The OurDocument Tool (aka
ConsensusWiki)
Efficient,
egalitarian collaboration on wording for
group documents such as policies and position papers
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Summary:
OurDocument (alternatively ConsensusWiki) is a web-based
collaboration tool to enable groups of any size to converge on an appropriate
expression of the group view on a topic, or to clearly state the main
alternatives when no consensus can be reached.
The basic strategy is to use low-threshold feedback from typical group
members to inspire the more opinionated members to refine their alternatives
for sections of the target document (e.g., a policy or position paper) to take
other views into account.
The OurDocument process is
egalitarian, scalable, and efficient, focusing the time of most members on
providing quick feedback about the alternatives. Rewording of alternatives in response to
feedback is done asynchronously by the respective authors (or by others who
modify someone else’s earlier version or add their own), rewarding clarity and
alignment with group opinion rather than author quickness, loudness, or
status.
By focusing attention on the concrete wording of a
document rather than on the discussion about it (although several forms of
discussion are supported), the OurDocument process
facilitates successful joint action by group members without having to fully
resolve differences of philosophy or analysis.
Depending on the rule settings chosen, each OurDocument use can produce various outcomes: a unified
final document, a set of clearly-stated alternatives, or a collection of items
each commanding any chosen level of group support. The process is fully transparent, and after
it is complete the evolution of each document can be retraced, facilitating
continuing insight (e.g., by later members) into the bases of a group’s
documents and policies.
OurDocument
group-document development tool
Features
designed to promote efficient, consensus-building collaboration
· Organization-customizable decision rules, supporting
without reprogramming decision processes ranging from strict consensus to
majority rule
· Asynchronous participation and email-driven
notifications, promoting efficient use of time
· Egalitarian access for proposing alternative language,
either by section or for the overall document
· Authors retain control of their proposals, but are
provided feedback that encourages modifications to accommodate other views
· Feedback made easy and inviting by use of predefined comment
tags whose cumulative effects affect the visibility and retention of
alternatives
· Varied set of free-form comment mechanisms supported,
including wikis and private suggestions
· Recursive application of OurDocument
methods, including subcommittees and author collaborations
· Winnowing of alternatives by transparently-fair
mechanisms
· Retrospective examination of the development process
possible after its completion
Development plans
The author of the OurDocument
project is Hunter Ellinger,
a software developer who invented a similar off-line policy-development process
while serving as an elected official.
The design shown here has been polished in League of Technical Voters workshops (Ryan Breed and Taylor
Willingham were especially helpful).
Implementation is in progress.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Design Overview
Development of documents that refine and reflect group
opinion poses several challenging tasks that an appropriate web-based support
system could greatly facilitate. OurDocument is designed to be such a system, providing an
accessible, scalable, and efficient method for groups to develop documents such
as policies or position papers. It uses
a variety of authoring and voting mechanisms, combined in a design informed by
experience with several off-line collaboration processes.
While OurDocument makes
extensive use of the consensus-building aspect of wiki-style
openness and convergent discussion, it adds structure to this process in
several ways. Authorship of each
proposed alternative is maintained, with changes in proposals made only by
their authors (who can be individuals or groups with their own decision
process). Straw-poll and
alternative-selection votes are also used to guide the process. The development of consensus about the
document content is encouraged and facilitated, but decisions can still be
reached if consensus is not achieved. In
many situations, clear statement of the alternative positions is useful even
when irreconcilable differences exist.
Each OurDocument
document is developed under a document rule that defines the
powers of each class of participants and the rules for invoking voting
processes if needed to winnow the list of alternatives during the development
process. This rule is itself a document,
of course, which could have been decided by prior use of the OurDocument mechanism (the site provides a default rule for
making rules, or one could be chosen by whoever is in
charge of the organization by which the document is being developed).
Each OurDocument
process is overseen by a person acting as document guide who makes the
human-judgment procedural decisions called for in the document rule, and
generally facilitates the process. The
guide also has authority to correct abuses and restrict access for users who do
not follow the rules. Guide decisions
are subject to appeal to ratification by participant vote, so a guide must
maintain the trust of most participants for the process to advance. However, the guide need not have deep
knowledge about the topic – that is supplied by the participants. It may eventually become feasible to replace
some guide functions (such as deciding when stage transitions are appropriate)
by either automated analysis or by distributed moderation techniques.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Participants: The document rule specifies which entities
have standing to participate. These can
be individuals or groups. Groups have
their own decision mechanisms, which can be separate uses of OurDocument or simply action through designated
agents. While usually all participants
except the guide have the same privileges (this helps motivate participation),
it is possible to designate which participants may author, vote, and comment.
Identity: The rule
specifies how participant identity is established. The usual mechanism is login by email with
notification of any action taken (the email addresses used are supplied and
controlled administratively, not by users).
An optional identity-cookie mechanism simplifies login.
Stages: Each
OurDocument document will proceed through several
stages: [i] rule definition, [ii] generation and
initial discussion of alternatives, [iii] winnowing to the primary
alternatives, and (if specified by the document rule) [iv]
final decisions. These stages
will emerge naturally in many cases, especially when a true consensus is within
reach, but also the document guide can declare stage transitions, which are
ratified by the participants according to the terms of the document rule. Occasionally the guide may revert
the process to an earlier stage if new issues emerge.
Timing: The document
rule specifies the minimum length of time that each stage takes, and how much
notice participants have between when the guide declares a stage transition and
when it takes effect. This includes the response
times for any voting mechanisms used.
Consensus: While mechanisms (described below) are
provided for voting to resolve deadlocks, these are interwoven with classic
consensus mechanisms whose purpose is to elicit and resolve objections without
regard to how many people express them.
Participants can “stand in the way” to force further consideration or
“stand out of the way” to agree that a document is a proper expression of group
opinion even if disagreed with. The
decision rule specifies the balance between consensus and voting approaches,
permitting use of OurDocument for strict consensus
processes as well as for decision processes that are ultimately based on some
level of majority vote.
Voting: The winnowing and final-decision stages
require voting mechanisms. These,
including designation of quorum size if required, are specified in the document
rule and can be whatever is felt to be appropriate for the application. While some alternatives have to be chosen
between by simple majority vote to be fair, it will often be productive to
require a supermajority (such as two-thirds or greater support) for final
decisions. This is the traditional way
of ensuring that decisions are broadly supported. In votes to identify the primary alternatives
for further discussion, on the other hand, it may be appropriate to set a
relatively low threshold (such as 10%).
To keep early voters from unduly influencing the outcome, OurDocument voting mechanisms display the amount of total
vote (and the time remaining to vote) during the election, but do not display
the individual results until the election is complete.
Initial
document version: The document rule will provide at least a
topic description, and may provide either a section outline or a full initial
version (in which case participants must be designated or volunteer as authors
of each section so that it can evolve in response to discussion and alternative
proposals). Areas known to be
controversial may have alternatives stating the main choices listed even in the
initial version, to prime the process and to communicate its impartiality. Once the process is under way, however, new
alternative proposals or variations by participants have equal standing with
the corresponding sections of the initial version.
Amendment
of existing documents: One
document-rule option is for a review process for an existing group document
(e.g., bylaws). In such cases the
original language is retained except when amendments produced by the OurDocument process receive final-adoption votes.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Sectioning: The guide specifies the basic arrangement
of the document, and can rearrange it as needed to maintain a coherent
development process. This process also
entails dividing the document into sections to which comments can be
attached. These sections will be a
hierarchy of various sizes, typically up to the entire document and down to at
least the paragraph level.
Subcommittees: A document
rule may provide that its guide can appoint subcommittees to work out proposed
wording for some or all of the sections (or such groups can arise informally –
see “collaborations” below). But the
product of that work (which often is more than one alternative) reenters the
development process for the overall document in the same way as an initial
version, so further changes are still possible.
Resource
materials: Participants can submit materials (or links
to them) that they will refer to in their discussion of alternatives. These will be accessible via a resource list
that can be viewed grouped by subtopic, source, or category. Often an initial set of resources will be
provided with the topic definition. The
guide can specify a list of external resource sites for which the authoring
mechanism will support easy-to-use symbolic links.
Group
action: Individual participants may act for a group
for which they are authorized agents, but notification of any persisting action
(such as a vote or a comment) is also sent to all other people authorized to
act for the group, as well as to people listed as monitors for that group.
Rearrangement: Separately
from alternatives to the content of individual sections, participants (or the
guide) may propose rearrangements that preserve the substance of the document
but alter its format, as is commonly done in wiki-page
restructurings.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Authoring: During
this phase, authors remain in control of the language of any alternative
versions they propose. Usually they will
modify their proposals during the process, in light of the balance of the
comments made, to enhance their appeal in the final winnowing process. Authors may withdraw their proposals at any
time, which often is done in response to other proposals or to the trend of the
comments. Authors may mark a proposal as
“under revision” between the time they agree with the validity of a critique
and the time they have a new version ready for consideration.
Collaborations: Two or more
participants may become joint authors of a proposal, in which case the
agreement of all members of such a collaboration is required for subsequent
changes in the proposal (that is, a collaboration operates by strict consensus). Proposed changes in a jointly-authored
alternative are made visible to members of the collaboration as soon as they
are submitted, but are not shown to others until approval is received from all
the authors. But authors may withdraw
from a collaboration at any time and propose their own
alternative for the same section.
Listing
precedence: The order in which alternatives are listed is
different in the initial and winnowing stages.
In the initial stage, alternatives are listed in order of length, shortest
first (an “omit this section” alternative is thus always the first). This encourages brevity and allays any
concerns about favoritism in placement.
During the alternative-winnowing process, however, position reflects the
straw-poll score, deemphasizing alternatives which have gathered little
support.
Commenting: Participants
may apply comments to either a topic section or to specific alternatives within
that section. Each section is associated
with pages that hold its comments, summaries of tagging for that section, and
navigation to a history for that section and to comment pages for other parts
of the document.
Tags: In addition to
free-form comments, a quick-comment mechanism is provided in which participants
can place one or more “tags” – words or short phrases selected from a standard
list (e.g., “Good idea”, “Too wordy”, “Not clear”, “Not true”). Tags are provided to lower the threshold for
comment submission and to enable automatic summarization of responses. This provides scalable guidance to authors
about how they might improve the clarity and attractiveness of proposals. The tag list is specified in the document
rule, and can be further customized by the guide. Tags can be applied either to proposed
alternatives or to comments.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Winnowing: If the
document rule calls for more than the natural consensus that arises from the
consensus-development cycle, the guide will begin the winnowing stage when the
cycle of authors’ adjustments to the alternative proposals has stabilized. Winnowing starts with a straw poll on the
alternatives that will determine the order in which they are listed on the winnowing
ballot. Then, after a final round of
discussion and adjustment by authors, the alternatives are voted on (using the
voting method specified by the document rule), and those not meeting the
support standard specified in the rule are dropped. If appropriate the guide may, subject to
ratification from participants, present some alternatives for decision prior to
others that are logically dependent on them, or raise the retention threshold
in multiple stages so that supporters of the excluded items can shift their
votes.
Unified
draft: When the rule calls for a final document to
be created (rather than a set of all the alternatives attracting significant
support), the winnowing process will continue until it produces a final draft
document that reflects the substantive decisions by collecting, from each set
of alternatives, the version that has the most support at the end of the
winnowing process. The unified draft
that results is now a group document and no longer has a controlling author,
since its contents may come from several people and in any case those who voted
for it now have a stake in its wording.
Amendments: The unified
draft may lack polish or still have some inconsistencies due to the differing
sources of the alternatives. As a final
stage, perfecting amendments to the final draft may be proposed, with votes
taken on those amendments that attract the number of co-sponsors called for in
the document rule. These amendment votes
require a simple majority to change the unified draft.
Final
adoption: After consideration of all qualifying amendments, a
vote is taken on whether to adopt the amended draft as a final document. If the required support (often more than a
simple majority) is not attained, a subsequent vote determines whether to return
to an earlier stage for further consideration or to abandon consideration of
this topic.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
·
Decide on policies
or bylaws for an organization, or amend existing versions.
·
Reveal and
reconcile differences of opinion on a topic within a group.
·
Establish that
group decisions are broadly supported, with all members able to influence their
wording.
·
Develop a statement
of organizational opinion whose breadth of support can be proven to external
parties.
·
Build a list of
well-posed discussion questions as groundwork for developing a document.
·
Create a
well-commented, polished set of competing positions each of which are supported
by a significant portion of a group.
·
Show later
members of a group the discussion by which the group’s rules or positions were
developed.
·
Generate the
document-development agenda for an organization.
·
Decide on the
rules under which a document will be developed.
·
Use results from
one group as input to consideration by the group with decision authority.
·
Have multiple
subgroups develop results in parallel, then repeat the process with subgroup
representatives as participants and the subgroups’ results as the initial set
of alternatives.
·
Have each member
of a group write a version of the document and provide feedback to others, but
with the intention of finding the best expressions of individual views, rather
than the best statement of the group’s view.
Summary Overview Rule options Discussion Consensus Convergence Applications
Last updated
3/26/2009 by Hunter Ellinger