Okay, so in the previous posting we established the basic goal of the system - provide a framework for policy development and discussion that’s centered around time limited productive processes.

The basic framework was established with three sub-applications that interface on various levels - the forum, the wiki and the social network.

Karma Network

One of the features I wanted to include, which will be implemented across all three applications is a Karma Network. The idea here is to introduce a voting system, influence metric, incentive for good behaviour and reward mechanism all in one system. This would be in the form of a kind of currency on LiberalLab - karma. Users earn a base level of karma for being active members - posting to forums, amending policy documents, signing in etc all afford a certain amount of karma. This can be used to review other users’ forum posts, policy amendments and the like. It can be used positively or negatively. A user can give away their karma to a user or conversely can consume their karma by “burning” their own.

The idea here being that users who are popular and/or well respected will get very high karma scores, whereas those who are abusive, problematic, difficult etc. will have low ones. The karma metaphor works well because the more you give away and help others, the more likely you are to receive karma yourself.

People with extraordinarily high karma scores can be featured on the index page, elected into panelist discussion, asked to proffer position papers or think-pieces on various issues etc. The system could even be used as a method of short listing facilitators for meatspace think tanks or other activities, maybe even consultants to decision makers.

Since the scoring is entirely relative, and the total amount of karma available is limited it’s hoped that one would see a “super-hub” structure, where karma is more or less pooled into a single person from a large collection of moderately or slightly popular individuals who collectively throw their support behind a representative.

This system would also prevent overly strong minority groups from gaining a disproportionate share of influence since their collective karma scores would be inhibited due to lack of popular support.

There’s lots of potential here if the functions of how karma is accumulated and consumed are balanced correctly - it could work much like a far more precise and dynamic version of the ballot systems proposed in Canadian elections recently

Posted by Jeremy on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 am.