The following is an excerpt from Chapter 6: Prioritizing Trustworthiness in the book Holy War for True Democracy.
A “judgment” is when a DG member submits an evaluation of the trustworthiness of a person or organization.
Let’s call the person submitting a judgment the “judge” and the Internet identity who is being judged the “subject”.
The judge starts by running the DG mobile app or going to the DG website in a web browser. To create a new judgment, the user clicks on the “Add judgment” button.
If the judge is not currently logged in, a login/register screen will appear. Note that only registered users can submit judgments. Login and registration will be conventional, except that registration will require that the user create or update the information in his/her profile.
The user will now see the initial screen for the Add Judgment feature. The user experience will be a series of sequential steps (a wizard UX with Next buttons on each step with alternative ability to jump to any step at any time). On mobile devices each step would be a separate screen:
- The first step will be the Add Judgment welcome screen. If this is the first time the user has created a judgment, then training material will show, including video(s). The training material will be based on the user’s current DG “level”. Each member starts at level one and can get promoted to higher levels based on completion of training material and approval by another member who is at a higher level. The training material will explain the importance of being careful, thorough and unbiased, and how your judgment will be reviewed by someone with a higher DG level, who will judge your judgment as a combination of scoring your effort and mentoring you in how to create the best possible judgments.
- Then, the judge identifies the subject by supplying various ways to identify the subject, such as name, email, Twitter handle, etc. If the DG app can guess who the subject is, the app will attempt to autofill information about the subject; otherwise, the judge will have to create the subject’s profile from scratch. The judge should verify and correct any autofilled information to make sure that the subject’s profile is complete and correct.
- Then, the judge enters multiple pieces of evidence that best illuminate the subject’s trustworthiness. Most of the evidence will be in the form of URLs, but in some cases will be textual descriptions if a suitable URL cannot be found. The DG server will attempt to retrieve and verify the URL and then save a snapshot in case the URL might deliver different data in the future.
- Then, the judge will choose a trustworthiness score (1-9) for the subject, along with a textual justification for the score.
- Then, the judge will choose a confidence score (1-9) where the judge provides his own confidence about how accurate his judgment is, along with a textual justification for the score.
- Then, the review step will appear where the judge will see a summary of his judgment, along with any errors and warnings about the judgment that is about to be submitted. The judge can either navigate back to modify the data or press the Submit Judgment to upload his judgment.
- Finally, the Thank you step where some text appears that says the subject will get the opportunity to review and give feedback. The text will also note that someone at a higher level will review the judgment before the judgment will be added as an approved judgment, possibly changing content, the trustworthiness score and confidence score.
Whenever a judgment has been submitted or modified, the subject will be sent a notification (e.g., an email). The subject will have full control over the subject’s portion of his/her profile and can submit feedback on any judgments on his/her trustworthiness.
Note that there is no anonymity in this process. People have to have the courage to stand up publicly for truth and accuracy so that we can increase the trustworthiness of information on government and politics, and thereby improve democracy such that it really is government of the people, by the people and for the people.
After a new judgment or revised judgment is approved, notifications will be sent to the subject, judge and any DG members who have registered for notifications.