Is CollAction kind of what you had in mind? Wikipedia also mentions PledgeBank which closed down in 2015 but still has a site with all the archived pledges at www.pledgebank.com. Not sure but I don’t think either of these sites allow versions of assurance contracts that use financial contributions.
I wonder what a good binding mechanism might be for crowdaction sites in general, because once the quorum is reached you still have to get everybody to go ahead and perform the action. Any thoughts?
A site based on dominant assurance contracts would also be interesting. It might be a bit more like Kickstarter, in that maybe the entrepreneur initiating the DAC can market and popularize the action, and be responsible for the action happening when/if the quorum is reached.
I didn’t know about it until now. If it turns out to work well it might just need the right publicity.
(Poking around it still looks relatively minimalist and I’m not sure if there’s more than 6 projects being used on it right now? It also doesn’t let me filter by language which is a pretty big deal)
I also just get a kind of allergic reaction to many of the campaigns and get a vibe that “the site is not for me”, since the campaigns look more like they’re being used as advertisements than to solve a legitimate coordination problem.
(This doesn’t preclude me from using it as a tool, just makes me feel a bit less excited about it. If someone has something they actually need coordinating on that’s relevant to me I’d be interested in trying it out)
Two key features I think such a site site needs to really have teeth are:
Ability to enforce commitments. My first stab at this is something like “you put in a deposit, and you only get the deposit back if the people who created the campaign agrees you took the action.” (i.e. you agree to show up at a protest if 10000 other people do. Everyone puts in $100. They get the $100 back if they show up at the protest and a protest organizer scans their QR code). This is more important for actions that are costly if people shirk their commitment.
Ability to filter who counts as a person who can join a campaign.I don’t actually want 1,000,000 arbitrary people to quit FB and join some other platform. I want _my_friends_ to do so. If I’m trying to get the hospital I work at to change policies, I don’t want 100 randos to sign a petition, I want the people who work at that hospital. Maybe there’s an optional flag which is “the campaign manager has to manually approve people that they recognize.”
(Both of the above require more trust between participants, and some kind of ongoing reputation)
Apparently someone has already mentioned it a year ago in a comment to Moloch’s toolbox, it didn’t seem to progress one bit since, so i wouldn’t count on it.
Is CollAction kind of what you had in mind? Wikipedia also mentions PledgeBank which closed down in 2015 but still has a site with all the archived pledges at www.pledgebank.com. Not sure but I don’t think either of these sites allow versions of assurance contracts that use financial contributions.
I wonder what a good binding mechanism might be for crowdaction sites in general, because once the quorum is reached you still have to get everybody to go ahead and perform the action. Any thoughts?
A site based on dominant assurance contracts would also be interesting. It might be a bit more like Kickstarter, in that maybe the entrepreneur initiating the DAC can market and popularize the action, and be responsible for the action happening when/if the quorum is reached.
WOW awesome! CollAction is very similar to what i had in mind (I thought of something with more functions).
It’s amazing that i didn’t find it with my search...
So, why don’t rationalists use it? does it not suffice as a tool?
I didn’t know about it until now. If it turns out to work well it might just need the right publicity.
(Poking around it still looks relatively minimalist and I’m not sure if there’s more than 6 projects being used on it right now? It also doesn’t let me filter by language which is a pretty big deal)
I also just get a kind of allergic reaction to many of the campaigns and get a vibe that “the site is not for me”, since the campaigns look more like they’re being used as advertisements than to solve a legitimate coordination problem.
(This doesn’t preclude me from using it as a tool, just makes me feel a bit less excited about it. If someone has something they actually need coordinating on that’s relevant to me I’d be interested in trying it out)
Two key features I think such a site site needs to really have teeth are:
Ability to enforce commitments. My first stab at this is something like “you put in a deposit, and you only get the deposit back if the people who created the campaign agrees you took the action.” (i.e. you agree to show up at a protest if 10000 other people do. Everyone puts in $100. They get the $100 back if they show up at the protest and a protest organizer scans their QR code). This is more important for actions that are costly if people shirk their commitment.
Ability to filter who counts as a person who can join a campaign. I don’t actually want 1,000,000 arbitrary people to quit FB and join some other platform. I want _my_friends_ to do so. If I’m trying to get the hospital I work at to change policies, I don’t want 100 randos to sign a petition, I want the people who work at that hospital. Maybe there’s an optional flag which is “the campaign manager has to manually approve people that they recognize.”
(Both of the above require more trust between participants, and some kind of ongoing reputation)
You took the words out of my mouth XD
Edit: I’ll elaborate my ideas in a post
Apparently someone has already mentioned it a year ago in a comment to Moloch’s toolbox, it didn’t seem to progress one bit since, so i wouldn’t count on it.