Democracy/WebParliament.org

From Intelligent Designs

The old WebParliament functioned as follows:

The core voting process

First there was a round in which people could submit the topics that were to be discussed, this was open for all

Then there was (weekly) a vote about wheiter the topic was to be discussed and voted on

Thirdly there was two weeks time to discuss the topic and to propose possible solutions

Lastly there was the actual vote on the solutions (also a week)

Individuals and Parties

The system worked with individuals and parties being allowed to vote in all votes. All votes of individuals had the same weight. The weight of the votes of parties was determined based on the number of votes a party received monthly on the WebParliament. So politically active people (who were assumed to be better informed) had in practice two votes, one via a party and one directly. The outcomes of both polls (individuals and parties) were presented separately.

The outcomes

They were e-mailed to many politicians and parties (probably not read by them, but that could change, at least as I hoped back then, if the WebParliament grew) and to people who subscribed to our newsletter.

I also found a local newspaper willing to publish them back then.

When did it exist

A few years ago (back in 2000), when I was still in Highschool I set up a site by the name WebParliament (.org, .net, .com). It was supposed to become an advisory parliament that functioned through the internet. I kept it in the air only untill 2001 because of a combination of being hard to maintain (my own fault back then, the system was a quite crappy collection of slightly modified existing Perl and PHP-scripts) and lack of visitors (making me somewhat pessimistic about the democraticness of the (ad-driven) web). So there is nothing there at the moment but the idea of one day re-opening it remained in my head.

Now I have started with other projects, that to the core are also intended to bring together otherwise separated people and ideas, Democracy/LogiLogi.org being the most important for me. However I still have a great interest in being involved in a WebParliament.

To be discussed

What do you think about a project like this ?

Is there anyone interested in creating (and pretty much leading) an OpenSource project that intends to revive the WebParliament ? (Demosphere project ?) I probably can arrange hosting and I still have the domains.

And if there is time left (if not and if there is enough interest we will plan a follow-up session to discuss it): What can be improved in terms of the form of the old WebParliament ? Or does it suck completely and is there something much better described already ?