Pirate Party reloaded

A few questions:

• By UBI, do you mean Universal Basic Income?
• Does "open data" contain things like open-source government systems?
• Does participation mean mandatory voting?

Great to see you, Peter.
Short answer:
yes (updated the description accordingly),
yes,
no.
Better answer: If these points are of particular interest for you, we should start separate threads for each of those points. Would that suit you?

@petercummuskey you asked:

Does participation mean mandatory voting?

Firstly: it seems that unfortunately the markdown parser is not working quite right. The list in the description does not get indented as it should. A number of items that appear on the same level as 'participation' should be displayed as sub-items, like so:

• participation
  • radical democracy / grass-root democracy / meritocracy
    • internet based party structure and member based decision making
    • a purely administrative board
  • equality -> e.g. Universal Basic Income (UBI), free education
  • open data
  • anti-corruption / anti-lobbyism
  • civil rights / anti-mass-surveilance stance / crypto-wars 3.0

I hope that this view makes my take on participation a tit bit clearer. Roughly it's about taking away obstacles and instead adding resources to empower all people to engage in shaping their community/society while at the same time reducing the ability of those with accumulated resources to push their particular interests through on privileged channels.

BTW: I have added free education to the list.

Secondly: to what political concept are you referring to when you say 'mandatory voting'?

@hubatmcjuhes, Like Australia, where non-voting is illegal. However, I'd offer an "abstain" option to make sure people weren't just picking a random party. I'm of mixed opinion on the matter, but I think it becomes more resonable as choices and accessibility increase.

@petercummuskey Participation can come in a great variety of forms. Pirates around the world tend to favour liquid democracy where votes can be passed on to others when so desired. They do require a degree of citizens taking responsibility which is preferable to mandatory voting.

I’d offer an “abstain” option to make sure people weren’t just picking a random party.

Me too. If people are not interested in politics or are not opinionated about a particular topic then I don't think that should have to vote.

People generally only care about things that affect them, right? So by allowing abstentions, the numbers for/against the vote will be a better representation of those affected by the subject that is being voted on.

Participation can come in a great variety of forms. Pirates around the world tend to favour liquid democracy where votes can be passed on to others when so desired.

Liquid democracy is a great way to pass an eligible vote to someone who is more equipped or cares more about the subject matter of the vote. I still don't think people should be forced to participate. If a community of people are apathetic towards the subject matter but are forced to participate then they'll all have to find someone to delegate their vote to. If the community all delegate their votes to one person then that's a lot of responsibility for that one person to bear (plus the possibility of misrepresentation as a result - but that's a disadvantage of liquid democracy rather than forced participation).

Communication and presentation (e.g. website, social networks)

The website(s) are due for an upgrade - the main site is out of date and minimally maintained. The CRM is no longer running at all.

Recently, I have been working towards a new online platform that should be initially ready in about a month's time. See the following document for more information about this new platform: https://gist.github.com/zl4bv/8a19c8f7a060ee703958

Also, in light of our terrible response times for enquiries to the board or party enquiries in general I have decided that we should implement a proper email ticketing system. I have previously suggested this to the board and the suggestion was discarded but after seeing pirate parties overseas using it and seeing how effective it was I believe it is something that could be of help to us too. I doubt it will make us respond any faster at first, but at least it will highlight enquiries that have not been responded to thus encouraging us to follow up eventually.

I am slowly working through the website working out how the WP configuration works and updating text