► In order to initiate an exchange with ideologi, an initiator must first configure the parameters by which the exchange will function. The nature of an exchange (philanthropy, entertainment, commerce, etc.) greatly affects the way in which settings should be configured by the initiator.
While there are only 24 parameters listed below, it is the goal of ideologi incorporated to continuously add new parameters in the future as conceived and requested by the community of ideologi.
1. Objective: The goal (or question to be answered) of a particular exchange, plus any reference material (documents, links, etc.) provided to participants by its initiator.
2. Initiator Identity (Public, Anonymous): If “anonymous,” initiators are unidentified by both the participants of the exchange and to anyone reviewing the records of the exchange in the archives of ideologi. In exchanges where commissions are involved (see below), then Initiator Identity is automatically set to "public."
3. Participation (Open, Closed): If "open," then anyone can join (minus those that are registered as "blocked" by the initiator of the exchange). If "closed," then only those occupying a fixed list maintained by the initiator may participate.
4. Communication Ethics Policy (Voluntary Observation, External Observation): The ethics policy by which the submissions of participants must adhere to within the exchange. If "voluntary observation," then observers chosen to officiate over any violations during the operation of an exchange will be selected from volunteer participants within that exchange. Upon entry to an exchange, participants will be asked if they are willing to act as an observer of the exchange. If "external observation," then observers will be selected by a pre-registered list of volunteers managed by an accredited third-party.
For more information, please review the posts entitled "Communication Ethics Policy" and "Participant-Based Policy Enforcement."
5. Auto-Translate* (Yes, No): If “yes,” then ideologi will automatically convert the text of the exchange (objective, directives, scores, etc) into the native language of each participant (i.e. AltaVista, Google or some other third-party auto-translation service).
6. Commission Structure (Free, Initiator-Funded, Participant Fee, Shared): There are currently four standard commission structures available for each exchange…
a) Free: Initiators are allowed to create exchanges that do not require fees from either participants or initiators.
b) Initiator-Funded: There is no registration fee for participants. In order to have an exchange published for consideration, this amount must be put into escrow by an accredited third-party until the close of the exchange. An initiator has the right to increase their financial contribution to total commissions until the start of evaluation. An reason for this might be to attract more participants to an exchange. However, the initiator cannot lower their contribution once submissions have been accepted for her exchange.
c) Participant-Funded: The initiator of an exchange has the right to establish a participation fee. It's primarily designed to be split-up into commissions for participants to share. Initiators may also establish an initiator commission, which is a percentage of the participation fee that goes straight to the initiator. In any case, each participant must pay this fee upon submitting their directive to the exchange.
d) Shared: As a combination of both previous scenarios, there is both a participant’s fee, as well as an initiator-funded contribution to the total commission of the exchange.
7. Initiator Preference Bonus (No, Yes[percentage]): If "yes," then the initiator of an exchange has the right to select one the directives of their exchange (which may or may not be the Prime Directive) to receive a bonus, which is a percentage of the total number of ions and financial commission (if any).
8. Evaluator Bonus (percentage): In order to incentivise participants into scoring directives in an altruistic manner, a certain percentage of each participants' ions (and any commissions) accumulated from an exchange are transferred to the participants who helped scored their directives. The amount given to each participant is based on the amount of ions (and thus commissions) given to a particular directive relative to all of the ions accumulated by that directive.
9. Maximum Number of Participants (#, Unlimited): The maximum number of participants that can join the exchange. If the maximum number of participants is reached, then no additional participants will be admitted. An initiator has the right to raise the maximum number of participants as many times as she wants until the start of the evaluation period. However, she can never lower the maximum number of participants once it has been raised. If "unlimited" then the number of Participants within a given exchange is unlimited.
10. Maximum Number of Directives Allowed Per Participant: If the initiator chooses more than one, then participants can submit more than one directive for a particular exchange. As is the case in any exchange, participants will never be able to review their own directives.
11. Format Requirements (Open [file type, size limit, etc.], Fixed): If "open" then participants are allowed to create their own submission, provided that the adhere to the format requested by the initiator. If "fixed," then the initiator will provide a list of fixed directives for participants to choose from. In the latter case, a comment field (text-only) will be provided to accompany their selection
12. Evaluation Date: The deadline for submitting a directive to an exchange. It is also the start date for the first evaluation phase by participants, where they login to evaluate and judge directives from their fellow participants.
13. Participant Identity (Public, Anonymous, Initiator & Participant-Only, Participant’s Choice): Initiators can choose from one of these four options in their exchange. If “anonymous” is chosen, then a participant’s identification will not be revealed, even in the historical records of the exchange. If “initiator & participant-only,” then participants will be anonymous to each other, but will be known by the initiator at the close of the exchange. If "participant's choice," then the participant can choose during their submission whether to make their identity public, anonymous, or only known to the initiator.
14. Participation Requirements (Submit & Evaluate, Evaluate-Only [All or Elimination]): “Submission & evaluation” means that participants must submit a directive as well as participate in evaluation. “evaluation-only” means that a participant can be allowed to participate in evaluation to choose the prime directive of the exchange. In addition, the choice of whether follow-up phases during evaluation includes all initial participants ("all") or just the semi-finalists of the previous phases ("elimination"). If “all,” then all participants will continue to participate in evaluation until the close of the exchange. If “elimination,” then disqualified participants will be notified at the end of their final phase and will be notified at the end of evaluation to find out the outcomes of the exchange.
15. Initiator Participation (No, Yes): If “yes,” then the Initiator is allowing herself to participate in the exchange by submitting her own directive as well as participating in evaluation. If that is the case, then the initiator cannot receive any of the financial redistribution of commissions in the exchange. However, their directive will still accumulate Ions, which will be discounted from the final calculation for commissions.
16. Creative License: The initiator gets to choose the terms of intellectual property ownership (standard copyright, Creative Commons, GNU, etc.) that each participant must agree to in order to submit her directive to an exchange.
17. Valuation Methodology (Ions, Descriptors [Pure Comparison, None of the Above]): If “Ions,” then all participants are given a random selection of directives from other anonymous participants to review and evaluate based on the intiator’s objective. During each evaluation phase, participants are given a set number of Ions to distribute to the directives assigned to them as they see fit (see the post entitled “How ideologi Determines the Value of Ideas”). If the initiator chooses “descriptors,” then participants will choose from a selection of descriptors provided by the initiators of an exchange. This may include words (e.g. Plus, Minus, Interesting, Incoherent, etc.), symbols (+, -, *, /, ?, $) or any other type of media.
In addition to assigning Ions or descriptors to each directive, a wiki-like editing feature is available for participants who want to make voluntary edits to directives they are assigned to evaluate. Providing this feedback is purely out of courtesy and is not required; the identity of participants making commentary is always anonymous.
18. Directives Evaluated Per Phase (# [Total, Minimum]): The number of directives that each participant will be given to review per phase of evaluation. If "total," then participants can only review that amount. If "minimum," then participants can request a new set of directives to evaluate until the time period of the evaluation period has elapsed.
19. Completion Term (Ion Accumulation, Descriptor Accumulation, Phases, Continuous [Half-Life]): If "Ion accumulation," then the initiator sets the number of ions needed for a directive to become prime, thus completing the exchange. If "descriptor accumulation," then the initiator sets the number of descriptors needed for a directive to become a prime directive. Once a directive achieves that number, then the phase of evaluation in which it occurred becomes the final phase and the exchange is closed. If "phases," then a certain number of phases will occur during evaluation. Regardless of the ion accumulation, the exchange will close at the end of the last prescribed evaluation phase.
If "continuous," then the exchange is designed to never end -- the number of potential evaluation phases are infinite. In addition, initiators determine the Half-Life of ions (the number of evaluation phases in the future until half of the ions accumulated during a particular phase will be deleted. So, in the first half-life, 50% of the original ions will be deleted, by the second half-life, half of what is left of the original ions accumulated (25%) will be deleted, and so on. At the end of each evaluation phase, results will be determined and an ion/commission disbursement will take place for the participants (if necessary). In this particular scenario, new participants can sign-up at any time before the evaluation period of each exchange. Their submissions and their participation in evaluation will be included in the next evaluation phase. Conversely, dropping out of the exchange (and the withdrawal of one's submission(s) can be done at the end of any evaluation phase.
20. Evaluation Time per Phase: The total length of time given to evaluate the directives given to a participant during an evaluation phase.
21. Upgrading Between Evaluation Phases (No, Yes)*: Gives each participant the right to update her directive if it makes it to the next phase of evaluation. The implied benefit is that she can adapt her directive to incorporate any of the ideas uncovered in the previous phase, as well as any epiphanies experienced since submitting her directive. If the option is “yes”, then an additional update phase will be made available after each phase of evaluation. The time length of the update phase is determined by the initiator; the default time is equal to the length of time of an evaluation phase.
*Initiators are limited to using this option only when they choose an intellectual property arrangement that allows directives to be modified or mixed with content from other participants’ directives. In addition, initiator anonymity will not be available if upgrading is allowed.
22. Publication of Directives (Participant’s Choice, Yes, No): If “yes,” then each directive will be publicly viewable in the historical archives of ideologi at the close of the exchange. If “no,” then only the participant who submitted the Directive and the Initiator will be able to view it.
23. Publication of Outcomes (Yes, No): If “yes,” then the outcomes of the exchange will be available for public review in the archives of ideologi. If “no,” then each participant will receive their portion of the Ions and/or payments once evaluation is complete, but will not be able to view the final results of the exchange.
24. Escrow Period (Days): The results of the exchange, as well as the commission distribution of an exchange will be held in escrow by an accredited third-party for the time period following the close of the exchange. This is in order for the initiator to investigate any rules or legal challenges to commissioning her Participants. The escrow period can be no longer than one year (365 days). If it's determined by either the initiator or a participant that a directive violates the creative licensing agreement for an exchange, or if all or part of the content comprising a directive violates the intellectual property of another party, then that directive will be disqualified. At the end of this period, the exchange will officially be closed.
► Once an Initiator has finished establishing the settings of her exchange, it is automatically ready for participants to review their objective and enter the exchange.
► If the initiator requests it, ideologi incorporated will assign the exchange a universal exchange code by , which is a hybrid of a universal decimal classification (UDC) code and the ISO 8601 representation of universal time, or GMT. This will make later searches for archived exchanges much easier to locate. The publicly available outcomes may also be submitted and archived by ideologi incorporated.
► Here’s an example of the established parameters of an exchange published in ideologi:
1. Objective: “Define the most interesting objective that other participants would want to have initiated as an exchange in ideologi.”
2. Initiator Identity: mykljonzun
3. Participation: Open
4. Communication Ethics Policy: ideologi incorporated CEP (Voluntary Observation)
5. Auto-Translation: Yes
6. Commission Structure: Initiator-Funded
7. Initiator Preference Bonus: No
8. Evaluator Bonus: 10%
9. Maximum Number of Participants: 150,000
10. Maximum Number of Directives Allowed per Participant: 3
11. Format Requirements: Open (Text file; Maximum 20K)
12. Evaluation Date: 12:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada), 11 November 2007
13. Participant Identity: Participant’s Choice (Public or Anonymous)
14. Participation Requirements: Submission & Evaluation (All Phases)
15. Initiator Participation: Yes
16. Creative License: Creative Commons Deed (Attribution 2.0)
17. Valuation Method: Ions (100, Pure Comparison)
18. Directives Evaluated Per Phase: 10
19. Completion Term: Phases (6)
20. Evaluation Time per Phase: 5 Days
21. Upgrades Between Evaluation Phases: Yes (Update Phase Added)
22. Publication of Directives: Yes
23. Publication of Outcomes: Yes
24. Escrow Period (Days): 15 days
► Until the evaluation date, a participant can submit, edit or even cancel their directive(s) already submitted to the exchange.