Community based climate collaboration via #tags and wikis by Jago

To the judges: thank you for the constructive comments.

I will respond here to all questions, and indicate where the original proposal would be modified with the response.

To the question "if it could happen, why hasn't it?' my (brief) response  is that the prevailing social platforms are proprietary and run by businesses that seek dominant positions in social networks.  Free access for the user comes in exchange for the providers' rights to mine and monetize users' data, and some form of lock-in. Social platforms follow a silo logic and the world is made to believe that such silos are necessary for innovation to happen.  In conclusion, it isn't happening because there is no investment in it, dominant players would prefer it not to happen.

The second part of the evaluation calls for some clarification: 

To the question "Is this a platform like Twitter that could inform local decision makers?" No and yes..: No because it is not proposed to create a new platform. There is only an intention to make better use of existing platforms. Yes because local decision makers can already make use of Twitter to inform decision making. They can invite #tagged comments on an issue, and publish a timeline with the hashtag.  

It is true that registration is required for all (major) platforms. The silo logic of such platforms implies that people have to register on every platform on which they want to contribute. If a city adopts one of these platforms as its "preferred platform", intending contributors to a discussion may feel obliged to join that platform.

The use of #tags and (city) wiki is a means for the city to be "platform neutral" (this wasn't explained very well in the proposal), whereas the citizens on the other hand may be using one or more platforms, or no platform at all - "they don't need to re-register somewhere in order to contribute". 

• Citizens (with registration on one or more major platforms) must not register on another platform in order to contribute to, or follow a discussion; They might just create a tagged post (or tweet, blog article, ..)
• A citizen without a registration may opt to give a comment at the wiki page (run by the city, or a service provider), or send an sms with a certain tag - to a phone nr - ref services demonstrated by http://wefarm.org/ (WeFarm)

The topic of search for #hastags across different web platforms was briefly mentioned in the section What actions do you propose? - the recruiting and engagement - bullet 3. Here I clarify a few of the options for the moderators of a discussion :

1. The moderator can pay for a service to look up tagged posts across platforms, and embed the "multi platform timeline of the tag" at the discussion's wiki page; 
2. On a daily or weekly basis, the moderator can use services such as Spundge or Storify to collect tagged posts from various platforms, the "curated posts newsletters" can be embedded at the discussions wiki page.

In both cases everyone interested in the discussion can follow the cross platform exchange simply by visiting the wiki page of the discussion for the embedded timeline or curated posts. (Observe that contributors to a discussion don't need to hand over control over their contributed content to the discussion's moderator - that content cannot just be "destroyed" by a moderator removing a wiki page or topic. Moreover, anyone can easily verify a moderator's work, which will prevent arbitrary or biased choices.)

The third part of the evaluation calls for a more realistic campaign proposal

The judges correctly notice that simply relying on the city to promote the proposed activities is likely to be inadequate. 

In response I would suggest that the city convenes civil society partners to explain the proposed climate collaboration approach, and obtain their feedback regarding the rollout of a number of discussions (which discussions? how to mix the proposed and more traditional approaches, including meetings? 

(continued)

Adding concrete details about how the project should be expected to proceed

The judges rate the proposal average for what concerns its novelty. And, concurring with this rating, I would like to emphasize that only the "systematic" wiki and hashtag represent some novelty that should be added to "business as usual" for what concerns public discussion. Therefore I have emphasized and provided examples of how to use wiki and hashtags, without paying much attention to organizing public discussions. My assumption is that adding smart use social media tools to current practice is indeed a small intervention, yet its cumulative impact is likely to be substantial -(an expectation which rests on theoretical considerations, for now). 

There are a few additional concrete points :

- easy social sharing of every page - e.g. via the commonly used addthis buttons, with hashtag in the title of the page > prior to adding a comment, a participant in the discussion may share the wiki page with followers/social network

- multi lingual wiki use, with a single hashtag used for a topic, across different languages

- sharing of background information, including relevant open data, current regulations, court decisions; do all this via wiki (for instance, render regulations with a wiki page per article).

(end of response)