How do the polls work?

 

This poll structure is based off one created by participants of the occupy movement who wanted to crowdsource decision making through online polling software. Their software is structured more like a forum than a traditional poll, because it encourages poll-takers to not just vote on pre-selected statements, but to add new ideas to the poll. It’s more of a software for crowdsourcing ideas in order to find compromise and consensus than it is a simple survey.

 

We have not yet obtained the rights to use their exact design or made our own version, so for now we’ve created a google form that will work similarly.

 

So, to use the polls for the best deliberation, we ask that you first go through existing statements and select agree, disagree, agree with reservation, disagree with reservation, or undecided. For this to really work, though, we need you to take one more step: if you selected anything other than full agreement, we implore you to take a moment and post a statement that more accurately reflects what you think was missing in the original post, even if you think it’s just a minor edit, or a detail. The place to do this will be in the final section of all polls. Your suggestion will then be brought back into the poll for others to vote on and modify. Through this iterative process, the ideas and language get better and better.

 

Note that we will be copying and pasting exactly what you type for the new post, so try to make it concise, respectful, and well formed while still capturing your ideas. Remember that your audience is our entire group and this is your opportunity for ongoing discussion with everyone while we are not in a formal meeting.

 

Finally, once you’ve gone through and selected responses for all statements and added a new statement if you so choose, we ask that you reopen the poll periodically and click ‘edit your response’ to see what new posts have been added and update your previous responses if you’ve changed your mind.

 

Thank you, and happy deliberating!