InstaGov/syntax

Displaying Lists

• answers:
  • <igov list=answers name=igov target="name of question" vpage=output var name >w3tpl code to display each result</igov>

Voting

<igov type=vote>attribute being voted on</igov>

• show vote status for this item, and accept votes from qualified users
• parameters:
  • text or tag contents: text describing what attribute is being voted on (quality of writing, quality of argument, agree with conclusion, belongs in category, importance, etc.)
• display format will be fixed at first, later based on templates from which user can choose in preferences
• default display format should show:
  • your vote
  • sum of all votes (including yours)
    • later: weighted sum based on credibility ratings
    • later: how your proxies voted
    • later: list of individual votes
    • later: voting history for this item

The rigorous way to do this would be for vote to be tied to a particular revision of a page. I am hoping that community monitoring will turn out to be more effective at preventing malicious topic-modification than revision control would be -- e.g. users can vote on whether an edit reflects a significant change to a page's meaning, and whether it should have been posted as a separate page. That will also take some development, but won't be as much of a usability obstacle as making everyone vote again every time there's a minor tweak to an answer's content.

In any case, I'm taking the approach of developing the simplest system that's usable, but trying to anticipate problems and having ideas fleshed out for dealing with them if they happen.