Dear Nico and all,

WDDM has been here for quite a spell, going nowhere, accomplishing little. The reason for this I believe is that there was no method to make decisions as a group, (referendum) and no process for peoples discussion other than email. It is especially important for a “Cyber” global type group to have a definitive structured process to function.

The Charter needed updating to include these necessary items. Email discussion often broke down and participation was very limited. Antonio insisted “the world” should participate and approve anything WDDM decided. He would not accept that we only wanted to develop internal process for WDDM. We are not making any decisions which would affect “the world”.

Now this has again been confused by some who want to be an “example for the world”. We are WDDM, there is no other WDDM to be an example for. What and how we decide to run this organization is simply decided amongst WDDM members. Our “decisions” are only for the WDDM organization, affect only WDDM members. WDDM can not be an example, testing ground for the world.

Reality is often a bitter fact. For instance all citizens are invited to participate in our County and local (town) meetings few attend at all. Twice a year elections bring in perhaps 45% to 50%. Our WDDM community is the same. We had “discussions” on Forum, Eric Lim, Mirek, sometimes Lee, myself were about all that participated. Of course all this is filed in “Archives” I believe. We did not write a charter just discussed things which should be in a Charter. Perhaps we should have simply written one.

At any rate, since we had few active participants, it was decided to form a “Board” who could write the needed Charter defining members, goals, purpose and structure. The Board could solicit ideas and initiatives from the members, bring all matters together in a Charter. This Charter would than be offered for ratification by members. This has not yet had time to work, the Board must spend time considering these matters.

Certainly thousands of people do not have to write a constitution. The written constitution / charter can be read and approved by members if they choose to do so. The draft charter could be published (to WDDM Forum) asking for comments which could change the “draft” to a more acceptable format.

Finally ratified, any constitution / charter hopefully would have I&R provisions so it could be amended, changed or tossed.

So we have a process, using Forum which allows comments on any initiative, posting new initiatives, and when completed, if seconded it progresses to Referendum where it can be tossed or implemented. Forum is quite simple, keeps track of everything which is a form of “minutes”, allows comments and voting to make decisions. Forum is quite adequate if utilized. Again, participation is the problem not the process itself.

If two people vote, and they vote for ratification, than 100% of WDDM voters ratified it. You can wish for more voters, you can holler and stomp your feet but the election was held and the outcome is final.

Nico has a great site configured for the purpose of processing ideas, initiatives and voting. Of course the key is how many people in a given community utilize this software.

Nico some months ago generously offered WDDM the use of his software. I did go and try it out, joined the email list. My concern is if we can not even get people to use a password to enter Forum, how will they ever participate in a more complex process? Nobody else took up this opportunity to my knowledge save Mirek. Later Mark tried it out. If WDDM members won’t even try something out, it is unlikely they would use it at all.

On Nico’s software, each item gets a “vote” than a filter can bring up only those with +2 votes for instance. This would reduce the number of items to view, seeing only the most “popular”. This is good with an active membership, with all viewing the “new” proposals and voting on them. If few participate, many really good proposals will hit the dust bin simply because of no interest, no vote.

I understand that not all Swiss Cantons use I&R. Is this so Nico? Is it up to each Canton to decide if they use I&R? How many do not use I&R?

The key to all of this is PARTICIPANTS.

Nico, are people using your program in Swiss land? Are you able to get a majority of people to use it? Participation is the problem. How can a program operate with no or few participants?

Regarding WDDM, instead of bemoaning how many participate to make a valid vote, we must accept those who do participate in what ever way they actually participate. If those participating finally ratify a matter it is approved. We can not consider a quorum amount unless we define active members and eliminate inactive members. No, those not participating do not need to be spanked, disenfranchised, shipped to the North Pole, or otherwise disciplined. We must simply accept what is. No software will change participation.

BReggum

Bruce Eggum Wisconsin USA
www.doinggovernment.com