Talk:E-democracy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2020 and 2 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Candreaangulo. Peer reviewers: Yifanbao1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2020 and 18 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ninatravassos.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Tone
Article has a great deal of good information, but tone falls short of Wikipedia " formal, impersonal, and dispassionate" standards. I will endeavor to make some substantive edits soon. Acciavatti (talk) 17:56, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Making sense of overlapping articles
There is a significant articles on very similar material on wikipedia, many of them with issues tone, sourcing, and problems with length. It looks to me like a great deal of these could be merged or deleted. On the other hand, a couple of these probably do deserve sepearte treatments. Thoughts?

Should keep:
 * E-democracy - effects of technology/internet on democracy. keep.
 * Participatory democracy - participation in democracy beyond elections. keep.
 * Online participation - participate in online communities. Not government specific. keep.
 * E-Governance in the United States - e-government in the US. keep.
 * Deliberative democracy - participation in deliberations of government. most likely keep.
 * Online consultation - meeting goverment officials online to discuss things. probably keep.

Clarify scope/merge?
 * E-Government - clarify distinction with e-democracy or combine the two? maybe move goverment sections from e-democracy there?
 * E-Governance - This has is the main article 4 other stub-class articles. Not sure yet what do do here. Merged them into parent article.
 * Government-to-citizen ✅
 * Government-to-employees ✅
 * Government-to-business ✅
 * Government-to-government ✅
 * eRulemaking - merge to rulemaking.
 * e-participation - merge to Participation (decision making)
 * Information and communications technology - merge to Information technology (slightly different, but WP:DICT)


 * Internet democracy - simple synonym of e-democracy I think. WP:MERGE probably. ✅
 * Collaborative e-democracy - two papers does not make a notable form of goverment. WP:MERGE into e-goverment maybe.

Possibly remove:
 * Cyberocracy - strikes me as WP:OR, or possibly WP:Fancruft from some cyberpunk fiction. delete? Mostly the work of one academic, but I was able to find a few sources for it and a clear definition. This is futurology, not contemporary goverment.
 * Online deliberation - is there anything here but buzzwords? delete?
 * Collaborative governance - Not much content behind buzzwords here. I nominated this for deletion.

Forbes72 (talk) 04:12, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Update: added a few more I found. Forbes72 (talk) 22:50, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Shift from republic to democracy
There is a note on the main page that the article needs the attentions of a political scientist. It so happens I have a BA in Poli Sci from UCLA so here's my contribution.

The first thing a political scientist might want to clarify is that currently, the world's so called democracies are actually republics. For instance the US constitution provides for government by elected representatives. Given the literally horse and buggy communication arrangements at the time, this was the only feasible way to try and express the popular will.

The internet changes the logistics radically enough so that we could contemplate a change from the form of a republic to the substance of a democracy, by putting more and more issues to a popular vote. JPLeonard (talk) 04:30, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on E-democracy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/11/6033340-power-of-twitter-facebook-in-egypt-crucial-says-un-rep

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 05:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 4 one external links on E-democracy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070513114639/http://www.coe.int:80/democracy/ to http://coe.int/democracy
 * Added archive {newarchive} to http://www.icele.org
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070428083504/http://www.ipdi.org:80/ to http://ipdi.org
 * Added archive {newarchive} to http://www.esri.salford.ac.uk/ESRCResearchproject/index.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 13:14, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Adult Citizens Human Rights
It looks like there are those of us who are more likely to hold back on the true ability of E-democracy then there should be. There is no way to keep a child with basic language skills from adding a potentially important word too any law. E-democracy is built on communication, not votes. As they are votes limit us too 2 candidates. Votes are some of the reason both candidates are not lovable by all or most of us. For some stupid reason you can only vote for one person when it's easy with computers to vote with logic such as “I vote for myself andor all living and artificial creatures not Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton”, for example. See, I should be allowed to say what I want because I am running for President.

It should also make us wonder why Human Rights starts with a 6 year old quote from Hillary Clinton that does not mention E-democracy but instead speaks of just “The freedom to connect”. Her quote looks more like she still wants those in governments to stay where they are, and as near as I can figure, be above the law. Just look recently as the FBI said Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges but that she was “extremely careless” in handling classified information. Robert Cattanach, a former federal prosecutor, said it was difficult to reconcile why Clinton's “extremely careless” conduct did not trigger a provision for “gross negligence”, and said “That's a hard one to pass the smell test on.”

That does not make sense as far as E-democracy can and I'd say should go. I think for the benefit of E-democracy we should put another person and a more recent quote for under Human Rights.

But still, all life on this planet has the right to govern. All life on the Internet should be the minimum of those who should govern. This should not be a political advertisement for a quote that really doesn't mention E-democracy from a person who is headed for something that is against E-democracy, a Me-republic.

Do we forget about emerging technologies? There are many reasons to believe that computers are going to not just out perform us as they already do, but out do us as we think with greater theories of emotion. Theories of emotions are still advancing. It is rather unbelievable that we won't have computers that both compute and remember on the same scale and ability as a human being thinks. Memristor look pretty awesome being a memory-transistor. Are we not going to prevent such a computer from adding to what seems is greater than the human thing to do?

On top of that it is becoming even more strange that there are no aliens out there. I really don't think that if there were aliens taking their spaceship around here that we would deny them access to a government that is supposed to be “of and by the thinkers”. We already have 7 conservatively estimated on the list of potentially habitable exoplanets. With the Milky Way at 100 to 400 billion stars and the 200 billion galaxies in just the Observable Universe, you must be very strange to think that this must be an empty universe of a sextillion planet earths, especially after we where smacked by Theia (planet) about 4.3 billion years ago that made us a Moon and took millions of years for us to make a solid rocky surface with water. It was only about 200 to 500 million years before Abiogenesis took place and we had life. I can not believe that you would love to have a single person allowed to be of greatest power when there is the Powers of Ten (film) to trip on.

If you find yourself being an Adult Human, I ask you in this Universe that is God that is THE ALL, ah, you know, that you find it very true for your own sake that “All life is sacred” as religions and as Einstein basically said; because if you don't believe that a cow is sacred then you would have no right to say that you are not edible.

See. Think. Did you notice how every sense has random? Random is the beginning. Order comes from Random. So if you have anything to say to me here. Michael Francis Lidman (talk) 15:52, 6 July 2016 (EDT). Because this is a very important subject.
 * Doesn't matter, don't care, cite professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources for your claims. This is not a discussion forum and we do not use original research. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:09, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

"This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fairthomas (talk • contribs) 12:18, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on E-democracy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.agoraproject.eu/papers/e-Government%20in%20the%20Service%20of%20Democracy.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.nicusa.com/pdf/CDG07_NIC_Engage.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120609141130/http://citris-uc.org/news/2011/ken_goldberg_data_and_democracy_initiative to http://citris-uc.org/news/2011/ken_goldberg_data_and_democracy_initiative
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080607140855/http://senatoronline.com.au/ to http://senatoronline.com.au/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051219231951/http://edc.unige.ch/ to http://edc.unige.ch/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 11:47, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on E-democracy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120415011918/http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/ColumnsBusiness/Is-Internet-democracy-under-threat-in-India/Article1-787097.aspx to http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/ColumnsBusiness/Is-Internet-democracy-under-threat-in-India/Article1-787097.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101229110700/http://democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6570 to http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6570
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20140603082954/http://transparent.gov.com/ to http://transparent.gov.com/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160107053420/http://ominvoimin.com/santas-little-helpers-wikidemocracy-in-finland/ to http://ominvoimin.com/santas-little-helpers-wikidemocracy-in-finland/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:58, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Change name to formal
Formal name for this topic would be something like Democracy and the Internet or Democracy in the Internet age -Inowen (talk) 04:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

re: "An E-democracy process has been recently proposed in a scientific article"
This article links to an article about soil. It has nothing to do with Democracy. myclob (talk) 03:47, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

General evaluation of article
Overall I think the article is very comprehensive and clearly written. Every section of the content is relevant to the topic, provided more details, and was concise.

However tone wise, I think the article leans towards promoting e-democracy and the positive side of e-democracy, whereas possible negative effects are underrepresented. I believe the tone can be more neutral to adhere to Wikipedia's standards, and perhaps alternative point of views can also be represented under the "Opposition" section. For sources, there were also some links that did not work. For example, citation [85] led to "404 Page not found", and citation [97] led to "story no longer available". This may make it hard for others to check the source and authenticate or dive deeper into the information. H.Susanna (talk) 19:23, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Worldviews
Need to add a worldwide view of the subject and improve the section that deals only with the United States and it doesn't represent the worldwide perspective. This one hasn't been fixed since August 2017.

The bibliographies in mind are:

Prins, C., et al. Digital Democracy in a Globalized World. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1606855&site=ehost-live.

MLA Hindman, Matthew. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton University Press, 2008. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/61871.

Candreaangulo (talk) 04:27, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

This article contains false information
There is multiple misleading suggestions in this article with no reference points at all. The author is just making bold claims without any support. As someone who has a degree in political science, has lived in a democratic country their whole lives, and understands the value of referencing, I do not appreciate authors putting out opinions without factual basis. And then editing when there is an actual factual basis to oppose their opinion. That seriously limits the discourse and is counter to the content of the article itself. Ie.


 * That's not necessarily true, democracy can also be veiled to control language and how information is released so that facts, ideas and conversations that oppose that language are removed or demonized.*** There are other parallels in the social design in the early days of the internet, such as the strongly libertarian support for free speech, the sharing culture that permeated nearly all aspects of Internet use, and the outright prohibition on commercial use by the National Science Foundation. Another example is the unmediated mass communication on the internet, such as through newsgroups, chat rooms, and MUDs. This communication ignored the boundaries established with broadcast media, such as newspapers or radio, and with one-to-one media, such as letters or landline telephones. *** Whoever wrote this is naïve at best. The early days of the internet was the wild west. There was more global communication but most people were either creating websites about crystal energy and conspiracies or teens showing off what bands they like on teentopia. Trying to comprehend what the internet would become in its early stages is like trying to wrangle cats.*** 2607:FEA8:4FDF:B7F0:DDD1:70BA:60A4:F396 (talk) 03:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

"It presumes all adult citizens have an equal opportunity to participate in the proposal, development, and creation of laws."
This is the Nirvana fallacy, or the Perfect Solution Fallacy. This fallacy occurs when an argument dismisses a solution or approach by assuming a perfect solution should exist and comparing the given solution unfavorably against this unrealistic standard. We should acknowledge that while perfect participation equality might be an ideal, it may not be practically achievable. The goal of e-democracy, then, is to significantly enhance the level of participation equality compared to traditional systems.Myclob (talk) 02:03, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

re: "E-democracy encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination."
What does this mean? What does it mean to "encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions"? This is a bit vague and could be confusing without more context. It seems to be suggesting that e-democracy integrates these factors in its methodology, but without explicit details on how that's done, the phrase might not be very informative.

How about: "E-democracy is an approach that leverages information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance political self-determination. It acknowledges and addresses social, economic, and cultural factors in its efforts to facilitate democratic engagement" or "E-democracy is an approach that leverages information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance political self-determination. It uses ICT to gather social, economic, and cultural information to facilitate democratic engagement and represent the collective will of the people."

I ended up with: E-democracy is an approach that leverages information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance political self-determination. It gathers social, economic, and cultural input in an attempt to improve democratic engagement or leverage crowd-sourcing to identify costs or risks associated with current policy or potential benefits of rejected policy.

Myclob (talk) 02:30, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

re: "must address cyber-security and safeguard any sensitive data"
Not all forms of e-democracy have sensitive data. One form would be a system, much like Wikipedia, in which users outline arguments why costs and benefits are more or less likely. The performance of these pro/con debates, as judged by a modified version of Google's Page Rank, could be used to give scores to the linked conclusions (conclusions must be linked to the relative strength of the supporting and opposing evidence, with attention to linkage, redundancy, and importance). Anyways, in this forum, peoples arguments are no more sensitive than our pro/con arguments on this page, which are public. Myclob (talk) 13:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

ReasonRank
A suggested approach to crowdsourcing government policy analysis incorporates techniques from conflict resolution, formal logic, cost-benefit analysis, and the now public-domain Google Page Rank algorithm. The Harvard Negotiation Project, as well as books such as Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, propose a framework that avoids bargaining over positions, separates people from problems, focuses on interests rather than positions, invents options for mutual gain, and insists on objective criteria.

This framework is geared towards analyzing the pros and cons of each issue. Pro/con arguments would be categorized by the community as either arguments or evidence (or data), with further classification based on truth, relevance, or importance agreement or disagreement. This formal logic would also be used to crowdsource costs and benefits, with reasons to agree or disagree on the likelihood or significance of each.

Building upon the concept of Google's Pagerank algorithm, which evaluates a webpage's strength based on the number and quality of its links, a similar mathematical approach could be used. This approach, called 'ReasonRank', would measure the strength of reasons for agreement or disagreement, considering the quantity and quality of supporting evidence and arguments. This methodology ties the strength of findings to the strength of the evidence supporting them. Reasons backed by more robust evidence would, therefore, carry greater weight when supporting other conclusions. To ensure accurate measurements, a separate algorithm would be employed to group similar statements expressing the same idea, thereby avoiding the issue of double-counting.

A formalized system for the public to use crowd-sourcing to identify overlooked costs of existing policies or potential benefits of discarded policies is yet to be established. The premise is akin to having the public serve as back-seat drivers, scrutinizing the work of the Congressional Budget Office and other bodies that evaluate the costs and benefits of each policy. Should the process be transparent and all assumptions clearly stated and explained, inviting public participation to submit pro/con arguments for any premises could be straightforward. Myclob (talk) 23:31, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

=E-democracy in popular media= E-democracy has been a recurrent theme in science fiction. Notably, works like David's Sling by Marc Stiegler and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card have anticipated forms of the internet before its actual invention, serving as platforms for the exploration of e-democracy.

David's Sling
In David's Sling, Marc Stiegler depicts e-democracy through the development of a computer-controlled smart weapon by a group of hackers. The hackers use an online debate platform, the Information Decision Duel, where two parties discuss their viewpoints before a neutral referee makes a decision. This fictional concept of an internet-like system for public debate reflects real-world aspirations for e-democracy: technologically enabled, inclusive, and transparent.

Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game also explores e-democracy, with the internet portrayed as a powerful platform for political discourse and social change. Two of the characters, siblings Valentine and Peter, use this platform to anonymously share their political views, gaining considerable influence. Their activities lead to a significant political shift, even though they are just children posing as adults. This highlights the issue of true identity within online participation and raises questions about the potential for manipulation in e-democracy.

Other portrayals
E-democracy has also been depicted in:


 * The Evitable Conflict by Isaac Asimov: Machines manage the economy for common welfare and make all key societal decisions.


 * The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein: A sentient computer assists Lunar colonists in their rebellion against Earth, with significant decisions made through public electronic voting.


 * Distraction by Bruce Sterling: The novel explores potential perils of e-democracy in a future United States heavily influenced by the internet and electronic voting.


 * Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow: The future society in this work practices digital direct democracy with a reputation-based currency called "Whuffie".


 * Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge: The novel imagines societal changes due to technological advancements, including more participatory democracy through continuous public polling and consensus-building tools.


 * The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds: The narrative centers on a future society where an artificial intelligence, the Prefect, administers a democratic system.

These works provide varied perspectives on the potential benefits and challenges of e-democracy.

Myclob (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2023 (UTC)