[Demexp-dev] TOP invitation to programmers.

[ketty .]

I have been made aware of the TOP Politics -group: http://top.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/
And a recent post to unite programmers: 
http://groups.google.com/group/top-politics/browse_frm/thread/505c11b28d85cbf7/c30b4ae282e4fbde#c30b4ae282e4fbde
With this response about DEMEXP:

I know that project rather well, I'm subscribed to their mailing list
and participated quickly to it before starting "parlement".

My troubles with it:

- voting method is "Condorcet", which is often considered slightly too
  complex for most people
- special powers to some administrators whose role is to organise polls
- technology is a very good one, but sadly it is not used much in the
  world and will have troubles finding programmers
- no possibility to use the whole system as a forum where every
  question/answer is just one more post
- few considerations for security

But, they have a group of intelligent people involved in a cool social
idea/ideal.

1. Voting system.
I think not one system would be perfect for all questions. My vision is to be able to set the voting system used on a per question basis. At least that is my vision of the technology, in practice you might wish to restrict the posibilities of users, or you might not.
This would be feasonable with demexp, no?

2. Special powers.
I am all for special grouping of users. For example you might want to differate between users above and below 18 years of age (or another arbitrary age). And you might wish to group users into geographical areas as is common in politics today. The techology should make possible such uses. How it is used in practice should be decided by users.

3. Technology.
I very much like ocaml and similar languages, and i would not want demexp in java. :)

4. Security.
This is important indeed. But not only the demexp-server is responsible for the security. We have the physical server etc to worry about too. The security issue is not something that can be finished from the start, but something that will be an ongoing issue.