e-Liberate Project Basics

Motivation and Rationale

Move beyond chat, premature endings and unresolved digressions

Support groups who are already working for social change

Try to mimic existing processes -- as closely as possible

PSCW (protocol supported cooperative work) predates CSCW

Modify the system after user feedback

Decision: Use Roberts Rules of Order

Observation: Software people don't want to implement existing systems

Roberts Rules of Order

Developed by Henry Robert over a 30 year period

"The majority can't prevent the minority from speaking, the minority can't prevent the majority from make a decision" (And the rights of large minorities [over 30%] have special rights)

Used by 1000s of organizations every day

A legal requirement in many cases

e-Liberate Status

Proposed in New Community Networks: Wired for Change (Schuler, 1996)

Prototype developed by students of The Evergreen State College (John Adams, Amber Clark, Cory Dightman-Kovac, Neil Honomichael, and Matt Powell) 1999-2000

Current version developed by Nathan Clinton (Evergreen and Public Sphere Project)

Supported roles: Chairs, members, observers

Testing with organizations has just started on current version

Internationalization (into Italian) has begun (Greg Feigenson and Antonio Marco)

Open source release planned after more trials (and cleanup)