Jimmy Wales wrote:
Having said all of this, I think that I would find very
useful a way
that I could formulate alternatives and have people formally register
preferences, with the understanding that it's an experiment. A tool
for more formally recognizing consensus. And then that tool might
eventually (with experience and changes as necessary) be more
formalized.
OK. Proposal (probably number 10^10, but anyway):
* Have a special page (or another project?) for "consensus management" ;-)
* Logged-in people only (just for ease of reading; user names are free...)
* Anyone can create a topic that needs a consensus decision
* Anyone can add solution proposals, as a wikipedia (meta) link, like
"Difficult topic (proposal Magnus)"
* Everyone can add (and remove) himself to the"decision finding" on any
topic
* Options on a topic are all proposals, "I don't like any of this", and
"I don't know yet", the latter being the default
* Anyone can change his vote (sorry: opinion) on the topic any time, and
give a reason for prefering that option
* For a topic, anyone can mark a checkbox "I think we should get this
done now"
* When some criteria are met (example: topic exists for 1 week, more
than 5 people are signed up, more than 70% think it's done now),
consensus is declared.
It has some voting elements (like actually deciding at one point), but
also the "flow" of consensus making. And, we know where the participants
stand at any moment.
Magnus