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LiquidFeedback

LiquidFeedback
Liquid Feedback Screenshot.png
Developer(s) Public Software Group
Written in Lua, PL/pgSQL
License MIT License
Website www.liquidfeedback.org

LiquidFeedback (abbreviated lqfb) is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system ("liquid democracy") which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants.

LiquidFeedback helps groups (such as societies or organizations, political or not) make decisions, without the limitations of a traditional Internet forum. It aims to create an accurate representation of the opinions held by the members of the group without them being distorted by social hierarchies and knowledge disparities. Each individual is encouraged to further their own initiatives within the limitations set by the operators.

The proxy voting feature creates power structures similar to representative democracy, even though delegations can be withdrawn at any time. This is necessary to produce results that reflect the mood of the majority, even when they don't find the time to participate in person, in order to avoid the domination of the extroverts, which is the problem that regularly arises with grassroots democracy.

The proposition development process can be summarized as follows:

To allow different values for timings and supporter quorums, and to allow the possibility of supermajority requirements for certain decisions, LiquidFeedback allows its users to have so-called “policies” for different kinds of decisions. The results can be used for information, suggestion, directive, or as binding decisions depending on the organizational needs and the national legislation.

LiquidFeedback was co-written by Andreas Nitsche, Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner and Bjoern Swierczek. The software incorporates the concepts of Liquid Democracy, Proposition development process, Preferential voting or the Schulze method, and Interactive Democracy into the operation of the software. The software was first published in October 2009 by Public Software Group e. V. after being suggested by some members of Germany's Pirate Party unsatisfied with conventional means of political opinion formation. Despite this affiliation, its developers are fully independent from the users of the software and they allow the software's usage by other parties and organizations. The first stable version of its back end was released in April 2010.


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