Contents

• Introduction
• Purpose
• Core concepts
• Frequently asked questions
• Source code
• Code of conduct
• Moderation information
• Useful guidelines
• Helpful links

introduction

Crowd Discusses Alternatives aims to more organized discussions that help users:

• Discuss with each other based on valid information.
• Find more alternative solutions.
• Distinguish the most popular solutions.

Purpose

Discussions in forums usually tend to have the following drawbacks:

• The discussions often have no conclusion (occasionally tend to become off topic).
• The few proposed solutions are buried inside the comments and cannot be easily found.
• Each proposed solution is usually written in detail by only one person and the users of the forum have the only option to agree or disagree with it (i.e. typically forums do not have the tools to help the users cooperate in order to improve the solutions).

Crowd Discusses Alternatives aims to solve these problems by focusing on the concepts below:

• Each proposed solution is decomposed in a set of “proposals” (each one of the width of roughly a sentence). The composition of another alternative solution can now be formed by grouping another set of proposals (from this pool of the proposals). This can help people who disagree, to find alternative solutions, evaluate them and finally consent.
• Each new proposal is easily distinguished from its comments (i.e. from the discussion that follows the proposal).
• The users can evaluate the quality of the references/sources that follow each proposal (i.e. validate the available information that the alternative solutions are based on).

Core concepts

Crowd Discusses Alternatives is an open-source online application that helps people discuss with each other, construct alternative solutions and distinguish the most popular. The core concepts (goals) of this application are the following:

• The application helps the team-members that are involved in a topic to well-define the subject of the discussion. The goals of the subject are clear and time-framed.
• The proposals are clearly distinguished from the comments.
• Team-members are able to group proposals in order to form alternative solutions.
• Team-members are able to insert references and evaluate them concerning their accuracy and importance.
• The application has powerful search tools that give users the ability to find specific comments, proposals or groups.
• The application has the tools that help team-members evaluate proposals and groups of proposals.
• Proposals and groups of proposals can be ranked by popularity.

Frequently asked questions

1. What is the difference between Crowd Discusses Alternatives application and other voting systems?

Crowd Discusses Alternatives does not try to distinguish the best solution of a problem (that is represented in a topic) from all the other solutions. On the contrary, it helps the users to find a collection of alternative solutions, and it clearly represents their advantages/disadvantages and their popularity.

The users do not just vote for or against a solution. They participate on the construction of the solutions. They insert proposals based on the sources/information that they have gathered. These proposals are the “bricks” for the collective construction of each solution.

Each solution might resemble of a bulleted list of the most fundamental concepts, or the most important decisions that will solve the problem. This might be necessary in order many people to be able to cooperate. If more details are needed, they can be placed as a question in another topic.

2. Why isn't there a feature for likes/dislikes in comments, in order to indicate who agrees or disagrees with each one?

Please note that in this application, the users are not able to like a comment (this has been done on purpose). Usually, when there are likes on comments, people tend to read mostly the most liked ones. When there are not, each comment has almost equal chance to be read by someone, thus probably some members of the topic will read it and they might continue the discussion.

Source code

You can find the source code of "Crowd Discusses Alternatives" in the following repository:
Repository of source code.

"Crowd Discusses Alternatives" is a free software under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
GNU licenses.

Code of conduct

Please respect the following rules when using this website:

• No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
• Content or interactions which harass in any way are not allowed.
• No racism, homophobia, xenophobia, casteism, or violent nationalism. No Holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism.
• This platform is not for pornography.
• Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
• Respect the licences of the creators when you share content.

Moderation information

If you become aware of some content in this website (text or link) that violates the code of conduct, you can send a notification via a private message to the admin of Crowd Discusses Alternatives. In the future, I am tending to add some features in this website in order the whole community of its users, to be able to help moderating its content, by reporting inappropriate content, and maybe by voting if it should become temporarily hidden from the search results due to violations of the code of conduct. The aim is, this community to be involved in the moderation of the content in order sounder decisions to be taken for this matter via creating an open and safe environment for discussions. The administrator can still temporarily hide or permanently delete content that violates the above code of conduct.

Please also note that this website is intended for public content only. There are no privacy guarantees (not even in private messages).

Useful guidelines

Please keep in mind the guidelines bellow, when you participate in discussions:

• Always be polite.
• Do not characterize other people. Just write down the pros and cons of their suggestions (from your point of view).
• If the conversation gets hot, try to be calmer when you respond, than the rest of the participants, in order to reduce the heat.
• Try to be on point of what you want to say. Stay focused on the subject of the discussion.

Helpful links

You can read about how you can use this web application in the following pdf (there are plenty of snapshots that demonstrate its user interface):
Crowd Discusses Alternatives V2_1_2.pdf.

Alternatively, you can watch the following video:
"Crowd Discusses Alternatives" open-source web-app . Explanation of its basic features.

An enhanced voting system for groups was implemented in 2024. For more information you can read:
Proposal of an adequately secure low-stakes voting system.pdf.