Starting a Dialogue in Ideologi

  

When starting a dialogue in ideologi, an initiator must first configure the settings by which the dialogue will function.  The purpose of a dialogue--whether it's philanthropy, entertainment, commerce, etc.--will greatly affect the way in which settings will be configured by the initiator.

While there are only 24 settings listed below, it is the goal of ideologi to continuously add new settings in the future as they are conceptualized and requested by its community.

 

1. Query:  This is the defined purpose of the dialogue.  It includes any reference material (documents, links, etc.) provided by its initiator for review by their participants.

2. Initiator Identity (Public or Anonymous):  If “anonymous,” the initiator is unidentified by both the participants of the dialogue and anyone reviewing the records of the project in the archives of ideologi.  In dialogues where profits are involved (see #6 below), then Initiator Identity is automatically set to "public."

3. Participation (Open or Closed):  If "open," then anyone can join (minus those that are registered as "blocked" by the initiator of the dialogu).  If "closed," then only those occupying an access list maintained by the initiator may participate.

4. Communication Ethics Policy (Internal Monitoring or External Monitoring):  The ethics policy by which the submissions of participants must adhere to during the life of the dialogue.  If "internal monitoring," then observers chosen to officiate over any violations during the operation of a dialogue will be selected from volunteer participants within that dialogue.  Upon entry to a dialogue, participants will be asked if they are willing to act as a monitor of the dialogue.  If "external monitoring," then monitors will be selected by a pre-registered list of volunteering users of ideologi and not participants of the dialogue itself.

5. Auto-Translate (Yes, No):  If “yes,” then ideologi will automatically convert the text of the dialogue (objective, proposal, scores, etc) into the native language of each participant (i.e. AltaVista, Google or some other third-party auto-translation service).

6. Profit Structure (Free, Initiator-Funded, Participant Fee or Shared):  There are currently four standard profit structures available for each dialogue…

Free.  Initiators are allowed to create dialogues that do not require fees from either participants or initiators.

Initiator-Funded.   There is no registration fee for participants.  In order to have a dialogue published for consideration, this amount must be put into escrow by an accredited third-party until the close of the dialogue.  An initiator has the right to increase their financial contribution to total profits until the start of the dialogue.  An reason for this might be to attract more participants to an dialogue.  However, the initiator cannot lower their contribution once submissions have been accepted for her dialogue.

Participant-Funded.  The initiator of a dialogue has the right to establish a participation fee.  It's primarily designed to be split-up into profits for participants to share.  Initiators may also establish initiator profits, 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 proposal to the dialogue.

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 profit of the exchange.

7. Initiator Preference Bonus (No or Yes{percentage}):  If "yes," then the initiator of a dialogue has the right to select one the insights of their dialogue (which may or may not be the Prime Directive) to receive a bonus, which is a percentage of the total number of ions and profits (if any).

8. Participant Bonus (percentage):  In order to incentivize participants into scoring insights in an altruistic manner, initiators may allocate a certain percentage of each participants' ions (and any profit) accumulated from an dialogue are transferred to the participants who helped evaluate their insights.  The amount given to each participant is based on the amount of ions (and thus profits) given to a particular insight relative to all of the ions accumulated by that insight.

9. Maximum Number of Participants (# or Unlimited):  The maximum number of participants that can join the dialogue.  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 dialogue.  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 dialogue is unlimited.

10. Maximum Number of Proposals Allowed Per Participant:  If the initiator chooses more than one, then participants can submit more than one insight for a particular dialogue.  As is the case in any dialogue, participants will never be able to review their own insights in an exchange.

11. Format Requirements (Open {file type, size limit, etc.} or Fixed): If "open" then participants are allowed to submit their own insight, provided that the adhere to the format requested by the initiator.  If "fixed," then the initiator will provide a fixed set of insights for participants to score against each other.  In the latter case, a comment field (text-only) will be provided to accompany their selection.

12. Start Date:  The deadline for submitting a insight to a dialogue.  It is also the start time for the first exchange of the dialogue, when participants login to compare and evaluate insights from their fellow participants.  A universal identification code, a hybrid of a universal decimal classification (UDC) code and the ISO 8601 representation of universal time (GMT) is assigned to each dialogue.

13. Participant Identification (Public, Anonymous, Initiator & Participant-Only or Participant’s Choice):  Initiators can choose from one of these four options in their dialogue.  If “anonymous” is chosen, then a participant’s identification will not be revealed, even in the historical records of the dialogue.  If “initiator & participant-only,” then participants will be anonymous to each other, but will be known by the initiator at the close of the dialogue.  If "participant's choice," then the participant can choose at the beginning of the dialogue whether to make their identity public, anonymous, or only known to the initiator.

14. Participation Requirements (Insight Submission & Exchange, Exchange-Only [All or Elimination]):  “Insight Submission & Exchange” means that participants must submit an insight as well as participate in exchanges.  “Exchange-only” means that a participant can be allowed to participate without submitting their own insight to the dialogue.  In addition, the choice of whether follow-up exchnages include all initial participants ("all") or just the semi-finalists of the previous exchanges ("elimination").  If “all,” then all participants will continue to participate in exchanges until the end of the dialogue.  If “elimination,” then the lowest ranking participants at the end of each exchange will be removed from the dialogue and will be notified the final score of their participation when the dialogue is over.

15. Initiator Participation (No, Yes):  If “yes,” then the Initiator is allowing herself to participate in the dialogue by submitting her own insight as well as participating in the dialogue.  If that is the case, then the initiator cannot receive any of the financial redistribution of profits in the dialogue.  However, their insight will still accumulate Ions, which will be discounted from the final calculation for profits.
 
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 insight to a dialogue.

17. Valuation Methodology (Ions or Descriptors {Pure Comparison or None of the Above}):  If “Ions,” then all participants are given a random selection of insights from other anonymous participants to review and evaluate based on the intiator’s query.  During each phase, participants are given a set number of Ions to distribute to the insights assigned to them as they see fit.  If the initiator chooses “descriptors,” then participants will choose from a selection of descriptors provided by the initiators of a dialogue.  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 insight, a wiki-like editing feature is available for participants who want to make voluntary edits to insights 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. insights Per Exchange:  The number of insights that each participant will be given per Exchange.

19. Time per Exchange:  The total length of time given to evaluate the insights given to a participant during an exchange.
 
20. Completion Term (Ion Accumulation, Descriptor Accumulation, Number of Exchanges or Continuous {Ion Half-Life}):  If "Ion accumulation," then the initiator sets the number of ions needed for an insight to become a directive, thus completing the dialogue.  If "descriptor accumulation," then the initiator sets the number of descriptors needed for an insight to become a directive.  Once an insight achieves that number, then the exchange in which it occurred becomes the final exchange and the dialogue is over.  If "Number of exchanges," then the directive will be chosen once a certain number of exchanges have occured.

If "continuous," then the dialogue is designed to never end.  Initiators will determine the Half-Life of accumulated ions (the number of exchanges it takes for half of the ions accumulated to be removed from the score of each insight).  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 will be deleted, and so on.  At the end of each exchange, results will be determined and an ion disbursement (with profits, if applicable) will take place with the participants.  In this particular scenario, new participants can sign-up at any time before the next exchange of each dialogue.  Their submissions and participation in exchanges will be included in the next exchange.  Conversely, dropping out of the exchange (and the withdrawal of one's submission(s) can be done at the end of each exchange.
 
21. Upgrading Between Exchanges (Yes or No):  Gives each participant the right to update her insight if it makes it to the next exchange.  The implied benefit is that she can adapt her directive to incorporate any of the ideas uncovered during the previous exchange, as well as any epiphanies experienced since submitting her proposal.  If the option is “yes”, then an additional update phase will be made available after each exchange.  The time length of the update phase is determined by the initiator; the default time is equal to the length of time of an exchange.
 

Initiators are limited to using this option only when they choose an intellectual property arrangement that allows insights to be modified or mixed with content from other participants’ insights.  In addition, initiator anonymity will not be available if upgrading is allowed.

 
22. Publication of insights (Participant’s Choice or {Yes or No}):  If “yes,” then each insight will be publicly viewable as a complete archive of insights at the end of the dialogue.  If “no,” then only the participant who submitted the insight, the participants who saw the proposal during a dialogue and the initiator will be able to review it.
 
23. Publication of Outcomes (Yes, No):  If “yes,” then the outcomes of the dialogue will be available for public review in the archives of Ideologi.  If “no,” then each participant will receive their portion of Ions and payments (if any) once the dialogue is complete, but will not be able to view the complete results of the dialogue.
 
24. Escrow Period (Days:Hours:Minutes):  The results of the dialogue, as well as the distribution of the profits, will be held in escrow by an accredited third-party for this time period following the end of the dialogue.  This allows time for the initiator to investigate any rules or legal challenges to the results of the dialogue.  The escrow period can be no longer than one year (365:0:0).  If it's determined by either the initiator or a participant that a participant violates the creative licensing agreement for an dialogue, or if all or part of the content comprising a proposal violates the intellectual property of another party, then that proposal will be disqualified and its Ion accumulation (or any other valuation method used) and profits (if any) will be nullified.  At the end of this period, the dialogue will be officially archived.

 
 

 Once an Initiator has finished establishing the settings of her dialogue, participants will be able to review its objective and submit a proposal for the dialogue.  Until the start date, a participant can submit, edit or even cancel a directive(s) already submitted to the dialogue.

 

Here’s an example of the parameters of a dialogue listed 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. Profit Structure:  Initiator-Funded
7. Initiator Preference Bonus:  No
8. Evaluator Bonus:  10%
9. Maximum Number of Participants:  150,000
10. Maximum Number of Proposals Allowed per Participant:  3
11. Format Requirements:  Open (Text file; Maximum 20K)
12. Start Date:  12:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada), 11 November 2007
13. Participant Identification:  Participant’s Choice (Public or Anonymous)
14. Participation Requirements:  Submission & Exchange (All Phases)
15. Initiator Participation:  Yes
16. Creative License:  Creative Commons Deed (Attribution 2.0)
17. Valuation Method:  Ions (100, Pure Comparison)
18. Proposals Per Exchange:  10
19. Time per Exchange:  5 Days
20. Completion Term:  Number of Exchanges (6)
21. Upgrades Between Exchanges:  Yes (Update Phase Added), 2 Days
22. Publication of Proposals:  Yes
23. Publication of Outcomes:  Yes
24. Escrow Period (Days):  15 days