Pirate Feedback/Improvements

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The screenshots here show the German translations, but Pirate Feedback can of course also be used in English. Other languages can be added easily by translation files.

Improvements

Here is an overview of the major improvements of Pirate Feedback compared to Liquid Feedback.

Preference delegation instead of chain delegation

While with chain delegation one can delegate his vote to only one person, which in turn can pass on to other members, with preference delegation one can create a list of people, to which one delegates directly. If the first person on the list does not use the delegation, the second person can use it. If the second person doesn't use it, it goes to the third person, etc.

The concept of preference delegation is explained in the following blog article of Andi Popp and Sylvi (in German): https://andipopp.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/discrete-democracy-ein-vorschlag-zur-weiterentwicklung-von-liquid-democracy/

Farddizzle made an introducing Video-Tutorial for the preference delegation (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn8Me9K6wHw

User interface

This is the page to set a unit delegation:

PirateFeedback Gliederungsdelegation.png

On the left side members can be added to the preference list, deleted from it or the order can be changed. On the right the preference list is shown again, but for all levels. While this makes no difference for the unit delegation, you can see it now for the area delegation:

PirateFeedback Themenbereichsdelegation.png

At the area delegation there is also shown, which trustee is interested in the issue and thus uses your voting weight during the discussion phase:

PirateFeedback Themendelegation.png

These informations are all also displayed in compact in the header of an initiative:

PirateFeedback Delegation Kopf.png

In the lowest row the complete preference list over all levels is displayed, while the different levels are marked by background colors.

Advantages of the preference delegation compared to the chain delegation

  • One has better control, to whom his vote will be given.
    The vote goes always only to members, to which one delegated himself. There is no further transfer of the vote. With the chain delegation instead it is hard to estimate, to whom the vote will be given finally.
  • There are no longer "super delegates", which collect their votes tree-like over multiple steps.
    If someone gets very many votes, then his trusters delegated to him intentionally.
  • One does not any longer have to make compromises when choosing trustees.
    With chain delegation you have to take care, if the trustee participates frequently or delegates too. Otherwise the probability rises, that your vote gets lost. This has the effect, that votes are more likely delegated to long delegation chains and thus super delegates. Additionally you have to take care, to whom the trustee delegates and to whom these members again delegate. Otherwise you vote could be easily go to members, which you definitely didn't want to support. All these problems are gone with the preference delegation. I can directly choose, who I find is competent. If he participates rarely, that does not matter, the vote goes the next on the preference list. To whom he delegates does not affect me, because he can not pass on my vote.
  • By the length of the delegation lists you can make it extremely unlikely, that the vote gets lost.
    Experience shows, that already preference lists with 10 reasonably active trustees make it very unlikely, that a vote gets lost. Many members are already satisfied with shorter preference lists. That preference lists get very long, happens almost never, because it has no further advantage.
  • The delegation relations get much clearer.
    After a voting I can see at a glance, how the weight of a participate comes about.

In addition Street Dogg has analyzed the problems of the chain delegation very thoroughly (in German): http://streetdogg.wordpress.com/category/lqfb/

Wrong counter-arguments

  • A restriction of the transitivity of the voting weight would be a restriction of the freedom of choice.
    Every voting system offers certain options and others not. Without rules, what is possible and what not, a voting system is not possible. The chain delegation for example offers you not the option to delegate to multiple members. One could see that also as a restriction of freedom.
  • The passing on of voting weight would be the consequent implication of the Liquid Democracy concept.
    In politics consequence is not the only criterion. It does not simply justify sacrificing democratic principles. In politics often solutions are demanded, which take in account different aspects and merge multiple views. Maximal consequent politics is the worst one can do. I don´t want to cite examples. The Liquid Democracy concept is not contrary to the preference delegation.

Pro und contra arguments

At every initiative pro and contra argument can be added. These can then be rated positive or negative by other members and thus bring them into an order. The concept is like at Wikiarguments.

Here the overview of the arguments on the page of the initiative:

PirateFeedback Argumente.png

The word "positive" or "negative" next to the argument shows, how you rated this argument. The brackets mean, that this rating is not counted. For pro arguments only the ratings of supporters are counted, for contra arguments only the ratings of members, which do not support the initiative.

Here the detail view of an argument:

PirateFeedback Argument.png

By contra arguments problems of a proposal can be indicated, which otherwise maybe many members would have overlooked. Before often the suggestions were misused to bring in contra arguments.

Notifications by email

It can now be much better adjusted, at what events one wants to get a notification. Before notifications were also only sent for issues, at which one declared his interest or which are in areas, where one became member of. Now it is also possible, to get all notifications.

Pirate Feedback Benachrichtigungseinstellungen.png

The subject of the emails is not anymore just "Issue reached next phase", but exactly, what happened to which issue, which initiative, which suggestion or which argument. e.g.:

  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] New issue #404 and initiative - i588: Wahlkampfthemen: Umfrage unter allen Mitgliedern in Oberbayern
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] New initiative in issue #401 - i579: Perspektive München 2030: Autofreie Innenstadt
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] New suggestion for initiative i579 - Den Fahrradverkehr nicht vergessen
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #401 reached discussion
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] New draft for initiative i577 - Kreisparteitag 2013.1
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #385 was frozen
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] New argument for initiative i561 - Karfreitag gehört gefeiert!
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Voting for issue #385 started
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #377 was finished (with winner)
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #329 was finished (without winner)
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #316 was canceled because no initiative was admitted
  • [Pirate Feedback LV Bayern] Issue #301 was canceled due to revocation

The notifications mails now also contain the text of a new initiative, a new draft, a new suggestion or a new argument. The notification that an issue was finished now also contains the voting result.

Delete personal data, account change without traceability

At any time a member can delete his personal data and lock his account permanently. This implements a data protection requirement.

In doing so one can create a new account for himself. That way an account change is possible. No mapping is possible between the old and the new account.

Details of issues and initiatives

The display is now much clearer:

PirateFeedback Details.png

In LiquidFeedback these informations are only displayed a an unformatted list:

LiquidFeedback Details.png

Source code of initiatives

To make is possible to copy the text of an initiative including formatting into a wiki, the source code of the initiative can now be displayed.

Warning before deletion of suggestions

Before if you wrote a suggestion and then you revoked your support for the initiative again, the suggestion was deleted without notice. This way frequently people delete their suggestions by mistake. In Pirate Feedback a warning is shown, which you have to confirm to delete your suggestions.

Display of the voting results and the casted votes

In the header of an issue and at the listing of issues the casted votes are now displayed for closed issues. In Liquid Feedback there is only displayed which initiatives one supported before the voting.

PirateFeedback Abstimmungsergebnis.png

The arrows indicate, that I voted only by delegation. In this example the member, which is shown in the right top corner, has voted with my vote. By the middle blue border one can recognize, that it is an area delegation.

It is now also displayed, which fraction are direct and delegated votes. These fractions can also be recognized in the bar graph by different green and red shadings.

Display of the voting behavior of single members

In the profile of a member there is now a link "Voted", by which you can see directly, how this member voted at all previous issues:

PirateFeedback Abgestimmt Kopf.png

PirateFeedback Abgestimmt Liste.png

Display how your trustees voted

There is now a link "Voted by delegation", which leads to an overview, how your trustees voted:

Pirate Feedback Abgestimmt durch Delegation.png

Further such direct links are "Latest voting results" and "Not yet voted".

Display of not yet voted issues in the area list

In the list of areas it is now displayed, at how many issues in an area one has not yet voted. Furthermore the layout of the list is now clearer.

PirateFeedback Themenbereiche.png

Filter by voting behavior

In the list of members, which voted, there is now a filter by voting behavior available. One can for example view, who voted with yes, without going through all the maybe many pages of voters.

PirateFeedback FilterAbstimmungsverhalten.png

Count of supporters

At the lists of supporters the count is displayed. So one does not have to count the supporters by himself, if one wants to know, how many more supporters are needed to reach a quorum.

Display of delegations at suggestions

In the list of opinions to a suggestion it is now also displayed, how many delegations the members have.

Pirate feedback anregungen delegationen.png

Display of issue delegations and population

On the page of an issue also the issue delegations and the detailed composition of the population, to which the quorums refer, is displayed.

Wiki editor

The most important formatting functions are now directly available in the editor, which helps especially people, who do not often use wiki syntax.

Pirate feedback editor.png

At the creation of suggestions there is now also a preview available.

When editing the text of an initiative one can – like common in a wiki – view the changes without already saving.

Change title of initiative

The title of an initiative can now be changed later as long as the issue is not yet frozen.

Member list

In the list of members it is now visible, which members are already in your contacts.

Navigation and layout

The rarely used links "Registration" and "Forgot password?" were moved to the login page, the more often used link "Logout" in turn was added to the navigation. "Edit profile" and "Upload avatar/photo" is now directly in the profile.

The filters are now arranged more clearly. By default now the issues of the subscribed areas are displayed. The filter by voting defaults to not yet voted issues. Open and closed issues comes now before "Latest events".

The layout of area lists, issue lists and initiatives is now slimmer and clearer.

Optional: delegation expiry

Delegations expire after a certain configurable period after creation. Afterwards the delegations do still exist and are visible, but marked as expired and not taken into account anymore at votings and so on. By a click on a button next to a trustee in the preference list, a delegation can be continued. Then the period until expiry starts again. Another configurable period before the expiry a warning is shown. From then on the remaining time and the continue button to reset the time is displayed.

PirateFeedback Delegationsverfall.png

The warning are also displayed on the home page, similar like the warnings about broken delegations by inactive members. In the warning is shown, how much time is left until expiry or if there are already delegations expired.

PirateFeedback Delegationsverfall Warnung.png

For LiquidFeedback Core v2.2.4/Frontend v2.2.3 a similar function is implemented. However there is no real expiry of delegations, but only right after the login a page for confirmation of the listed delegations. Probably this confirmation will just be clicked away like a Windows error message. Because when you log in, you mostly want to do some certain thing and not motivated to go through the delegations. Even when you go through them, there is no option to change delegations, but only to delete them. There is also no way to evaluate the delegations, because you first have to confirm the page, to get to other things. Apart from that the evaluation of delegations in LiquidFeedback is quite circuitous, because you have to look at every voting individually.

Optional: additional direct issue quorum

When creating a new issue some members have so many delegations, that they reach the issue quorum on their own. To avoid that, there is now the option, to configure an additional direct issue quorum in the policy. At this quorum only direct supporters are counted, without delegations. Only when both issue quorums are reached, an issue is admitted to the discussion.

PirateFeedback direktes Quorum.png

Switch off delegations

Delegations can be switched off for units, areas or policies.

Fixed bugs

Many bugs have been fixed, here only the for the user most obvious ones:

  • Because of wrong line breaks the last word before a change in the Diff was often also marked as changed.
  • Logging out two times led "System error: ../env/request/set_csrf_secret.lua:15: Cross-Site Request Forgery attempt detected", because the session was deleted.
  • Because of a mistake in the program logic, email notifications about new suggestions contained the link to the issue instead of the link to the suggestion.
  • The registration showed partially not reasonably behavior and was thus completely revised. While I heard many times, that someone can not register himself in the LiquidFeedback of the federal level, we had not even one such case with Pirate Feedback in Bavaria.

Other

On this page only improvements are listes, which are visible for the end user. But also the administration area and the installation have been improved extensively.

Many more things have been improved and many further bugs have been fixed. A more detailed list is at the releases.

Pirate Feedback can do everything, what Liquid Feedback can, the only exception is the chain delegation. Improvements of LiquidFeedback also go into Pirate Feedback, as long as they`re reasonable and after the developers have fixed the most obvious bugs.