Re: IRC debate feedback

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Peter Samuelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.03.19.0827 +0100]:
> paragraphs cut off because of the limits of the medium.  (Pasting from
> #-replies irc logs or from a live client?  Per-candidate logfiles of
> #-replies?  Use of a text editor for collection / reformatting?  Etc.)

I used the following script, and ended up piping it through tools
I know better than perl, as shown at the end:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

while (<>) {
   s/^[[:digit:]:]{5} //;   # trim leading time
   s/^[[:space:]]*//mg; # trim leading spaces
   s/^<[ [EMAIL PROTECTED]([[:alnum:]_-]+)>//;   # convert nickname format
   chomp;   # remove newlines
   s/\[/\n[/g;  # reinsert newlines
   print;
}
print "\n";

# read NICK; perl debate-reply-trim.pl | fmt -w 350 \
# | sed -e "s,^,[$NICK]," | tr -s ' '

I am sure this can be majorly improved.

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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Peter Samuelson]

[Helen Faulkner]
> Having just run the 2005 DPL IRC debate (and a stressful experience it
> was too), Martin Krafft and I would like to get feedback on what people
> thought of the debate and how it was run.

Thank you, Helen and Martin, for a job well done.

I think the most useful thing would be a writeup from the two of you on
how you managed the technical aspects of running the thing.  There were
a lot of minor technical difficulties early on in the debate but you
obviously learned quickly how to iron them out - all but the first 20
or 30 minutes went quite smoothly.  It would be interesting (for me,
and for whoever needs to moderate debates on irc in the future) to hear
how you solved problems like awkward line formatting and getting
paragraphs cut off because of the limits of the medium.  (Pasting from
#-replies irc logs or from a live client?  Per-candidate logfiles of
#-replies?  Use of a text editor for collection / reformatting?  Etc.)

Apologies if you already wrote this up and I just haven't seen it.

Peter


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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Manoj Srivastava]

Hi,

I really liked the format of the debate, and I think that
 despite the popularity of the second hour's free wheeling debate, the
 structured first hour,along with carefully chosen questiosn, gives a
 better idea of the candidates policies, and responses to unusual
 scenarios. The second half needs the anchor of the policies described
 in the first half; lacking that, people would still have been
 wondering where the candidates stood.

I would notr change the format; the extempore part's
 popularity notwithstanding.

manoj
-- 
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Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Anthony Towns]

martin f krafft wrote:
also sprach Adrian von Bidder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.03.16.1344 +0100]:
I found the first hour basically wasted time - the strength of IRC
is that it's real-time, while the form of the first hour of debate
did not really use that,
The goal of the first hour was to make sure that the candidates do
not have much time to polish their responses but must write more or
less off the top of their heads. I feel this allows us to get to
know them better without their diplocatic DPL candidate masks.
Personally, I found I had to be more "diplomatic" in the first hour than 
just writing to lists -- in the first section you had to keep your eye 
on the clock, and spend time worrying about how to cut & paste, and 
flicking between two channels, all of which is distracting when trying 
to understand multipart questions and respond to them. And there was no 
chance of back & forth, which seems to me the point of a "debate".

During the second hour, I was struggling hard to find my purpose.
I thought the second hour was really quite good; especially part way in 
where, it seemed to me, we all worked out what we were doing.

Cheers,
aj
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Re: IRC debate feedback

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Adrian von Bidder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.03.16.1344 +0100]:
> I found the first hour basically wasted time - the strength of IRC
> is that it's real-time, while the form of the first hour of debate
> did not really use that,

The goal of the first hour was to make sure that the candidates do
not have much time to polish their responses but must write more or
less off the top of their heads. I feel this allows us to get to
know them better without their diplocatic DPL candidate masks.



also sprach Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005.03.16.1428 +0100]:
> My suggestion is that only one person is allowed to speak (i.e.,
> type and press enter) at a time.

Very difficult to do, since people may be in process of composing
a line when +v is removed.

> Every candidate would have to raise their hands in order to get
> the word, or could choose not to speak up at a certain point.

This is already very difficult in the real world. If observed by all
candidates, then it's basically a very dull "debate".

> This would avoid that two or three lines of thought are totally
> mixed without even saying that one is talking about something
> different

IRC is based on context. I do not see it as a disadvantage to have
intermixed comments, rather as an advantage of IRC over real-live
discussions (where it would be impossible to follow).



It was a tough time to hold this debate, but having thought about it
a lot beforehand, I do not really see significant ways to improve an
IRC debate with that many (or more) candidates. I feel that
time-pressure is an interesting component to "exploit" which limits
the debate to a synchronous medium. As opposed to VoIP/Phone, IRC
has the advantage of giving you the scrollback. Also, noone really
minds if you return to previous issues.

During the second hour, I was struggling hard to find my purpose.
I had to make sure to keep the discussion going, stop it from
side-tracking, stop it from homing in on details, and simultaneously
try not to actually take part in the debate (someone claimed I did,
although I could not identify what I may have done wrong...
pointers/comments welcome). I purposely avoided voicing/devoicing
because it's a little too close to censorship and a little too
radical, I found.

In the year to come, I will hopefully find some time to research
into the CSCW field and figure out how one might best approach this
debate. Then next year, we can run another experiment. :)

-- 
Please do not send copies of list mail to me; I read the list!
 
 .''`. martin f. krafft <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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`. `'`
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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Marc Haber]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 02:28:25PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> I also liked the second part better.  I could imagine a compromise in
> the middle of both schemes, for something to replace the first part; I
> don't know whether this is technically manageable, though.  My
> suggestion is that only one person is allowed to speak (i.e., type and
> press enter) at a time.  After he/she has finished, the moderator(s)
> hand the word over to the next person.

Yes. This can be enforced by moving the voice tag, and greatly eased
by a small $CLIENT scriptlet whch does the -v $LAST_SPEAKER +v
$NEW_SPEAKER from an easy-to-type command.

Maybe speaking times can also be automated by having a script
automatically remove voice after the timeout expired. This is much
less trouble-prone than manual de-voicing which can easily be called
biased.

Greetings
Marc

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Mannheim, Germany  |  lose things."Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 621 72739834
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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Helen Faulkner]

Marc Haber wrote:
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 01:44:45PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote:
[...]
I haven't looked at any earlier IRC DPL candidate debates, so I can't
compare if this was better or worse.

Earler debates may have been "easier" due to the lower number of
participants.
I strongly suspect that is true.  If we hope to have a wide field of
candidates in future elections (and I personally think that having a
variety of candidates is a good thing), we need to work out how to run a
debate with that many people involved in the most effective way possible.
The earlier debates that I've read [1][2][3], used variations on the
format of the first half of the 2005 debate.
Helen.
1. http://www.debian.org/vote/2000/leadership_debate/
2. http://raw.no/debian/debian-debate.html
3. http://www.debian.org/vote/2003/dpl-debate.log


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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Frank Küster]

Marc Haber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 01:44:45PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote:
>> I found the first hour basically wasted time - the strength of IRC is that 
>> it's real-time, while the form of the first hour of debate did not really 
>> use that, instead showing the weaknesses of IRC when text needs to be 
>> copied & pasted around :-)  The 'Questions for the Candidates' emails on 
>> -vote, together with a summary like  
>> (thanks to David for doing this!) is much better suited for this.
>
> Maybe something Web- or Wiki-Based would be good for this, as mailing
> list discussions tend to get more verbose than intended.
>
> The strength of the first hour was that all information became
> available at once which made it much easier to follow than a mailing
> list discussion.

I also liked the second part better.  I could imagine a compromise in
the middle of both schemes, for something to replace the first part; I
don't know whether this is technically manageable, though.  My
suggestion is that only one person is allowed to speak (i.e., type and
press enter) at a time.  After he/she has finished, the moderator(s)
hand the word over to the next person.  But everybody can react on what
anybody else said previously (we'll notice if someone ignores the other
candidates and only answers the moderator, or only engages in disputes
with candidates, ignoring when the moderators try to steer the talks
somewhere else).  Every candidate would have to raise their hands in
order to get the word, or could choose not to speak up at a certain
point.  The moderators would ensure all candidates get approximately
equal shares of time (or of turns, don't know).

This would avoid that two or three lines of thought are totally mixed
without even saying that one is talking about something different (like
in 

#   let's move on... [23:43]
#  It is probably safe to say that the results of the Vancouver 
meeting [23:43]
#   stirred the community up quite a bit. What could have been 
done [23:43]
[...]
#  better to prevent such turbulences and potential loss of 
[23:43]
#  productivity? [23:44]
[...]
#  martin_krafft: nice segue from my previous remark :) [23:44]
[...]
#  martin_krafft: I don't see any loss of
  productivity. The Vancouver meeting was a necessary bit of quiet time
  for the release managers to get together without distraction. [23:44]
#  martin_krafft: it seems the meeting was arranged hurriedly
  for some reason. i think there was no need for such haste (the DPL
  election?) [23:44]
#  martin_krafft: again, I fully support the right to
  freedom of association. [23:44]
#  martin_krafft: then the group should try to find new
  members, in an active way. [23:44]
#  martin_krafft: Obviously, I like the idea of cutting
  off the flamewar where it starts to get nasty, non-technical or overly
  repetitive. :-/ [23:44]

AnthonyTowns and Andreas Schuldei, maybe even JonathanWalther in his
second sentence, clearly address older questions of Martin, and
everybody different ones.

Candidates could still say "I agree with what A said previously, but...;
to your new question, $moderator, I say that ...; As a new topic, I
think X is very important, and ..", but it would be much clearer.

Thanks to Helen and Madduck!

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer

Re: IRC debate feedback

[Marc Haber]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 01:44:45PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote:
> I found the first hour basically wasted time - the strength of IRC is that 
> it's real-time, while the form of the first hour of debate did not really 
> use that, instead showing the weaknesses of IRC when text needs to be 
> copied & pasted around :-)  The 'Questions for the Candidates' emails on 
> -vote, together with a summary like  
> (thanks to David for doing this!) is much better suited for this.

Maybe something Web- or Wiki-Based would be good for this, as mailing
list discussions tend to get more verbose than intended.

The strength of the first hour was that all information became
available at once which made it much easier to follow than a mailing
list discussion.

> In contrast, I very much appreciated the second part of the discussion - it 
> was, as several of the participants said, a bit chaotic, but I think both 
> of you started to try to lead the debate a bit more towards the end - 
> successfully, in my view.

I agree. Good work.

> I haven't looked at any earlier IRC DPL candidate debates, so I can't 
> compare if this was better or worse.

Earler debates may have been "easier" due to the lower number of
participants.

Greetings
Marc

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Re: IRC debate feedback

[Adrian von Bidder]

Helen, Martin - thanks for your effort.

I found the first hour basically wasted time - the strength of IRC is that 
it's real-time, while the form of the first hour of debate did not really 
use that, instead showing the weaknesses of IRC when text needs to be 
copied & pasted around :-)  The 'Questions for the Candidates' emails on 
-vote, together with a summary like  
(thanks to David for doing this!) is much better suited for this.

In contrast, I very much appreciated the second part of the discussion - it 
was, as several of the participants said, a bit chaotic, but I think both 
of you started to try to lead the debate a bit more towards the end - 
successfully, in my view.


I haven't looked at any earlier IRC DPL candidate debates, so I can't 
compare if this was better or worse.

So long
-- vbi

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IRC debate feedback

[Helen Faulkner]

Hi All,
Having just run the 2005 DPL IRC debate (and a stressful experience it
was too), Martin Krafft and I would like to get feedback on what people
thought of the debate and how it was run.
Suggestions for future debates will be very welcome, not that I am
planning to volunteer to do that again ;)   I am sure that whoever does
it in the future can learn from our successes and mistakes.
Logs of the debate channels have already been posted by some people
(thanks).  The logs of all four channels will also be posted to the
debian-vote pages [1] soon.  An edited log of the #debian-dpl-debate
channel will also be posted (this will preserve all questions and
answers but will omit some of the disorganisation, to make it easier to
read).
Thanks again to everyone who helped make the debate work :)
Helen
(Posted to debian-vote to hopefully reach the IRC debate audience, but
please follow up with feedback on the running of the debate to
debian-project, because I think this is off-topic for the actual 2005 vote.)
1.  http://www.debian.org/vote/



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