techPresident - New York Times - Comments

Interesting, I've already

der74hva3 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:05:21 -0400

Interesting, I've already seen this in some forum. If I find the link, i'll put it here.

wou

der74hva3 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:28:58 -0500

wou

FOR or AGAINST? It's all in how you phrase it.

littlebier8 — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:18:28 -0500

Ron Paul isn't anti-everything, just anti-control. So, basically, all of the NEGATIVES (anti-Fed, anti-war, etc.) that people love to mention can be converted into POSITIVES. He's FOR individual freedom; he's FOR civil liberties; he's FOR humantitarian treatment of all people; he's FOR sound money; he's FOR a balanced budget; he's FOR leaving other countries alone if they leave us alone; and so on. It is only because people have come to expect government to DO things for them that they focus on the fact that Paul does NOT want government to be DOING anything other than protecting your rights to life, liberty, and property.
It's all in how you phrase it. Do you want him to be AGAINST something (that is, stopping the gov't from doing something), or do you want him to be FOR something (that is, letting you help yourself and others)? No one has a higher opinion of the writing talents of Mr. Levy, but sometimes I think our inbred biases about the role of government lead us to frame our words in a way that reflects them, myself included.

Article is way off target

Freedomfighter — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:58:36 -0500

This article is so far off base I have no idea where to begin.

First, Ron Paul carries the Libertarian vote and has previously run as a Libertarian.

Secondly, the Republicans and Democrats have a lousy record on civil liberties. He appeals to conservatives and liberals who are concerned about basic rights. Most in the media tend to think Democrats are pro-civil liberties but as the Waco disaster proved, they are not.

Third, anger at the Republican establishment. Taxpayers, who may not mention it specifically, think the Republicans through principle away, and Rudy who has done drag does not help matters. One fine example of how the Republican establishment operates is mentioned in the book Primary Mistake by Steve Laffey who was a Republican candidate for Senate.

Fourth, neo-isolationists. It is not just Iraq, it is the United Nations and every military engagement the US ever had. There is good reason to have critical instead of triumphant view of US history but Ron Paul supporters would have the United States destroyed by xenophobes opposed to any military engagement whatsoever. They can quote Thomas Jefferson all they like but Jefferson created the US Navy to fight Barbarian pirates and Saddam was just another form of such pirates.

Fifth, gold, gold gold. I understand and even favor a gold standard but let’s be honest here. The panic about the Euro, about oil prices and the US/Canadian exchange rate are feeding this panic for gold. Ron Paul is known to support the gold standard and hence benefits from the illusion of economic “crisis”.

"Overlooked" is a self-fulfilling prophecy

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:40:24 -0400

Relegating newer videos to an "overlooked" section (as was done at Community Counts) formally sequesters less popular videos into a lower tier and further reinforces the "popularity effect" of the leading videos.

But that's probably the best you can do for now. For the long run, consider this: One of the things I was working on was a grid that would open in random order and could then be sorted in various ways (tag, title, author, current popularity, the user's own rating, etc.).

on Randomization of 10qs videos

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:53:29 -0400

We're aware of the issue, and the site will start to dynamically display a column of "Overlooked" videos on the right-hand third of the front page...as soon as there are enough videos in the system to push some off the front page because of the popularity effect.

Any, any user is free to take the embed code for a particular video and put it on their own site, which means there are plenty of ways for people to drive attention to what they think of as deserving questions.

Good suggestion

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:36:09 -0400

Perhaps the front page could present 3 separate columns of videos: most popular, newest, and random. I especially think newer videos need more exposure as it will be hard for them to catch up to the number of votes on ones that were posted early on.

Randomization

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:44:11 -0400

I see now that the 10questions site provides a button to randomize the display of videos. I'd suggest setting things up to invoke it on page load.

There's another way. It might be a better way.

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:23:14 -0400

I see that 10questions is essentially a reworking of CommunityCounts, which is a great idea overall. In particular, I think the the idea of soliciting candidate responses to the selected questions and then having another round of voting on their responses is outstanding.

Nevertheless, what's going on here repeats some of the most glaring shortcomings of CommunityCounts. I think there's lots of room for improvement.

Frankly, the failure to randomize the display of videos on load makes it patently unfair. That means that the "front page" videos will get increasingly greater attention than the others, and there will be an ever widening gap between the leaders and the also rans. You're replicating the same tiering problem of the current presidential campaign.

Moreover, I find site performance to be rather pokey, which makes it hard to use.

I'm all for developing a technology which can be used to compel the candidates to answer citizens' questions. I've thought deeply about these problems because, like David Colarusso, I've also put a lot of effort into creating technology that could facilitate online democracy. I used to call it Indaba.org. Now it's called ChoiceRanker.com.

The main difference is that I use a ranked choice/Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) interactive ballot rather than a thumbs-up or down contest.

To see what I mean, here's a link to a poll that includes the videos from the CNN/YouTube debate this past summer.

http://www.choiceranker.com/election.php?eid=153

The current implementation of choiceranker is very good at dealing with crowded fields of up to 10 and is OK up to maybe 25 or 50, but it would be better to have some kind of subgroup vetting once the choices exceed a few dozen. I have a strong vision of what needs to be done, but I don't have the resources to do it on my own.

In this overstimulated age, building a better mousetrap isn't enough. You also need to invest in a lot of billboards before people will know where to find your door.

Human nature

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:51:43 -0400

You seems to assume the worst about people, Wacko. It's obviously very early to tell, but the most showy videos so far have been voted to the bottom of the pile.

I have to believe that humans (which many Americans are) really want the best for each other - however they see it. Otherwise, why would you want them to vote at all?

(I'm not just saying this b/c my video is on the top of the pile right now. I consider that an accident of timing and don't expect it to last long.)

This will work great (for the NYT and MSNBC)

LonewackoDotCom — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:26:28 -0400

Just as long as your goal is for the candidates not to be asked tough questions, this format will work great. Which is probably what the major sponsors want. The last thing the NYT and MSNBC want would be for the candidates to be asked really tough questions. And, that's definitely the last thing the Democratic and Republican parties want.

As TP knows, I outlined a different approach, and I've even started implementing that (example: http://nomoreblather.com/yt2/uninspected-cargo-containers ).

My approach would weed out the Obama Girls and snowmen; the TP/NYT/MSNBC approach will guarantee those type of questions will be right at the top. Which is probably exactly what NYT and MSNBC want.

wow

alicescheshirecat — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 08:15:37 -0400

I can't believe that someone would have the balls to post assumptions like that involving shopping bags.... serious thats insane.

I'm excited to see that the great women bloggers out there are getting some play. I always ask "and how many women are on that site?" to which the answer is always 1 or 2 and its so disappointing. Thanks so much for writing about this!!
Ally

join the Future Majority

I think there are a few

Zephyr Teachout — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:11:34 -0400

I think there may be a few additional dynamics going on here--along with those mentioned.

One is simply path dependency. The first groups of political bloggers, men, developed a network with eachother--all of us are inclined to invite more people like us and imagine more people like us doing what we do, so as it grew, the political blogosphere grew male.

I can imagine another world in which the first political bloggers were female--blogging would have been treated differently, different people would have been invited to early polblog conferences, a different network would have developed. We would have talked of blogging as "soft" perhaps--you know, like nursing--and reporters would look to, quote, and therefore build communities around women blogs.

Also, in this country we tend to associate technology and maleness-see the disproportionate ratio of male software developers in this country compared to S. Korea, e.g., where software is apparently coded more as a "language" than a "technology," and therefore a female and male profession. And we all know that people are more likely to "see" people who fit their stereotypes, and support them.

Related to this, I'm troubled that a new part of political campaiging seems to be less diverse, in general, than political campaigning generally. What I've seen repeatedly is women with the same skill set as men being seen as "implementers" when a man in the same role is a "strategist." Our archetypes are deep, and we have to fight to overcome them--if we don't, the "implementers" will just go get "strategic" jobs in industry, where there are strong incentives to overcome these biases.

On a related note, I was wondering the other day why campaigns didn't have more "mens outreach coordinators." It says something wild about the mindset of a campaign that there is a position for outreaching to half of the country. Does that mean that the rest of the campaign is men's outreach, except for that one position?

Many more thoughts, but thanks for raising these issues.

Crowdsourcing Elizabeth Edwards

Ari Melber — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:10:12 -0400

I had the same thought, and its notable that the Times is dipping its toe into crowdsourcing at the same time that Assignment Zero is launching more formal experiments with this type of journalism. My new column on that front is here, for those who are interested:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=179213

In this context, I agree, but...

David All — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 16:58:59 -0400

This could also encourage irresponsible PR firms struggling to gear up their online team to beef up their legions of sock-puppets. And that's a bad thing.

________________________________________
David All
The David All Group
http://davidallgroup.com
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