Review on 'Voting and Rating' Report

Please find detailed versions of the invited comments by
John December
and
Arnold B.Urken

Personal Notes of the 'Voting, Rating, Annotation' Conference, 30 April 1997
by Roland Alton-Scheidl (Research Unit for Socio-Economics/A)

Some important statements from audience:

Voting ties
A is preferred by a majority to B
B is preferred by a majority to C
C is preferred by a majority to A
unavoidable exceptions, several proposals to solve such situations

Ratings: provide, motivation, encouragement, incentive to/for something

G. Tscherteu: experimental view on rating

No general rating tool, as we have very different social settings, rules and functions.
Urken: How do you prevent collusion?
Schreiber: How do you differentiate to several strategies?
Newman: Game MOMIC (?)
CompuServe man: one group which is excluded may communicate with e-mail only(?)
M. Davis: Is moderation censorship in this case? Discussion about, what a
moderator can do (put messages to...)
Clift: Big incentive is: large audience.
Rupert: Starting idea was: link access rights with rating results.
Hummes: give Bonbons; game a vehicle, interest is that people use ratings
Urken: directories can disagree;
Schreiber: no purges in conferences! NO, NO!

John December:

Recontextualize group communication: how to create *meaning*.
Next products: How to bring groups together.
Focus more on: Social influence
Socio influence model (SIM): behaviour of and attitude to CMC is influenced
by the salient social influence, not by the technology
Postal Buddy failure
Kovacs: Tools also influence social activities
Davis: Why don't people vote: it's still too complicated and it has nothing
to do with their life !?
Sonntag: Local issues
Biro: Logical limits: people should learn the differences between all
voting methods.

Arnold Urken:

Direct Participation and Voter Competence
+ Will of all vs. the general will
- Rosseau posed voter competence problem
- Condorcet solved it: jury theorem
+ Weighted votes to augment group performance

Motivating Participation
+ Give information to get information
- entertainmant value
- comments reading
- benchmarking
+ Identify individual or groups with common interests

Asynchronous Voting
+ Manipulability not equivalent to manipulation
+ Factors
- Running vote total known
- Voting system
- Change votes
+ Two-week elections
- promote informed choices?
- ambiguos position viable?

Collecting and Owning Data
+ Data belongs voter
- active auditing
- default: data cannot be sold
+ Government monopolies
- inefficient, insecure
+ Outsourcing Elections ! How to cope that?

Fungible Voting
+ Votes saved or traded to express intensities or preference
+ Self stabilizing system
+ How to redistribute votes to maintain stability
+ Money similar systems are used by small groups only which break up
society finally

People vote for a winner!
People could be forced to trade votings.
Voting tools as a learning device.
Privacy should be handled flexible.
View society as a cooperation and trade votes?

Schreiber: Take offer costs.
Sonntag: Delphi; use iterative concepts
Swedish man: Don't vote on anything.

Marilyn Davis

3 points about democracy
- Plebiticism for groups who wish to
- Consensus driven group meeting (religious groups)
- Who should vote: only those, who are concerned with questions
- Rise of a new usenet groups needs no vote, but 100 users who wish it
- User owns the vote
Voting only for people, who show, that they have worked on an issue.

Biro: Americans like equal voting power, other cultures perceived
competences (?)
Disseminate Voting Best Pratice to the World.
Voting is not good for minorities!
Vienna man: Learning as an aspect. We have to learn, how to vote fair.
Who is made responsible for result?
Irmay: Take care, that result is accepted!