User:Ryanliou/sandbox

Article Evaluation on Civics Technology
Link: Civic technology


 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

Everything is relevant to the article topic. However, I feel like there are certain paragraphs the author didn't have to explain. For example, the passage on the background of the Knight Foundation could be easily cut down to only include how they benefit civics tech (the last sentence). Something that was distracting was the 'Definition' portion. I felt that the author could've split it into different sections: Background, Controversial Definition, Future of Civics Tech. Other than that, the author was extremely consistent when detailing civics tech programs in different countries and the effect of them on the nation. This was helpful because it was easier to follow as a reader.


 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

This article is neutral. There are no claims that are biased toward a particular position.


 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

Nothing was overrepresented but I felt that the effects of civics technology was underrepresented. There are more segmentations than just communication, elections, and socioeconomics.


 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

Few of the links don't work. The sources support the claims in the the article.


 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

Most of the references were primary sources so there is a chance that some of this information is biased. Some of the references were also from major news outlets like NYT which could be biased.


 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

None of the information is out of date.


 * Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

Most of the conversations covered were corrections and suggestions to certain topics in the wiki. Some were advice about the neutrality of the sources, others were correcting some mistakes about different topics, or offering more research and sources to include in the article.


 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

This article is part of lots of WikiProjects.


 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

This is a more broad dive into civics tech and covers all the most general aspects. In class, it seems like we'll be diving into different types of civics tech and their applications and effects.

Evaluation on Talk page: Talk:Civic technology

Possible Articles to Work on:
1. Voter suppression


 * Add section on legislations that combat voter suppression
 * Add section on companies dedicating their mission to combatting voter suppression
 * Recent examples in voter suppression
 * Investigate voter suppression in other countries

2. Electronic voting


 * Improve the public network DRE voting system to add citations
 * Add a section of Blockchain as a type of voting or add that into the online voting section
 * Investigate open source government
 * Possibly update the analysis section with more details to each subject
 * Possibly add a section for the different impacts (communication, voting, economic, social, etc)
 * Possibly add a section on legislations that help electronic voting (Help America Vote Act)
 * Criticism of electronic voting and hacking

3. Participatory budgeting


 * Cryptocurrency research into participatory budgeting
 * Possible more research into Brazil's experience in participatory budgeting
 * Effects on community

Finalizing my Topic

 * Reformatting the structure of the document
 * History of Quadratic Voting and Applications both contain the same paragraph about Colorado so I'll be deleting the 'History of Quadratic Voting' section and consolidating everything into the Applications section.
 * I'll be separating the Applications section into two subsections: Origination of Idea and Applications throughout the world
 * Within the origination of idea, there will be 2 sections: 'Development in Public Good' and 'Development in Corporate Governance'
 * Within the Applications throughout the World, there will be 2 sections 'United States' and 'Taiwan'
 * Adding more information on E. Glen Weyl and his specific developments to the original idea and its use in Corporate Governance (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2264245)
 * Adding a section under History of Quadratic Voting for Taiwan's use quadratic voting (https://medium.com/@yahsinhuangtw/highlights-from-first-radicalxchange-taipei-meetup-f2a9c3b797ab)
 * Adding a section for criticisms about the issues with individual security of Quadratic Voting (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.05300.pdf)
 * Adding a section for businesses that are responsible for developing Quadratic Voting like Democracy Earth, Collective Design Engineers, and RadicalxChange with a short bio detailing each of their missions involving quadratic voting
 * Fixing grammar mistakes

History of Quadratic Voting
One of the earliest known models idealizing quadratic voting was proposed by 3 scientists: William Vickrey, Edward H. Clarke, and Theodore Groves. Together they theorized the Vickery-Clarke-Groves mechanism (VCG mechanism). The purpose of this mechanism was to find the balance between being a transparent, easy-to-understand function that the market could understand in addition to being able to calculate and charge the specific price of any resource. This balance could then theoretically act as motivation for users to not only honestly declare their utilities, but also charge them the correct price. This theory was easily able to be applied into a voting system that could allow people to cast votes while presenting the intensity of their preference. However, much like the majority of the other voting systems proposed during this time, it proved to be too difficult to understand, vulnerable to cheating, weak equilibria, and other impractical deficiencies. As this concept continued developing, E. Glen Weyl, a Micorsoft researcher, made major breakthroughs in applying the concept to democratic politics and corporate governance and coining the phrase Quadratic Voting.

Ideation in Democratic Politics
The main motivation of Weyl to create a quadratic voting model was to combat against the 'tyranny of the majority' outcome that is a direct result of the majority-rule model. He believed the two main problems of the majority-rule model are that it doesn't always advance the public good and it weakens democracy. The stable majority has always been systematically benefited at the direct expense of minorities. On the other hand, even hypothetically if the majority wasn't to be concentrated in a single group, tyranny of the majority would still exist because a social group will still be exploited. Therefore, Weyl concluded that this majority rule system will always cause social harm. He also believed another reason is that the majority rule system weakens democracy. Historically, to disencourage political participation of minorities, the majority doesn't hesitate to set legal or physical barriers. As a result, this success of a temporary election is causing democratic institutions to weaken around the world.

To combat this, Weyl developed the quadratic voting model and its application to democratic politics. The model theoretically optimizes social welfare by allowing everyone the chance to vote equally on a proposal as well as giving the minority the opportunity to buy more votes to level out the playing field.

Ideation in Corporate Governance
Quadratic voting in corporate governance is aimed to optimize corporate values through the use of a more fair voting system. Common issues with shareholder voting includes blocking out policies that may benefit the corporate value but don't benefit their shareholder value or having the majority commonly outvote the minority. This poor corporate governance could easily contribute to detrimental finical crises.

With quadratic voting, not only are shareholders stripped of their voting rights, but instead corporate employees can buy as many votes as they want and participate in electoral process. Using the quadratic voting model, one vote would be $1 while two votes would be $4 and so on. The collected money gets transferred to the treasury where it gets distributed to the shareholders. To combat voter fraud, the votes are confidential and collusion is illegal. With this, not only is the majority shareholders' power against the minority stripped, but with the participation of everyone, it ensures that the policies are made for the corporate's best interest instead of the shareholders best interest.

Taiwan
Taiwan has had 2 applications of quadratic voting so far. The first event was hosted by RadicalxChange in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, where quadratic voting was used to vote in the Taiwanese presidential Hackathon. The Hackathon projects revolved around 'Cooperative Plurality' -- the concept of discovering the richness of diversity that is repressed through human cooperation. Judges were given 99 points with 1 vote costing 1 point and 2 votes costing 4 points and so on. This stopped the follow-up effect and group influenced decision that happened with judges in pervious years. This event was considered a successful application of quadratic voting.

Another application is Taiwan's government-run e-democracy platform Join. This platform utilizes the quadratic voting system to encourage public participation in budget matters. Citizens having 99 points to assign to their preferred policies using the standard quadratic voting model. With over 4 million active participants, anyone can start an e-petition for a certain policy. When it surpasses 5,000 signatures, corresponding government sectors will address the questioned issue by holding a collaborative meeting. So far, Taiwan has held 40 collaborative meetings spanning topics of tax filing, medical resource distribution, or environmental maintenance in national parks.

Germany
In Leipzig, Germany, Volt Germany -- a pan-European party -- held its second party congress and used quadratic voting to determine the most valued topics in their party manifesto among its members. Partner with Deora, Leapdao, a technology start-up company, launched its quadratic voting software consisting of a 'burner wallet'. Since there was limited time and it was a closed environment, the 'burner wallet' with a QR code acted as a private key that allowed congressmen to access their pre-funded wallet and a list of all the proposals on the voting platform. The event was considered a success because it successfully generated a priority list that ranked the importance of the topics.

Quadratic voting also allowed researchers to analyze voter distributions. For example, the topic of Education showed especially high or emotional value to voters with the majority deciding to cast 4 or 9 voice-credits (2 or 3 votes) and a minority casting 25-49 voice-credits (5-7 votes). On the other hand, the topic of Renewed Economy showed a more typical distribution with a majority of voters either not vote or max out at 9 voice-credits (3 votes). This indicates that there are less emotionally invested voters on this proposal as many of them didn't even spend tokens to vote on it.

Sybil Attacks
One of the biggest weaknesses of quadratic voting is the lack of moderation when dealing with cheating. The specific term used for cheating with quadratic voting is Sybil attacks. These attacks use sybils, or fake or duplicate identities, to influence community-orientated decisions to push them in their favor. Since a single vote has the potential to tilt a majoritarian group decision, prevention of sybil attacks is an important priority in ensuring the security of quadratic voting. With one of its priorities being an open, peer-to-peer network, an anti-sybil identification software is a requirement to implement widespread quadratic voting.

Humanity DAO
Humanity DAO, launched in May 2019, is an example of an Ethereum-based protocol that is for combatting sybil attacks. Humanity DAO maintains a decentralized registry of human identities using holders that regulate whether candidates are legitimate enough through consensus-based voting. Their identification protocol starts with asking candidates to submit a request with their social media profile information alongside a fee. If the candidate is rejected, the fee with be refunded. Members will vote on the candidate's legitimacy based on their submitted social media information and are incentivized to be honest to generate demand and lead to long term sustainability. This project ultimately stagnated because the community of early adopters was saturated. In addition, with a decentralized system, changing the protocol was extremely difficult so when they suffered from repeated attacks that ultimately raised the application fee, new members were discouraged to join. As a result, the project was shut down in January 2020.

Future trajectory for Sybil Attacks
Some possible avenues of inquiries include to investigate more intersectional Proof of Personhood systems that aren't directly blockchain based. For example, extending the Web of Trust by having a protocol that verifies proof of identities using social interactions would allow a community of users to assign corresponding levels of trusts to different candidates in relation with others. However, this would require a fully-decentralized system. This Web of Trust protocol could even expand to allowing candidates to provide proof of personhood by physical attendance which could lead to trusted clusters that grow into communities. All in all, sybil attacks are the last step before opening the path of internet-based, community driven political movements and economies.

Response to Nihal Singh:
''Peer Editing: Nihal Singh: Hey Ryan, I like how you subcategorized each section that you needed to work on. As I read through your contributions, there seemed to be ample amounts of contribution through quality information and credible research. Your article wordings, however, seem to carry a voice through charged wordings. For example, the Development in Democratic politics seemed to use quite charged words that led me to make a viewpoint rather than just keeping a neutral tone. It would be nice if you kept a neutral tone while giving facts that way people can develop their own conclusions instead of readings things such as "its not fair". Other than that, your sources seem to check out just fine and I thought you did a great job at covering the topic at hand.''

Hey Nihal! I am glad you enjoyed my subcategorization of each section alongside my research and evidence. I will minimize the bias when describing the minorities by deleting that phrase since it was redundant of the same idea stated neutrally a few sentences above. Also, expanding the tyranny of the majority to the United States was only tangentially connected to the passage anyway. Thanks for the solid feedback!

Response to Ethan Pak:
''Hi Ryan! Overall, your drafts are extremely well-written and comprehensive. I especially enjoyed your historical overview, as it was brief and concise, but provided the right amount of information and background I needed to continue on with the article. Additionally, you did a great job with linking all your information and claims to valid and credible sources, while also keeping a neutral and encyclopedic tone. The single suggestion I have, though, is to possibly add information showing the arguments refuting the idea of the "tyranny of the majority." While I completely understand that you included that information as an explanation for the creation of quadratic voting, it currently reads as a scathing critique of our current systems. While you do not have to add a lot, possibly a sentence or two explaining the opposing argument could make this portion of your article sound more balanced. That being said, it was such a well-written draft and your comments and explanations about Taiwan were a great addition! Great work! Ethanpak (talk) 03:08, 14 October 2020 (UTC)''

Hey Ethan! Thanks -- I really tried to keep a healthy balance between too much historical overview vs too much application now so I am glad it showed! I'll be sure to research more on an opposing side to the tyranny of the majority argument as well as make sure it is explicitly stated that this idea was the motivation for Weyl's application. This will hopefully eliminate the misperception of me complaining about our current political system through my supposedly neutral historical overview. Thanks for you advice!

Response to Lindsey Li:
''Hi @Ryanliou! Great job with the draft! Overall, it was well-organized, clear, and easy to understand. I also really liked how you structured your article draft with headings above each section and how you included a section that discusses a real-life example in Taiwan. The sources you included are reliable and range from a diverse spectrum of authors. One thing I noticed though that was also brought up by some other peer reviewers is how some of the wording in the draft came off as a little biased, specifically in the section where you state "it isn't fair for the minorities." Although that maybe your perspective, not everyone may think that so it's important to maintain a neutral POV as there will be many people reading this. Despite that, it's a great starting point! --Lindseyjli3 (talk) 06:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)''

Hey Lindsey! Thanks for all the input and I am happy that the subcategories helped you be able to read my draft in an organized way. As mentioned before, I will work on balancing out my Development in Democratic Politics section to be more two-sided and neutral through incorporating more information of the 'tyranny of the majority' idea and specifying that it was motivation for Weyl to construct his quadratic voting model. Although this suggestion is similar to previous remarks, thanks for including it in your peer review anyway because it showed me how important this mistake was! Thanks for the help!

Response to Susanna Huang:
Hi Ryan,

''Great job on your draft! I really like the structure you've outlined in your plan and your draft was clear and easy to understand. Here are just a few very minor areas of improvement I think can be implemented:''

''1. "Development in Democratic Politics" Section: - In my opinion "Development in Democratic Politics" is a bit of a misleading title. I think the section provides context on the current system and reasons for why quadratic voting can amend these issues rather than focusing on the development aspect.''

''- The middle part about majorities is slightly repetitive. For instance, "Since the majority has a higher chance of winning, it isn't fair for the minorities", can probably be removed as this idea has already been conveying. In addition, majority/minority is not only limited to racial aspects so I would suggest taking out this part "In the United States, the stable majority has historically been white people while minorities have been people of color" too.''

''2. "Taiwan" Section: - Maybe provide a little more context on the RadicalxChange Hackathon. It's a little unclear what the purpose of the project was and the impact it had.''

H.Susanna (talk) 07:11, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Hey Susanna! Overall great advice and thanks for bucketing it into a list so I can address each easily!


 * 1) This was a common issue among all the peer editors and I will be sure to change it. I think because of the misleading writing, it seemed to read as a review of our current political system and how quadratic voting could solve it when in reality, I simply included it to explain the motivation behind Weyl's invention of the application. I will be sure to more explicitly say this to decrease this common misperception. I also agree that the United States portion was redundant and I will delete it accordingly.
 * 2) I actually did include the purpose of the Hackathon which was a competition to create projects that help with cooperative plurality. The impact of the Hackathon was that it was one the first implementations of quadratic voting where the judges used this system to choose the winner. However, since my point didn't come across clearly, I was be revising that portion to help clarify that point.

I'm glad you enjoyed the organized structure and found it helpful for overall clarity. Thanks for the suggestions!

Response to Lucas Kim:
''Overall, I think that these contributions drafted are very effective and add lots of value to the article. The original article lacks a lot of information on the history as well as the development of issue in not only the government and politics but also its development of application and where it is being used. The strongest parts fo the user's contributions are the way in which the information is organized, providing a flow that is easy to follow. For future improvements, I think it could be interesting to see more countries in which quadratic voting is being applied in and potentially a larger expansion on certain topics of the ends of the section that feel slightly flushed out.''

Hey Lucas! I am glad you thought my revisions were necessary and my organization was helpful for clarity. In regard to other countries utilizing quadratic voting, I am pretty sure Taiwan and the United States are the only 2 countries so far to use it. However, I will do more research to double check. I will be sure expand more the developmental sections and their applications! Thanks for the help!

Response to Candreaangulo
''I thought the introduction to quadratic voting is really well written because it explains an overview of the definition and origin. The article complies with informing the reader and complies with academic neutral language. I'd suggest including more citations, fixing grammar mistakes, add a more detailed analysis and include external links. There are missing citations and statements that weren't cited and include original work. this needs to be fixed.Candreaangulo (talk) 03:36, 14 October 2020 (UTC)''

Hey Candreaangulo! Thanks for the feedback about the neutrality of the writing! I'll be sure to further revise my article to ensure I didn't miss any grammatical mistakes that Wikipedia didn't help me pick up on. As for the missing citations or uncited sentences, I was curious which specific instances you were referring to because I made sure all paraphrased idea were cited. Hopefully you can let me know and drop a suggestion sometime so I can go back to double check. Thanks for the advice!

Response to Jeshgus
''Your potential edits look great, and your sources, especially the last two, look reliable. Did you notice the last two sources were written by the same authors on different dates? Does the later one have the same content plus more making the first one useless?''

''The criticisms on the system seem like they could use some help for sure. I say this because the whole section is based on the monetary alternative of Quadratic voting. I can't find many sources claiming this is a common method, so I wonder why it gets so much coverage. You know better than I do, but it seems like the whole monetary voting principle would go against democracy's base principles.''

''Also, the prev. author uses cost = (desired votes)^2, but I don't think it is really this simple. If I were designing the system, i would probably put in a coefficient to change the slope.''

'' Good luck!! IDK why I can't add signature, username is jeshgus ''

Hey Jeshgus! Thanks for all the help! My last two sources related to Taiwan's application was written by two different authors: one was written by Ann Scott Tyson while the other was written by Audrey Tang. Maybe when you check back, you can let know and I can double check for you.

I do agree that the critique for QV needs to be revised and I plan to add a section about individual security by Santiago Siri -- a topic he talked about extensively as a guest lecturer. At the same time, I will investigate your questions about monetary voting principle by doing more research and hopefully I'll be able to let you know.

Finally, I will research a more developed version of the formula and will edit that in the article.

Overall, thank you so much for all the suggestions and I hope I can answer some of your questions when I do some further research. To add your signature, there should be a button on the bottom of the edit box that says "Sign your posts on talk pages:" with the '~' button. You can add your signature through there :)

Response to Esk00
''I think the topic sentences give a great concise definition of what Quadratic Voting is and overall the lead gives an overview of what the rest of the article will discuss. Overall, I think the article contains a lot of information that often is un-cited, and needs to be re-organized to make the article more concise. Lastly, I agree that the wiki article is missing a section about business today such as Democracy Earth to give more context about the subject of Quadratic voting. Esk00 (talk) 06:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)''

Hey Esk00! Thank you for your advice on my article! However, I think you should thank the original authors for the concise topic sentences defining QV and the good introduction, I am sure they would be happy to hear their work complimented! My contributions were more around the historical overview and applications of quadratic voting. I do agree that the original article is a little all-over-the-place and hopefully my contributions and editing will re-structure everything to help with clarity. To address the section about business today, I did add a drafted paragraph about Taiwan and its recent application on QV, but I agree that there should be a section dedicated to start-up companies revolving around furthering quadratic voting. Although I think your critique revolved more around the original article, I am glad we share the same concerns showing the direction of my edits are on the right track. Thanks for all the help!