Month: September 2021

Q & A

One of the developers I outsourced to had a number of questions, which will hopefully be useful to other people.

Who is the wrangler and deputy?

This app is basically for US citizens, though can be modified relatively easily for citizens of other political systems. Indeed, while the voteslinger role only makes sense in a democracy, wranglers operate principally by shaming and educating, not voting. So, in principle, the app should be useful for activists in other countries, at least those not too authoritarian.

A deputy is basically an assistant administrator. The sheriff and deputies don’t have many advantages over wranglers and deputies; and I can’t think of any that would impact the database design. But, if you’re curious, you can read the other specs for insights into the differences. E.g., the slack clone spec makes clear that messaging limits for wranglers and voteslingers basically don’t apply to deputies and sheriffs.

Is Wrangler the person who knows people about the misdeeds of the politicians? If yes then please just answer about the deputy.

Well, I would hope that posse members generally know about the misdeeds of politicians, even before joining a posse. The wrangler role is one of the two main activist roles that are more about affecting the politician. The “educational” aspect that I refer to is subsumed under this targeting of the politician. It is more about educating people outside the posse – i.e., the general voting public. The slack clone can be used to keep people inside the posse knowledgeable about specific issues. I expect people inside the posse already know most of what they need to know, to have an opinion on how bad the politician is with respect to the particlar posse issue.

One Posse will only point to one politician and one issue means one posse member/registrant cannot point/address two issues at once?

I’m not 100% sure I understand your question, but the short answer seems to be “no”. On Day 1, there will be 3 issues already defined, so for any given target/politician, there can be at least 3 types of posse. A user can join all 3 posses, if he/she feels strongly about all of the issues. While I expect most users will only join 1 local posse for each posse they belong to, viz. the one closest to their home, there is no reason to restrict them to activities related to only one such local posse. So, e.g., they can be wranglers in a local posse in their hometown, as well as another town.

Can one user join multiple posse have the same issue? Or Can one user join multiple local posse and have the same issue?

Yes, one can join multiple posses that have the same issue. E.g., each state in the US has 2 Senators. If they are both bad on an issue, the citizens they represent will need tools to affect both of them.

Similarly, joining local posses that have the same issue is no problem

When one considers the voteslinger role, in particular, however, this becomes somewhat more complex; Mostly this is because we don’t want to fraudulently inflate counts of voteslingers. A citizen can, generally, only (legally) vote once (I think some states or localities may be introducing ranked choice voting; also, some have special runoff elections; I am ignoring all such complexities). So, if we want to know how many voteslingers have pledged to vote against target X, we cannot double count, triple count, etc., the total number of voteslingers by ignoring the fact that the same user is present in multiple posses and local posses. Also, if the system gets widespread adoption, we can expect that multiple posses (not local posses) will appear, with different sheriffs, but the same issue and target; and a user may want to join more than 1 of these posses. At a minimum, we will have to now divide such a user’s contribution to the total count of voteslinger, in each posse.

In the Day 1 implementation, while I don’t think it’s worthwhile to forbid this scenario, I will simply recommend to avoid it by forbidding it as a business rule, which doesn’t even need to be implemented in front end code or database rule. I.e., I can just advise the super_sheriff to take care not to have duplicate posse ‘signatures’ (target + issue). However, now that you’ve got me thinking about it, the GraphQL API should anticipate this scenario, and do the the voteslinger count division. If no voteslinger is present in posses with identical signatures, then the count of voteslingers will be the same, anyway. Also, now that I think about it, for wranglers it would be better to double/triple/etc. count membership across posse signatures (unlike a voteslinger), while still avoiding double counting across posse/local posse boundaries.

As far as joining multiple local posses having the same issue, that is definitely allowed. For citizens with a lot of time on their hands, I would even encourage it. For those who don’t have such a luxury, it wouldn’t make much sense, to me.

What is the procedure/flow to become a posse? Does it only require a simple registration or anything else?

This is basically covered in the front end spec. Joining a posse requires a basic email registration. The main difference is we demand an approximate location, for membership in a local posse as an activist member. (And we ask for it, in case they are just joining a posse as a follower). Theoretically, wranglers could be overseas, in which case, revealing their location to other posse members will not be useful. But, that is the exception.

We actually don’t want an exact location, for security reasons. Approximate locations, accurate to within, say, 1/2 mile to 2 miles, should suffice to encourage face-to-face meetings.

Is this application dealing with US citizens or the whole world?

Day 1, US. However, it’s an open source project, and I hope it’s useful enough in the US that other citizens adopt it to fit their needs. I’m particularly grieved at what’s happening in Australia and New Zealand. So-called “democratic” countries are trampling on their citizens’ rights, using covid as an excuse. So, the medical tyranny issue should be, and in many cases is, foremost in their minds.

I’m still confused about one thing: why the deputy/wrangler/sheriff of one posse is not the wrangler, posse, deputy of all local posse belong to that specific posse?

Well, the idea of a local posse is to encourage group activities, with in-person interaction. Even in a relatively small state, like New Jersey, it can easily take 3 hours to drive across the state. How often can one participate in a face-to-face activity with somebody 3 hours away?

Who is a voteslinger?

A voteslinger is a user who has taken a pledge to vote AGAINST a politician, if they do not meet a voteslinger redline demand that the voteslinger has adopted. It is not revocable. A wrangler, OTOH, can turn around and vote for the politician that they have acted against. “voteslinger” is a play on the US Wild West stock character of “gunslinger”.

My expectation is that, during the last part of an elected politician’s term, the voteslinger role will be most effective in controlling the politician. But during the beginning and middle part of the term, the wrangler role will be more effective. Consider the 6 year term of a US Senator, who just got elected. If you say to such a person “do this, or we will vote you out of office in 6 years”, the Senator will probably laugh, knowing full well that you will likely not be as motivated in 6 years; and fail to attract a significant following who will be committed to act in 6 years.

Are you targeting to make it a mobile or web application?

Well, the user facing part, that I call the front end, will use vue, and thus will be a web app. But, I’m mostly concerned about it being very usable in a mobile device; hence, the simplicity and the fact that my main wireframe is for a mobile footprint.

For the back end business part, I am also looking at a web app, but it doesn’t need to look good in a mobile footprint. (I personally don’t like using small footprint devices, except when there’s no choice.)

Is it possible that one person has one role in the posse and a different role in local posse?

In terms of admin roles vs. non-admin roles, that is definitely true. You can be a wrangler in a posse. But you can also be the sheriff in one of it’s local posses, based on your neighborhood.

I didn’t completely think through the various possibilities for the more activist roles of voteslinger and wrangler, but I will try to do so, now. I hope I don’t contradict anything else I’ve written. I think, at a minimum, I will have to finish revising the front end spec to reflect what I’m now going to write….

If you are a wrangler in a local posse, you are a wrangler in the parent posse. Same with voteslinger.

However, if a person automatically inherits those roles in a local posse, that creates a problem, mostly because we want to allow users to join many local posses of the same posse, and the user may not want to play the same role as a member in different local posses. (Say, because this implies participation in group activities that, while not required, are encouraged.)

So, I’ll say that a wrangler in a posse CAN join a local posse as a wrangler, WITHOUT taking on any new pledge, if they so desire. So, they will the benefits of the role of a wrangler, but not have any new obligation (in the form of a pledge) usually associated with the wrangler role. Alternatively, the posse wrangler could join the local posse as just a follower. Another possibility is that, if they’re not a votelslinger in the parent posse, they can join the local posse as a voteslinger (which automatically makes them a voteslinger in the parent posse)

Similarly, a voteslinger in a posse can join a local posse as a voteslinger, WITHOUT taking on any new pledge, if they so desire. Or, join as just a follower in the local posse.

So, to summarize, if you are a voteslinger in a parent posse, you can join any local posse without taking on any additional pledges, as a voteslinger. However, you can alternately chose to join as just a follower.

Similarly, if you are a wrangler in a parent posse, you can join any local posse without taking on any additional pledges, as a wrangler. However, you can alternately chose to join as just a follower.

If you are a wrangler, but not a voteslinger, in a parent posse, and want to join a local posse as a voteslinger, you will have to take a voteslinger pledge.

Similarly, if you are a voteslinger, but not a wrangler, in a parent posse, and want to join a local posse as a wrangler, you will have to take a wrangler pledge.

Difference between target and issues related to posse?

Each posse has exactly 1 issue they’re concerned about, and exactly 1 target, or politician. The politician will typically be somebody already holding office, but need not be. From a strategic point of view, these issues should be major ones, at least during the initial phase of adoption. On Day 1, when the app is ready for practical use by the public, if I have any influence on what’s actually offered, there will only be the 3 issues I define. But that is not a given. Furthermore, the system should eventually allow a much larger number of issues to define posses. Of course, since it’s open source, people will be able to create or subscribe to their own provider, who will allow the sorts of issues they are concerned with. Too many issues will lead to fragmentation of effort. Too few will alienate citizens whose main concerns are not addressed. A sweet spot needs to be aimed for, but it should be driven what the public wants.

BTW, I’m actually leery about “what the public wants”. Even a much improved democracy will be no better than it’s citizens. See the youtube “Why Socrates Hated Democracy” for insights. I’m not super optimistic about what a non-corrupted democracy (actually, in the US, democratic republic) would look like. But certainly what we have in the US is a horror. There is a democratic façade, but the real power structure is something called “inverted totalitarianism” In a nutshell, financial interests (primarily) have co-opted the government.