The Direct Democracy Forum is a platform for citizens to engage in political discussion and debate, and to find up-to-date information on political issues and legislation. It is not affiliated with any political party or organisation, and is currently self-funded by its creator.
Visit Bills before Parliament to peruse forums for each of the current bills before parliament. Each forum will give lots of information and resources about the bill, and arguments for and against. Once you have read this, you can rate the bill yourself, and/or engage in debate in the comments section. Once you earn enough reputation, you can help edit the user-curated sections of the forum.
Visit Policy Questions to peruse forums on policy ideas contributed by users of this site. Each "Policy Question", as they're called, is either a "Yes-No" question or a "Quantitative" question on a specific policy idea. As with the bill forums, each policy question will be accompanied by user-curated information and resources, as well as arguments for different positions. Once you have read these, you can answer the question, and/or engage in debate in the comments section. Once you earn enough reputation, you can help edit an existing policy question or create a new one.
Code of Conduct
The primary goal of this site is to promote intelligent discussion about government policy. It is not a place for vulgar, derogatory or abusive language, or for ranting and raving. Comments and policy questions will be deleted, and bill edits removed, if they are clearly out of step with this basic ethos. Debate on the Direct Democracy Forum can be spirited, indignant — even emotive — but it must always be buttressed by a foundation of reason and evidence. Any contribution to a policy question or bill must follow relevant guidelines; arguments must follow the argument guidelines.
In addition to potential removal of contributions that violate this code of conduct, such violations will result in immediate consequences to a user's "reputation" (see the next section) and, from there, potential cancellation of the user's account.
Reputation System
This website operates on a reputation system, whereby certain "actions" are only made available to a user after they have done sufficient good works on the site. Ths system is chiefly inspired by the Stack Exchange Websites where it seems to produce very positive effects in promoting expert opinion and civil engagement.
The basic concept is simple: every time you receive feedback from the community (or a moderator), you gain or lose a "reputation point". Certain actions require a certain threshold of total lifetime reputation points.
Points Scheme
1 point for:
Each upvote received on a forum comment.
-1 point for:
Each downvote received on a forum comment.
-200 points for:
Having a comment deleted for violating the site code of conduct.
Coming soon: a point scoring system for edit activity.
Outcomes
20 total points unlocks:
Editing user-curated fields on bill forums
Editing user-curated fields on policy question forums
50 total points unlocks:
Creating a new policy question
100 total points unlocks:
Deleting a comment that violates the code of conduct
Deleting a policy question that violates the code of conduct