone wanting an update on how the federal government’s adventures into the wilds of citizen consultation via blogs [at the Digital Economy Blog hosted under the auspices of DBCDE] are going could do a lot worse than read these two posts from Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion and Axel Bruns at Gatewatching. Bruns asks the very good question – “what if you do build it and they do come?”
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Axel Bruns proposes a slashdot-style comment moderation system but really, Slashdot comment threads are hardly the paragon of either civility or relevant self-moderation. There is way too much obviousness modded up as “insightful” and humourless irrelevance modded up as “funny”. Sure you can self select the weight you put on any of this – and there is meta-moderation too – but that sort of system is designed with Slashdot’s technical audience in mind.
They really need to inject some personality into that blog. Even after commenting a couple of times on issues of interest, it’s a bit mind-numbing. Expecially reading all the ‘its all about the filter’ comments in threads that are supposed to be about other topics. What’s happened is “the net” has become a single issue topic. And it’s detracting from other equally important areas of the portfolio. For example, Government IT purchasing and software development policies (which builds skills by investing directly in them – in my opinion, many of the wrong ones).
You can’t shut the gate after the horses have bolted. That would be political suicide, both angering concerned citizens, and giving the opposition an opportunity to say "Conroy didn’t think this through, what the hell does an apparatchik know about the complexities of technology and sociology of the digital SOCIETY (not just economy)".
But I must wonder if Conroy had read the breadth of features outlined in the discussion paper on this topic more than a year ago, and, more the the point, the sections on challenges of such channels between politicians and the citizenry.
Tyro @1: Just to clarify – I’m certainly not suggesting a carbon-copy of the Slashdot moderation system. I do advocate learning from that and other self-moderation systems which help large communities manage themselves, though (obviously with an eye on the emerging community of participants on the DBCDE site, and its specific features). Slashdot’s one of the oldest and best-known sites using such a system, but that’s not to say there aren’t others better suited to the task; a bit of added peer-moderation, at any rate, is what may be very helpful for the DBCDE site.
(If people have their favourite peer-moderation schemes in large Websites, incidentally, I’d love to hear about them – snurb(at)snurb.info.)
My priorities are two
1) Self-managed Blogs that strictly respect and observe natural-justice in all their day-to-day moderation proceedings.
Openness. transparency. Right of appeal, presumption of innocence, etc.
2) Net based prediction markets ( My 2c) that pay out on the nail to the nearest correct prediction of the the permanent retirement of any bloody authoritarian seeking to censor the net by brute-force attack. ( Sear. Policy analysis markets )
And yes in case yr wondering – I couldn’t give a rats about the federal government.
Now we have the net we don’ need no steenkin’ Conroy government. Hasta la vista Stevie.
Does government blogging have something to do with drinking Swedish mulled wine?
BTW, unfortunately we’re having some technical difficulties at Gatewatching at the moment. Sorry if anyone’s trying to get to that post and is only getting a timeout error…
Snurb@3:
large communities managing themselves? you can’t have that! what would we need a gubbermint for? /sarcasm
This is probably the number one reason we have a censorship proposal at the moment.