Feb 7, 17 / Pis 10, 01 22:59 UTC

Re: Proposal - Weekly Q&A session with Igor Ashurbeyli  

I'm sure there's no particular rush - even with minimal specific effort I'd still envision it reaching a state sensible to submit well before the month's end - it's easily 97% complete minimally as it is - I'm also doing very little, I'd think the bulk of the effort has been Vadorequest's.

As for "team" - I'd not describe what exists as that, it's just general open input from anyone what'd like to see this work. There has been an overall lack of input - as is the case with so many other things - but that could be due largely to language barriers and we've possibly suggested a good handle on current affairs and the 500+ veiws haven't lead to questions or concerns - or "bettter" ideas.

Feb 7, 17 / Pis 10, 01 23:32 UTC

For the record about 6-12 people helped with the document. Most of them about corrections or comments. Hard to tell the exact number since most of them are "Anonymous". Also, I didn't keep track of who has proposed what. Most of the writing as been done by myself, and as for now I am indeed "alone".

I’m concerned about the quantity of the questions that may arise. The use of a dedicated tool is a must-have, but we don’t have any. So we must rely on something we can think of. And for now, I only can see the forum to get the questions. The use of upvote/downvote could also reveal itself to be useful. I'll try looking in a dedicated tool, I'm thinking something like "Facebook poll", where anyone can add a new option, and anyone can vote up/down for all options. This would help the staff to deal with low-quality question and reveal those the community wants to see asked. Maybe a top ten/twenty of those questions could be selected as final questions. (But I don't want the poll to be on FB itself since many people wouldn't be able to use it)

I really want to keep the staff work at minimal, and I strongly believe the right tool would much help ensure that. The forum, as much as I'd like see it fit, doesn't and would bring a lot of pain for the staff to order and maintain all questions. On the other hand, the use of an external tool would delay the whole proposal. (because it would need a PoC, additional setup, and such) So, I'm still wondering about what should be done about that.

For now, the general idea has changed a bit. There won’t be real-time. And the session would be monthly, most likely. I believe a 3 weeks open for community questions would be fair, and then one week to select the ones that'll get asked. But again, this process would depend on the tools at our disposition.

@Speakee: If you can add me on fb and send me your email so I can give you write access to the proposal document. https://www.facebook.com/Vadorequest

I think we should quotes the most pertinent sentences written on this thread and put them on the Proposal, as a proof our decisions and action plan are decided by the insights of the citizens themselves. Would that seem like a good idea to you?

  Last edited by:  Ambroise Dhenain (Translator, Asgardian)  on Feb 7, 17 / Pis 10, 01 23:33 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time

Feb 7, 17 / Pis 10, 01 23:32 UTC

EyeR,

happy to hear you would see it that ready already. And yes, "team" would be the wrong term to use, as it really is an open input project. I'm just kind of eager to see this success, as it surely would help with the trust bond between certain Asgardians and the Officials, haha. Great to see someone who's keeping me in check with my spontaneity.


Vadorequest,

just sent the request. Happy to help!

I'm quite glad the way you took with the general idea of the session. Monthly seems just about right, since there probably won't happen anything major in that time which would not be publicly addressed in the Chronicles. Also outside tool is a great idea, but there really is that additional setup needed, so that needs additional thinking if it is going to be used. The idea of quoting the most pertient sentences is a nice idea, imo. It just needs to be made the right way so it does fit with the other document as it should. Other than that, I like the way we're going with this proposal.

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  Last edited by:  Aleksi Laakkonen (Asgardian)  on Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 00:07 UTC, Total number of edits: 3 times

Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 02:18 UTC

(But I don't want the poll to be on FB itself since many people wouldn't be able to use it)

It's not that we can't. We just know better.

The use of a dedicated tool is a must-have

Eventually, yes certainly. This really wouldn't be too dificult to develop I would of thought. Personally with regards to "additional services" I'd be developing a portal interface first. Somewhat like a "kiosk interface" granting access to various tools which are integrated to the maximum way that still makes sense. Then you can attempt to build individual things in a modular framework around this portal. Then we might end up with something that can do anything, and is still actually possible to maintain or upgrade.

But for what we have made available right now - ie: a forum - Then a subsection can hold a months questions or so at a time - each question can be additionally a poll, if it'll allow one option then we can get a good handle on how many are interested - sort to the higher polled first - and anyone with similar or additional of ilk can in theory tag into that. Over the month, mods can keep it trimmed(taking on extra for that purpose if required) and tidied. A "dead question" subsection can exist to simply throw all the posts into after processing(long term retention in DB). This should make it easy to total them all up into a concise set of questions over a few days and submit for answering. I'd think it decent to attempt to give him a reasonable window in order to come up with answers, I suspect he will have cause to think before answering a few. That pause will add up over 20-50 questions. To assume Dr Ashurebyli's translator costs him he can deliver his response in his native language and surely there will be those in our number able to translate into every relevant language - reducing time and cost to him further. A subsection next to the questions subsection could potentially contain responses archived over time - I'd personally think a wiki more suitable, I can't recall if that feature request was picked up and confirmed inbound tbh.

External tools - especially things of closed source nature, or of proven privacy and or security risk(like facebook, and you can add in moral and ethically questionable conduct with regards to the data they rape from their victims, I mean users.) are definitely things to avoid. It's honestly better to not even bother starting that to intentionally build on shakey foundations. It never ends well. To ignore any privacy or security concerns, I've seen too many things shut down and isolated purely because they had no control over the medium they attempted to utilise to consider trusting random third parties anywhere in the chain, no matter how trivial the data.

Initially, there is expected to be a high volume of questions - but retaining and displaying previous sessions should in theory minimise this over time and eventually those tasked with pruning questions in there will be mostly consumed with checking it's not been previously asked(we need something on the post input system to check for such - maybe not prevent post outright, unless clear inhuman posting demonstrated, but flag for moderator attention. This could be adapted to catch spam runs etc additionally (another reason for portal, there's so many tools...) but this could be achieved with a little script in cron throwing the ngnix logs through awk producing a "report" of things what might want to be looked at. For post count sorting, that's just a little glob of SQL and it'll return a nice list - maybe some HTML to get it formatted pretty into a table or whatever - a lot can really be automated. This is what computers are for, making things easier). I'm not keen on selecting a limited number of questions - grouping many similar to reduce total count and possibly stripping of extra/duplicate detail or rephrasing to suit, sure - but If anyone should, I'd suggest it's Dr Ashurbeyli as he knows how much time he has, and what questions he has capability to provide answers.

If we end up submitting 2000 questions, so be it - it should just be implicit not to expect 2000 answers, just what he can reasonably get through. By not expecting realtime response, and granting a large window(maybe a week after submission, as an optional timeframe more than a rigid requirement, actually released as and when it's done with) in which to respond it should hopefully maximise the number that's possible to reasonably get through. If it's felt important to be answered, it can always be asked again - especially right now there's not a massive rush with most things as they hinge on too many other things being completed first. I'd expect the total number of questions to drop over time to a much more managable level - this sort of thing, IMHO is only a "stopgap measure" - Once we select for ourselves some governmental model then a lot clearer lines can be drawn in a lot of places. If it progresses to the "direct democracy" model then community activity should imply knowlege - or easy access to - of various initatives and projects, progress within and thusly have other places to seek more detailed answers.

  Updated  on Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 02:25 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times
Reason: clarifications, typo

Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 16:57 UTC

EyeR had again many solid points. We are indeed going to start with the forum and poll system in my opinion, as it is quite ready to be implemented.


Vadorequest,

I completely checked the doc file with the Project Proposal Guide open and for example fixed the font size to 12 as requested in the guide. It should now be in line with the requirements. I wrote one comment in the Abstract section, as it is still displaying the old real time vision of this proposal, and should be edited to follow our present approach. The Approach section is too still displaying the old weekly approach, and should be edited. I can of course take care of this when you give the go. Take a look and let me know what do you think.

When everything regarding that is put in order, we can go over it once more and think if something else should be added; if not, then polish it through and submit it to the C.A.

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  Last edited by:  Aleksi Laakkonen (Asgardian)  on Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 17:08 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times
Reason: Additional notes

Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 19:23 UTC

About the tools we can use right now - AKA the forum, I just got an idea.

The use of an entire section is a possibility, but in order to count the upvotes and such, what do you think about putting all the selected questions inside a poll with multiple choices, within the forum?

So basically, we would have all questions as poll (checkboxes) and we could vote for like... 10 of them? I'll make a fake new topic with such settings and see how it goes.

@Speakee: Go go go! We're on the same tracks, don't hesitate to update the document if you believe it should be done! I've activated the tracking of the document for myself and can revert it back if needed. Also, if we're unsure we can just put the new version of a paragraphe and put the former version in another color, for instance.

Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 20:02 UTC

That is... quite promising if it works. Go ahead and tell us if it does work in our favor!

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  Last edited by:  Aleksi Laakkonen (Asgardian)  on Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 01:57 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times

Feb 8, 17 / Pis 11, 01 22:14 UTC

Towards the later end of question sampling period it'd be easy to collate existing questions and put it as a sticky topic up top that is also a poll, limited to 10 selections(think should get more, will be a lot of questions) to allow the community to trim the submission pile themselves. This does indeed sound a "fair" way to reduce what we ask of Dr. Ashurbeyli.

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 09:06 UTC

I believe it's the best way we currently have to handle things, once the poll is fixed and we can add more than two choices. Also, it seems there is a limit in the source code at 30 choices but I'm not quite sure how it works and if it can be changed.

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 14:08 UTC

I really think the initiative is very interesting. Especially to start having some kind of bi-directional communication while forming a concrete government. I will gladly participate in whatever is needed.

I think we would have to give more time to Igor (or the appropriate committee) to analyze and respond in as much detail as possible to the questions we send. For that reason I think it would be more convenient to take 2 weeks to get questions and then 2 more weeks to be able to analyze and respond. Here we could think that Igor took a week (aprox.) to answer questions and then the translators had 1 week more to translate the answers. This also doesn´t have to be exact, clearly if they take a little more time to answer questions accurately this benefits us all.

As for periodicity, I think it is appropriate to keep one meeting per month as the initial idea.

As for the method itself, I don´t think that at this time something online or in several time zones is appropriate. Especially for the organization that this would demand.

What if it could be interesting is that Igor answered video questions (whenever possible) and the translators did the same as they have done in the past. This material could summarize the current forum and we would no longer have to analyze the problem of different time zones.

Anyway we would have to analyze, as comment EyeR, the option of a wiki as it´s more appropriate than a forum if what we want is to have a FAQ or list of questions and answers associated.

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 21:35 UTC

Limit to 30 in the source is a good excuse to limit to thirty - it's likely to be a lot smaller than the total pool and 30x questions answered a month, given a week to respond - that's less than five/day. Again, just because 30 are submitted doesn't mean there is requirement for 30x response(although it would be nice) as we should understand he has other things to be doing.

Or was that thirty total questions? if so we can just use multiple threads with 30x questions in each. Limit to ten choices - and possibly go a second round if we have to, to limit it further

With regards to translational work - surely we can do this, if Dr. Ashurbeyli isn't overly comfortable with English. As in, the community. It can get transcribed into his native, and via the community the response can become translated into everyone's native.

Video is IMHO a complete waste of b/w - you can move far more data with much less fuss. Also textual is easier to hop to specific bits, lift for reference, and archiving long term for posterity. I had put in a feature request for a wiki, I'm not sure if that's one of the things picked up for implimentation. It'd suit a lot more than this little project, like holding all FAQ's, and could eventually one day form a knowlege reference exceeding the likes of wikipedia(we're a few TB behind currently)

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 21:54 UTC

30 in total. But as I said, it may not be a real issue.

Video would be a waste of time, especially for the Officials. Takes much less time to write. Also, would be much easier to translate.

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 23:23 UTC

The proposal has been rewritten, thanks to the help of @Speakee!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ohSScHXIGH9vOmfq7ZxJiHs21iBo83-02FRh4Akj1u8

We believe we're almost good to go. We shall add the quotes part and then we're done. Please review the document :)

we should quotes the most pertinent sentences written on this thread and put them on the Proposal, as a proof our decisions and action plan are decided by the insights of the citizens themselves

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 23:36 UTC

Naw, just link to the thread - if they're concerned they can see for themselves... keeps it concise.

Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 23:52 UTC

I'll just proofread it through one more time and wait for Vado's answer then. On my own behalf, huge thanks to all members who have contributed to this little project of ours with their opinions, and specially to @Vadorequest for the major bulk he has done with it!

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  Last edited by:  Aleksi Laakkonen (Asgardian)  on Feb 9, 17 / Pis 12, 01 23:55 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time