Ellen suggested:
> Appropriate first tier filters would be:
> a) deferring off-topic comments
> b) acknowledgikng one comment per individual per topic
> c) curtailing long responses beyond 250 words.
These are a good start. Indeed, they're filters we definitely need and
absolutely intend to put in place through a combination of code and
discretion of the Berkman staff.
But what do we do if there just turn out to be too many comments that pass
these three criteria?
Some ideas off the top of my head:
* FIFO (first-in-first-out). We've got time for, say, eight remote comments
per agenda item. First six people to send their messages get read (say, in
their entirety), others go into the archive.
* Moderator's Choice. A Berkman staff person -- primarily Professor
Zittrain, for those of you wondering! -- reviews all the messages received
prior to the first time remote comments are recognized on a particular
subject, and he reads the ones that he thinks are most significant.
"Significant" is of course the tricky part -- he could look for views not
already stated by physical participants, but then the majority voice is
artificially weakened by his selection process so that doesn't seem quite
right. He could look for messages that seem most thought-provoking from an
academic perspective, but neither is that quite what we need. Yet if one
placed sufficient trust in Mr. Zittrain -- as I'll admit I personally do,
make no mistake about it -- this could be acceptable.
* Randomly, as Michael Froomkin suggested.
* Some other way, including perhaps some combination of the above. I do
like the idea of combining random selection with some other method -- say,
take seven messages selected by whatever process is used primarily, then one
random message from the remainder.
I really do think this is a hard problem. Personally, I'm totally
dissatisfied with the incentives of FIFO ("write early and you'll get
recognized, quality no matter"). But, I can understand why Moderator's
Choice isn't appealing to those who, for whatever reason, just don't trust
the particular individuals doing the job, perhaps preferring a system that
goes beyond the moral character of the staff involved.
> I thought the mix of remote participation and physical participation at
the
> Names Council meeting on June 25 worked fairly well, with a large screen
at
> the front of the room. The pNC checked the screen occasionally, but
> haphazardly. Fairness dictates building those checks into the physical
> agenda every ten or fifteen minutes.
I'm not familiar with the particulars of the NC's remote participation, but
their methodology sounds reasonable. Yet realize that it's not so hard to
do remote participation a small, low-volume scale. Indeed, from my
recollections (admittedly just that, but I think likely reflected in the
comments on this list) of the remote participation on the DNSO and GAC
meetings on the first day of Berlin, things go well with remote
participation until some critical point of messages-received-per-minute is
reached. When below the threshold, it's easy to choose messages -- just
apply baseline criteria like the three Ellen suggested above, and indeed
that's what we did that first day.
But the question in my mind remains: What do you do when there are too many
acceptable, on-topic, concise remote comments? How to choose?
