@gora : a website for democracy @gora is a social network conceived - PDF document

@gora : a website for democracy @gora is a social network conceived to enable an easier communication between different actors of our society: persons, local governments, State, companies, associations. The original goal of the site is to create a participative democracy to consult all members of society while taking a political decision. But @gora will offer much more opportunities: e.g. any project can be described in @gora, from job adverstised to a sportive competition. Noticeably, the research system is original and allows complex researches, such as : What company obtains the best note from its employees in my region ? The polls and sorts that anyone can create will give some substantial data to citizens, decision-makers and searchers. Agora ’s functiunnalities Profiles Profiles contains the identity of a physical person : name, first name, birth date, town. The true identity of the person is demanded. The user can choose to display several sections on his profile, such as: - The interventions, which contains the interventions of the user in public debates, and recent interventions in the followed debates - The personal information such as profession, gender, address, marital status, CV, centers of interest, competences, political orientation … - Supports and notes attributed to a document, to an intervention or to any data - Followers and followed profiles - Groups the user is into - Debates for which he is censor - His answers to polls, - His documents - The projects he is implied in - His friends and blockings - His sorts - His reactions - The petitions he signed Each time possible, the user handles the confidentiality of the contents relative to his profile. The default confidentiality is to make public all data and deny the access only to the blocked profiles, except for polls and blockings which are private by default. On his own profile (in the parameters section), the user can define a confidentiality specific to each of his contents (which is one of the followings : public, accessible only for a set of profiles and/or groups (such as the friends ), denied to a set of profiles and/or groups, private). The user can

choose to broadcast the contents of a section to his followers or not. On each content, the user can highlight the content (make it appear above other results) or modify its confidentiality. Groups A group is acting like a profile on various aspects. Let ’ s see the differences: a responsible is necessarily attached to a group: he controls what ’ s going on in the group, noticeably the parameters, the contents and the authorizations of joining the group. The responsible can change if both predecessor and successor agree. The personal information are replaced by the group information: type (and possibly a subtype) of the group, number of members, function of the group, set of readers , publication ’ s rules precising the procedure by which the group publishes. The authorization to publish can be attributed: only to the responsible ; to all the members of the group ; to interventions supported by the unanimity, or by the majority, during a group poll ; to one or several elected representatives – with several vote systems available. Groups have no friend, no blockings and no followings but can define the readers : the set of users authorized to see the contents of the group (by default, every user). Some new sections (that doesn ’ t exist in a profile page) are: - Intern debates - Open letters (from any reader to the group) - The members (who can be secret) The projects Any profile or group can create a project. In practice, a project is a group with some precise characteristics: needs (completed or not), objectives, progress, and description of the project. The debates Debates are an amelioration of existing forums: they are entirely customizable (in the display as in the conception): for example, interventions are not necessarily ordered by date. There are two types of interventions in a debate: declarations and comments . Declarations answer directly to the theme of the debate whereas comments answer to declarations or other comments. The principal characteristics of a debate are: - A title One or several domains (and possibly sub-domains … ) - - A confidentiality (who can read and write) - A censor, who configures the debate and censors it : he choose the confidentiality, the authorization of anonymous interventions, the parameters (the sort used to display by default the interventions, to display or not the comments by default) and can delete any intervention in the debate. Each debate has its own page but there is also a debate page, where are shown debates the user follows, those recently consulted, the most popular ones … We call discussion private debates (where the only readers are the writers), with a few people and an exhaustive list of writers. We can discuss with a friend who is online (or not). Discussions can be by drawing or webcam. We can choose to disable some profiles to discuss with us (it is by default the case for blocked profiles).

The documents The documents are from three types: collaborative texts (ie. Wiki), petitions or normal documents. Documents and debates are indeed two variants of the same structure : the written ; they differ only because documents have only one writer (except for wikis which are particular), and no comment. When the document is not a text, it ’s a declaration consisting in a link to the file, open inside the window of l ’@gora. Anyone can react to a debate or to a document even if he is not an authorized writer (we say that authorized users speak in whereas others react ). On each debate or document, we can display the reactions to this written, which has the form of a debate (reactions are nested: we can react to a reaction) but by default, reactions are not displayed and don ’t cause notifications – contrarily to interventions. The petitions Petitions are in practice documents addressed by open letter to a profile or a group. We can support a petition (as we can for any document). The polls Each poll has its page but there is also a polls page, where are displayed different sections: the polls the user hasn ’t answered yet, those the user has create d, those he already answered, the most popular ones … The page also links to the polls parameters (which sections are displayed, activation or not of the option every … min a poll appears on the screen or of the option the opening of l ’@gora is on a poll ) and to a tool of statistical treatment. Each poll has: - An author (profile or group) who decides who can answer and consult the poll - Answers with confidentiality (decided firstly by the author, after by the respondent). If the confidentiality defined by the author allows it, the answer is saved but anonymously. The followings and news Each profile can follow a profile, a group, a debate, an intervention in a debate, reactions of a written, a poll or a project. If the user follows a content, the news of this content will appear in the newsfeed. The general newsfeed is customizable (the user has the choice to be notified to this or that type of news), and each following is customizable too: the following can be complete (with systematical notifications) or partial (without notifications and/or on only specific news such as the profile has just published a new document or this person has spoken in a debate or this group has published in this specific domain ). The followings page is thus nothing else that the parameters page for the newsfeed. The news are by default unread data. They include news in followings and, according to the user ’s choice a dose of news verifying a chosen statistic ( very popular , a mean note superior to 4/5 , more than 35000 supports in the right-wing parties , etc.). The user decides if the overflew news are considered as read (default choice) or not, and if the unread news should appear or not. The user chooses how to order the news (by number of supports, level of the mean note, or any statistic on a sort).