Tag Archives: book

Wikicrazia,

June is past, and the online collaborative phase of Wikicrazia ended with a result way above my expectations. I made the slides above to present them and thank all participants, to whom I am indebted for an expanded knowledge base and a vey useful experience. Thanks a lot!

I’m off to write the final version. The draft and the comments remain online, and will keep reading and replying to comments to come in after June 30th (there are some already), but I will not be writing further weekly updates. Before that, I would like to share two little provisonal remarks which are not self evident looking at the data. The first one is that this experience did not create a Wikicrazia community: with few exceptions, people are talking to me, not to each other. The social graph describing the process is a star, in which everybody is connected to me, but not to anyone else. The second one is that no politician has contributed. I don’t personally know a lot of them, but I was hoping in buzz or serendipity, i would be interested in their point of view.

As I assimilate this extrordinary experience, I will share interesting ideas, assuming I can think of any. As a first approximation, I can already say I find Nina Simon’s conclusions (after an experiment different from Wikicrazia in many ways, but with a similar spirit) roughly consistent with my own.

Wikicrazia, (Italiano)

Giugno è passato, e la fase collaborativa su Wikicrazia è finita con un risultato molto superiore alle mie aspettative. Ho fatto le slides qui sopra per presentarli e ringraziare tutti i partecipanti, a cui sono debitore di molta conoscenza e di un’esperienza molto utile, che non avevo mai fatto prima. Grazie tantissime!

Mi ritiro a scrivere la versione finale. La bozza e i commenti rimangono online, e io continuerò a leggere e a rispondere i commenti arrivati dopo il 30 (ce ne sono già), ma non darò più aggiornamenti settimanali. Mi restano da fare due piccole osservazioni provvisorie che nei dati non si vedono immediatamente. La prima è che non si è creata una community di Wikicrazia: tranne poche eccezioni, i partecipanti si rivolgono a me, non gli uni agli altri. Il grafo sociale che descrive il processo è una stella, in cui tutti sono connessi a me ma non tra loro. La seconda è che nessun politico ha partecipato al processo. C’è da dire che ne conosco pochi, ma speravo in un passaparola, è un punto di vista che mi interesserebbe.

Man mano che digerisco questa esperienza straordinaria, condividerò le idee interessanti che mi stimolerà, sempre che me ne vengano. In prima approssimazione, posso già dire che mi ritrovo abbastanza nelle conclusioni di Nina Simon sul suo esperimento, diverso dal mio ma con uno spirito simile.

Wikicrazia: the source code (week 4)

In a few days I will end the collaborative phase of Wikicrazia. Today I was going through the latest comments to come in (there are many, and I am lagging behind in replying a bit), and I was thinking that this blog has come to host a sort of source code for the book that I will finish writing in July. On top of the draft that got the process started, you’ll find here a great wealth of contributions to the discussion offered by more than twenty wikicrats, who have very diverse takes: civil servants, scholars, active citizens, journalists, technology experts, Italians and non-Italians. Congratulations, wikicrats: togeter we gave rise to a conversation of stellar level. If there is a richer, more diverse one anywhere in the world on this topic, I have been unable to find it. I am particularly proud of the fact that there has been no hint of flaming, we have dissented at times but everybody has been superpolite.

Starting from this material, anyone can reconstruct their own Wikicrazia, even using comments to attack the central case I am trying to make! As for me, I will try compile the source code in my own synthesis as best as I can, to be released as the Wikicrazia book in September. It will take on board the many suggestions made by wikicrats, and not a few ideas of my own that the discussion has prompted, so it will be more nuanced than the draft I uploaded a month ago. But the process helped to confirm that wiki-style public policies, discounted for the naivete and the problems as yet unsolved, are a really good idea.

I’ll wait for the very last comments, then post a final report, over and out. Wikicrats, ad maiora!