Janko,

Paul has made some criticisms of your idea elsewhere on the thread...and 
some of his points are certainly worth considering.

However,  a system with some of the attributes you describe might be 
implemented as a "fun" tool to experiment with social communities and 
the outcomes of their interactions.   If you take one step of 
abstraction away from "serious" consensus-seeking and make the tool 
configurable enough to support "playing at consensus seeking",   it 
might become a runaway hit.  :-)

Gregory Bourassa


Janko Mivšek wrote:
> Dear Smalltalkers,
>
> Becasue we have quite some problems in a community with seeking a
> consensus on important questions, from organization ones and on, I came
> to idea to build a tool for help. And a GSoC project can be an ideal
> opportunity to build such a tool. What do you think?
>
> Here is a description:
>
> Brainstorming portal for better community decision process
> ==========================================================
>
> Create a web portal for brainstorming sessions/meetings to get ideas and
> answers to important questions in Smalltalk community. Portal should
> allow on-line to:
>
>    1. brainstorm the ideas
>    2. vote to get-out the best ideas
>    3. seek consensus
>    4. analyze - report
>
> On-line session/meeting should look like a Skype session together with a
> brainstorming portal, from collecting ideas to a final decision
> proposal. Example of such session can be a Squeak Oversight Board
> meeting or planning session for a new Smalltalk project. Or some broader
> session in the community, like on a question how to organize better.
>
> Some important concepts:
>
>     * anonymity of idea proposers
>     * associations: proposers see the ideas of anonymous others to
>       facilitate an association for proposing an even better idea
>     * seeking consensus to avoid 51/49% decisions but to come closer to
>       100% agreement on important ideas.
>
> Technical details
>
>     * a web application for gathering brainstormed ideas in real-time
>       (using Ajax and Comet technology).
>     * voting system with appropriate algorithms
>     * analytics with on-line graphs and reports on paper/PDF
>     * installation on a publicly available hosting server
>
> Benefits to the Student
>
>     * getting insight into group dynamics of Smalltalk community and in
>       general
>     * gaining knowledge of modern web technologies in Smalltalk and in
>       general
>
> Benefits to the Community
>
> Better community decision process by getting the best ideas from the
> members while on the other side avoiding stalemates so frequent in
> Smalltalk community those days
>
>
> Best regards
> Janko
>
>
>   

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