polis VS openData

Most of the work of good public consultation facilitators is (1) stopping those loud/frustrated/opinionated/entrenched people from distorting process, and (2) allowing some people to be heard.

Perhaps surprisingly with (2), public consultations are sometimes almost like public therapy -- allowing people to feel heard so they can then take a step forward, even if it's not a step fully in the direction they prefer. People can make better compromises when they feel heard, they just need to be contained so they don't take speaking time/attention from everyone else.

Disclaimer: highly involved in public consultation, tech, and consensus-building technology through my interest in https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis

Certainly a number of valid concerns here. Like any tool, polis is as good as its context, usage, data inputs.

I can offer a specific case study with data:

A debrief: https://pep.org.nz/2020/12/01/doc-tries-to-restore-e-democra...

The professional facilitators who work at nation scale in NZ: https://pep.org.nz/

The convo: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1908/S00014/scoop-hivemind...

The reporting: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1911/S00063/biodiversity-h...

Raw data: https://github.com/compdemocracy/openData/tree/master/scoop-...

This is an ideal use case, but it is encouraging to us (and has motivated me over the course of the past decade) that given some combination of factors, there can be real progress, and while yes, it takes a bit of work, we do spend an enormous amount of time and money on worse outcomes than this. So, we can "save one starfish" https://raycenter.wp.drake.edu/2018/06/29/the-starfish-story... and put some lights on the horizon of other possible systems, should we inspire some millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions to be spent on other political activities than driving wedges.