This platform, I am afraid, has some challenges.....
Dear Mr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta (& Mr. Sachin Taparia),
Barely a week on this community & I am already a little unsure if this platform can live up to the promise of generating actionable ideas to be provided as an input to the PM.
Why am I cynical within seven days? - I'm so for the following reasons;
1. Way too many new topics/ resources getting posted - this'll impact the member engagement as their attention is bound to get diluted by all the new diversions (topics)
2. Very high level of repetition of Ideas (by way of comments..) - This happens since there is a deluge of comments that brings down the visibility of each comment posted drastically which I'd guess is ~2-3 views per comment at the best. I hence could end up typing my entire input even if 50 or 500 others before me have said the exact same - THIS is NOT at all a good use of members time nor the editors of TINM, assuming they go through all comments diligently!!..
3. No system to highlight key discussions or key comments - this means every new resource/ topic posted will kill the engagement of the previous topic despite its relatively higher criticality
4. Common dump for both discussions & documents? - I have not thoroughly checked yet, but it appears that If Mr. Gupta prepares a document to be submitted to a certain ministry, even that will be uploaded as a resource since there is no other separate section to upload it say something that says "Draft White Papers"... This means I can easily miss out my pet topic even if it came to conclusion of being submitted as a letter/ white paper.
I have a few quick suggestions to improve the situation;
a) LocalCircles engineers really need to make this a better discussions platform akin to Linkedin Groups, Groupsites et al & their priority should be to start with the highlighting features i spoke of in my point 3 above
b) Introduce a survey, poll format wherein the likes of Mr. Gupta lists a set of actionable points which members will vote against - so that by the end of the survey/ poll campaign there is a collective priority list of actions - this should also have a feature for members to include options that aren't listed.
c) Many others...
For any initiative as ambitious as this to be successful, it is pertinent the platform itself is designed in a efficient fashion so that the outcome is clear & unambiguous & thus the quality of engagement remains consistently high.
I Hope you take this critique of mine in the right spirit and improve the quality, efficiency of member engagement here - It's in the best interest of India that this amazing collective exercise shouldn't end up a mere formality of generating engagement without an eye on impact of all the citizen participation.
Best,
Murali more
Barely a week on this community & I am already a little unsure if this platform can live up to the promise of generating actionable ideas to be provided as an input to the PM.
Why am I cynical within seven days? - I'm so for the following reasons;
1. Way too many new topics/ resources getting posted - this'll impact the member engagement as their attention is bound to get diluted by all the new diversions (topics)
2. Very high level of repetition of Ideas (by way of comments..) - This happens since there is a deluge of comments that brings down the visibility of each comment posted drastically which I'd guess is ~2-3 views per comment at the best. I hence could end up typing my entire input even if 50 or 500 others before me have said the exact same - THIS is NOT at all a good use of members time nor the editors of TINM, assuming they go through all comments diligently!!..
3. No system to highlight key discussions or key comments - this means every new resource/ topic posted will kill the engagement of the previous topic despite its relatively higher criticality
4. Common dump for both discussions & documents? - I have not thoroughly checked yet, but it appears that If Mr. Gupta prepares a document to be submitted to a certain ministry, even that will be uploaded as a resource since there is no other separate section to upload it say something that says "Draft White Papers"... This means I can easily miss out my pet topic even if it came to conclusion of being submitted as a letter/ white paper.
I have a few quick suggestions to improve the situation;
a) LocalCircles engineers really need to make this a better discussions platform akin to Linkedin Groups, Groupsites et al & their priority should be to start with the highlighting features i spoke of in my point 3 above
b) Introduce a survey, poll format wherein the likes of Mr. Gupta lists a set of actionable points which members will vote against - so that by the end of the survey/ poll campaign there is a collective priority list of actions - this should also have a feature for members to include options that aren't listed.
c) Many others...
For any initiative as ambitious as this to be successful, it is pertinent the platform itself is designed in a efficient fashion so that the outcome is clear & unambiguous & thus the quality of engagement remains consistently high.
I Hope you take this critique of mine in the right spirit and improve the quality, efficiency of member engagement here - It's in the best interest of India that this amazing collective exercise shouldn't end up a mere formality of generating engagement without an eye on impact of all the citizen participation.
Best,
Murali more
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Now I am starting to agree more with Sri. Murali Apparaju that this may be a futile exercise. First, there seems to be sort of groupism in that only the 'resources' put up by some are commented upon by members, while others attract few comments. Second, suggestions from members for inclusion of topics are not taken up as resources for discussion, like for example, my suggestion for inclusion of the topic 'Agriculture' and 'irrigation', which I feel affects the livelihood of a vast majority of our people. Third, the white papers prepared must be posted in the forum for 'vetting' by the members before the final draft is prepared, which I feel is not done. Hope the moderators/promoters of this forum do something about this, before the 'feeling' spreads. more
Jul 16
Nothing can be achieved after a long discussion, only what we will get is a waste. If not convinced you just evaluate foreign countries with India. What to look at is whether any policy is right or wrong.There will be two side discussion for a crime also which itself prove nothing. more
Jul 08
I agree with Mr. Murali. It is very difficult to read all comments posted and make sure that nothing is repeated. If a 'string' is long, with a lot of comments from many, it means that that the subject of the string has attracted a lot of people. It will be a very difficult thing to 'remove' repetitive posts, at the same time keeping the enthusiasm of the members of the forum in tact. The moderators must find some way out. But discussion of different topics at the same time can be allowed, as experts in one specialized area say Finance or Law, can go to the topic of their interest and post their resources and comments. But the amount of topics discussed can be restricted to say 6 or 10 at the most. Each must have a separate link at the right corner of the web page like 'ARTICLE 370 CHARCHA' etc. Now all development topics are grouped under 'TRANSFORM INDIA UNDER NARENDRA MODI'--- this can further sub-divided into different sub-groups like Improvements in Railways, Womens' security, child and women's welfare, Agriculture, Water supply and Irrigation etc. Can this be done in the near future and all discussions moved to them for easy access? more
Jul 08
True Shashidhar... I'm encouraged though that I have (already..) received a response from the LocalCircles-support on my feature suggestions wherein they confessed that as a governance platform this needs some more work & that they are going to launch them soon (polls feature, pinning of key posts et al) From the impact angle, TINM should come up with some fair & structured means of limiting engagement without killing the member enthusiasm - this is critical to ensure quality of opinion generated & for proper prioritization of issues being discussed. I hope & wish data-mining & big-data analytics tools wouldn't be necessary to separate wheat from the chaff anytime on this group and that the citizen consensus will evolve sans noise once these checks & measures are in place. more
Jul 08
Precisely, when thousand people discuss on certain matters with little control and broader navigation, it is a NOISE which is being generated. I am sure both Sh R P Gupta and LocalCircles Team would have some "Big Data Analytics" tool to derive inferences out of such NOISE. These tools convert unorganized data ( conversations) into meaningful statements based on select keywords ( topics). However, until the system matures, there could be some loss of genuine conversations here and there. more
Jul 08
