if obama puts legislation online for feedback, how can they manage thousands of comments?

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Permalink Reply by salim dao on January 20, 2009 at 8:42pm

i like the digg voting system. i think it works very well. some may make snarky comments but they will be voted down by the community. not only will it get rid of the unnecessary comments, but it will bump up the comments that really matters to the community. youtube also uses the digg-style voting system.

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Permalink Reply by Ankeet on January 20, 2009 at 10:48pm

But that also mean that threads that lean towards certain special interests will be trolled by those who the issues matter to. Thus obviously putting opposing viewpoints at a disadvantage. Not to mention the fact that people will believe a lot of things the Internet Hate Machine tells them to.

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Permalink Reply by Marvin Price on January 21, 2009 at 10:18am

Wow. Just wow.

First of all, most proposed legislation is ALREADY online long before it becomes law. Americans have ample opportunity to seek out bills before they are voted on and monitor how their legislators are voting, in other words, which pockets their legislators are in. You already typically have MONTHS, not 5 days.

You can read it and write to your local, state, and legislative branch representatives. I doubt it's something most people will actually do, considering they by far already ignore the opportunity.

Most legislation is written in a legal vernacular that normal human beings have to force themselves to read through and comprehend. I estimate that at least 70% of the language in bills is irrelevant to the meat of the proposed law. I don't see this as an attractive pass time for the typical "I voted for hope" and "I voted for change" sound bite oriented American voter. Then again what can you expect from career politicians and lawyers like President Obama? Truth? Clarity? I think not.

How does Congress say, "We can go on field trips?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. CON. RES. 1
_______________________________________________________________________

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),
That pursuant to clause 4, section 5, article I of the Constitution,
during the One Hundred Eleventh Congress the Speaker of the House and
the Majority Leader of the Senate or their respective designees, acting
jointly after consultation with the Minority Leader of the House and
the Minority Leader of the Senate, may notify the Members of the House
and the Senate, respectively, to assemble at a place outside the
District of Columbia if, in their opinion, the public interest shall warrant it.

Passed the House of Representatives January 6, 2009.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bills are often named things that obfuscate their true purpose like SB1132. They then get nicknames to further muck things up like "Patriot Act." Who would be against "The Patriot Act?" People have to depend on those who are willing to wade in, read, and ferret out the true effects of legislation.

Not to mention what happens when you have stupid legislation written for the sake of just writing legislation to get your name associated with a cause. Here is an example of bad legislation, written to create responsibilities for non-scientists, on a subject matter that is predicated upon bad science to achieve political goals. I chose it because it's small, relative to most legislation, yet dumb as all hell:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 6, 2009

Mrs. Christensen (for herself, Ms. Bordallo, and Mr. Faleomavaega)
submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on Natural Resources

_______________________________________________________________________

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION



Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service should incorporate consideration of global warming and
sea-level rise into the comprehensive conservation plans for coastal
national wildlife refuges, and for other purposes.

Whereas global warming can generally be described as an increase in the average
temperature of the earth's atmosphere, and sea-level rise can best be
described as an overall increase in sea level;
Whereas global warming and related aspects of climate change are caused by the
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases due to industrial
processes and fossil fuel combustion associated with the process of
economic growth, and changes in land use such as deforestation;
Whereas studies show that the continuation of historical trends of greenhouse
gas emissions will result in additional global warming, with current
projections of global warming 2.5F to 10.4F by 2100;
Whereas global warming will induce sea-level rise that will steadily inundate
coastal areas, change precipitation patterns, increase risk of droughts
and floods, threaten biodiversity, and offer a host of potential
challenges to public health;
Whereas the generally expected 50 to 200 cm sea-level rise from global warming
would inundate 7,000 square miles of dry land in the United States and
equal amounts of coastal wetlands;
Whereas such sea-level rise will effectively force recreational beaches inland,
exacerbate coastal flooding, and increase the salinity of aquifers and
estuaries in the next century;
Whereas it has been reported that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere now will persist for approximately 100 years;
Whereas if we are not proactive in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and wait to see obvious effects of global warming and sea-
level rise, it may be too late to avoid the harmful repercussions of
such events;
Whereas the ongoing and projected estimates of sea-level rise as a result of
global warming threaten the loss of 22 percent of the world's coastal
wetlands by 2080;
Whereas the ongoing and projected increases in sea-level rise as a result of
global warming have extremely strong implications for stewardship by the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service of nearly 1,100,000 acres of
coastal wetlands located in 159 coastal national wildlife refuges in the
United States and its Caribbean and Pacific territories;
Whereas the National Wildlife Refuge System was created to conserve fish,
wildlife, and plants and their habitats;
Whereas the effects of global warming and sea-level rise may greatly impact the
effectiveness of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the conservation
of migratory birds, anadromous and interjurisdictional fish, marine
mammals, endangered species and threatened species, and the habitats on
which these species depend;
Whereas global warming and sea-level rise has already begun to affect some of
the Nation's most valued natural resources such as the coral reefs near
Buck Island National Park in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and Blackwater
National Wildlife Refuge on the Chesapeake Bay, and other areas; and
Whereas amendments to the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of
1966 that were made by the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement
Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-57) require that the Secretary of the
Interior shall prepare a comprehensive conservation plan for each
national wildlife refuge within 15 years after the date of enactment of
such Act: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),
That it is the sense of the Congress that--
(1) the United States Fish and Wildlife Service should
incorporate consideration of the effects of global warming and
sea-level rise into the comprehensive conservation plan for
each coastal national wildlife refuge;
(2) each such comprehensive conservation plan should
address, with respect to the refuge concerned, how global
warming and sea-level rise will affect--
(A) the ecological integrity of the refuge;
(B) the distribution, migration patterns, and
abundance of fish, wildlife, and plant populations and
related habitats of the refuge;
(C) the archaeological and cultural values of the
refuge;
(D) such areas within the refuge that are suitable
for use as administrative sites or visitor facilities;
and
(E) opportunities for compatible wildlife-dependent
recreational uses of the refuge; and
(3) the Director of the United Fish and Wildlife Service,
in consultation with the United States Geological Survey,
should conduct an assessment of the potential impacts of global
warming and sea-level rise on coastal national wildlife
refuges.

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Permalink Reply by Edward on January 21, 2009 at 10:53am

I think you just illustrated one of the major draw backs to comments on a post.

Too long and off topic.

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Permalink Reply by Marvin Price on January 21, 2009 at 11:04am

And I think you just made my point.

Most legislation is hundreds of pages, sometimes thousands of pages. I post the smallest recent piece of legislation I can find to illustrate, and you say "too long and off topic."

I rest my case.

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Permalink Reply by Edward on January 21, 2009 at 11:26am

Hey Marvin,

Had this discussion been about posting and commenting on a piece of relevant legislation then your post would have probably been appreciated by me a little more.

As this discussion asks the questions:

"...how can they manage all the feedback this could generate? Will someone have to read all the comments? Will they use a Digg-style voting mechanism?

What do you think would work best to manage all the interaction?"

You response was completely off topic, which in itself is not a problem, but coupled to being extremely long post presents one of the major draw backs to user-comments on posts.

Legislation generally has an abstract which reduces the main points of change or new ideas into a digestible format. This would allow people or pick and choose issues they are interested in leaving feedback for, and browse or skip those non-emergent legislative issues they are not intrigued by.

The wording of the legislation is very important, obviously, but the intention and practical implementation of the new law is more important. It is the latter that people are most likely to be engaged by and post feedback on.

Your gripe about the global warming legislation, you spammed this discussion with, is because it's "...predicated upon bad science to achieve political goals," which is your opinion. But you could have saved several inches of text if you just listed the major points of the proposed law.

(1)There are 15 or so debatable outcomes of global warming impacting our country:
(2)This law proposes the FWS and GS conduct the following:
quoted
(1) the United States Fish and Wildlife Service should incorporate consideration of the effects of global warming and sea-level rise into the comprehensive conservation plan for each coastal national wildlife refuge;
(2) each such comprehensive conservation plan should address, with respect to the refuge concerned, how global warming and sea-level rise will affect--
(A) the ecological integrity of the refuge;
(B) the distribution, migration patterns, and abundance of fish, wildlife, and plant populations and related habitats of the refuge;
(C) the archaeological and cultural values of therefuge;
(D) such areas within the refuge that are suitable for use as administrative sites or visitor facilities; and
(E) opportunities for compatible wildlife-dependent recreational uses of the refuge; and
(3) the Director of the United Fish and Wildlife Service, in consultation with the United States Geological Survey, should conduct an assessment of the potential impacts of global warming and sea-level rise on coastal national wildlife refuges.

Debate the points you don't like, offer reasoning and evidence.
Debate the actions you don't like, and offer the same.

It's easier, much more friendly, and even for an off topic post is shorter and more interesting to read.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Robinette on February 4, 2009 at 1:38am

rock on Edward, we gotta fight for the cause of all comment readers everywhere. PLZ DONT LEAVE HELLA LONG POSTS ON BOARDS. We just wanna read something quick and move onto the next post. dont bore the shit out of us.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Robinette on February 6, 2009 at 9:10am

oh plz, this is way different than posting a long reply about your opinion. i got over that shit, but copying and pasting a novel is a whole new lvl. so, i didnt read it, and thats sort of my point. i find your posts to be meaningful but when someone overdoes it, like so, they water down the importance of such things. i read all your stuff tube, its making me a more aware person.

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Permalink Reply by Edward on January 21, 2009 at 11:06am

comment boards that have the most recent comment at the top work well for those following a discussion as it saves page clicks just to find where you were last.

Maybe comments get to expire unless they've been recommended by a certain number of users per hour/ 6 hours / day so evolving comments and thoughts can move on from previous iterations without clogging up the discussion.

IP addressing restrictions could prevent multiple users (more than 5?) in the same office/ computer registering their thoughts on the discussion per hour / 6 hours / day.

Any maybe don't require registration to vote so you can just quickly check in on and evolve a discussion at the library/ iphone/ friends house/ etc. It'd allow greater access to the idea to those technophobes who want in but don't want to register.

Website registration has benefits, but mostly just to the website involved (anti-spam, restricted content, user tracking, etc.) this process should be cleverly implemented so that registration is not necessary but abuse of the system is prevented.

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Permalink Reply by Edward on January 21, 2009 at 1:27pm

Most businesses offices have a dedicated set of external IP addresses that can't be renewed/released. Their license, or that of the ISP, prevent too much fiddling. At home my IP stays the same until I reboot my modem and I get a new one.

At work my IP address starts with the same 6 numbers and the xxx.xxx.200 to xxx.xxx.225 are the 3rd numbers with obviously the 4th being all 254.

My point with IP addressing was that you'd at least be able to restrict the same machine/ ISP connection (i.e. lobbying office) from swaying any feedback in a short time period. It wasn't meant to be presented as a bullet proof solution to fraud or abuse, but could still be implemented with a well thought out algorithm.

5 days sounds fine to me. It means maybe 5 days of digital input to be included with the many more days it would take to be sponsored, committeed, debated, and survive both chambers.

Imagine getting a text saying "New initiative of gay marriage being proposed in the house goto: change.gov/34821 and review" on your blackberry or whatever.

If you don't go within 5 days, maybe it wasn't important enough for you to go. Time is a very efficient and free way to manage thousands of comments.

Long or off-topic posts are not a problem unless combined (at least to me).

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Permalink Reply by Ankeet on January 21, 2009 at 2:57pm

At my high school, each workstation has the same external IP address. This is a school meant to accomodate, hm, around 1800 people? And currently holds 2200+. At least eight 40-workstation computer labs alone, not to mention the library/media center, and a computer in nearly every classroom. So all of these get one restriction? It doesn't matter what that restriction is, a "well thought out algorithm" for IP restricting is still IP restricting, and it's a horribly non-scalable solution to apply, blindly or not, to variable infrastructure. Oh, wait, 14-to-19 year olds don't have rights.

Maybe we should convince 'em to organize legislation information and filter out the unnecessary legal blabber via semantic markup.[/joke]

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Permalink Reply by Marvin Price on January 25, 2009 at 5:18pm

And yet you can look up any legislation you like now with no restriction. You can then comment to the appropriate legislator with no restrictions. There are no time limits. You can comment up until the point when the proposed legislation becomes law. It's been like this for years. No additional bureaucracy is required. No hiring people to deal with it. No increasing the size of government for a publicity stunt.

Also keep in mind a legislator is far more likely to respond to a a well thought out letter written specifically to them, then to a mass of gobbledygook from, well, the masses.

While I'm sure that a Democratically held White House and Congress will be doling out legislation faster than financial bail out dollars, I'm pretty sure we will continue to be kept abreast of it all.

Let's see, what can we make illegal this week? What additional laws can we pass to hamstring individuals? Oh joy. The changes are already making me giddy.

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