OSPT

From Wiki

The OSPT (open-source poli* toolkit) is a set of technological tools and organizational techniques to organize groups working towards shared goals. "Open source politics" is the application of this toolset to the political arena; "open source policy" is the ideal it aims to support. Its basic philosophy is that openness and transparency are powerful ways to keep groups of people happy and working together, and that the open source movement is the primary known application of that idea to actual shared endeavors. For that reason, we believe that application of the lessons learned in open-source software can be applied to problems in other areas, such as government.

Any technological platform is only one possible means to that end, and any technological platform could be used, more or less effectively, to support the good-will efforts of collaboration we envision. That said, of all possible technological platforms, we are actively looking for the best solutions to organize the many processes that people use when working together.

[edit] This is what we have so far

(Here is the current platform in use)

• MediaWiki for the whiteboarding of explanatory text (you're reading the Wiki now).
• Drupal to provide a number of additional community features, including news stories, forum-style conversations, and comments.
• MovableType to provide blogging and news aggregation tools.

[edit] This is what we envision

• Deliberation tool for standardizing the construction, amendment, and ratification of a particular policy. (This is still just in the planning stages.)
  • Hmm: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicracy
  • Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERulemaking
  • Don't forget: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map
  • Condorcet Method
  • But the deliberation tool might just be a refinement of the existing Wiki.
  • It should include polls. (Soon.)
• SILC channel and autopublishing of the logs there
• Integration with other social sites for exposure: Digg API? Technorati?
• Mailing list management? Other, more refined notification tools?

[edit] We are still investigating other possible components

• Pligg here: http://www.pligg.com/ (dunno)
• Drupal with whatever works for news aggregation -- perhaps on issue tracker sites or something
• Elgg?
  • Drupal use cases here: http://drupal.org/cases
  • and MediaWiki integration here: http://drupal.org/project/mediawiki (this needs some work to do what we want)
  • and here http://www.zacker.org/elgg-vs-drupal-floss-competition is one of many sites comparing D and E and suggesting it may make sense to integrate both into one big, fun glob.
• OpenID to aggregate user login details across multiple applications
  • OpenID here: http://www.openid.net/
  • Extension:OpenID for MediaWiki here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID
  • Note to self: may be useful - http://dev.inames.net/wiki/How_to_Setup_an_I-Name-Enabled_Mediawiki