Wiki-model for eliciting strategic responses to urgent issues

Enabling Collective Intelligence in Response to Emergencies (Part #7)

There is no lack of "best practice" databases in response to known issues. The concern in the above argument is with unforeseen issues and disasters for which there is inadequate experience and much learning must take place "on-the-fly" and with the least possible delay. The related concern is with anticipatory profiling of problems and solutions -- exemplified in part by the activities of whistleblowers and those warning of crises to come -- however this information is deprecated from a perspective of "business as usual". The challenge is one of developing databases that include information because it may prove to be relevant -- namely respectful of the Precautionary Principle.

A valuable summary is provided by Vita Lanfranchi and Neil Ireson (User Requirements for a Collective Intelligence Emergency Response System, ACM, 2004). This is based on the European project WeKnowIt, aimed at designing, implementing and delivering technologies and methodologies enabling both Emergency Response organization, personnel and community citizens to participate in the monitoring of an emergency incident. A subsequent study, funded within the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 [see project description], was undertaken by Vassilios Solachidis, Phivos Mylonas, et al. (Collective Intelligence Generation from User Contributed Content, 2009; WeKnowIt: Emerging, Collective Intelligence for personal, organisational and social use, 2009).

As noted above, this argument emerges from the development over a period of years of the online Global Strategies Project. In conjunction with the associated online World Problems Project, its later development had been funded by the European Commission with a focus on biodiversity: Ecolynx: Information Context for Biodiversity Conservation (1997-2000). Biodiversity is now the focus of the UN International Year of Biodiversity (2010). The interlinked databases of the Global Strategies Project and the World Problems Project were positively evaluated for funding by the World Bank: Interactive Conceptual Environmental Planning Tool for Developing Countries (INTERCEPT): approved for funding through the World Bank's InfoDev program (submitted 25 March 1998; approved 2 June 1999; removed from proposal pool March 2000).

More recently on the site of the State of the World Forum, a case is made at some length for a Global Solutions for Global Challenges: a proposed International Consultation and Global Solutions Wiki. The potential of any such initiative is discussed separately in the light of the experience with existing online initiative (Global Solutions Wiki, 2009).

Clearly, given the subsequent success of Wikipedia, and given the rapid profiling of individual crises ("problems"), like the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the "missing link" is the systematic indication in such Wikipedia entries of collection points for remedial suggestions -- such as the Deepwater Horizon Response; the official site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.

But, as the quotations above indicate, the 7,000 suggestions (and rising) are now subject to a non-transparent process totally at variance with the Wiki policy. Those submitting suggestions cannot view others made, make comment critically on their defects, improve the argument, reconcile duplicate texts, etc -- as in the well-developed, and much admired, Wiki process. There is every possibility that an additional constraint is that many of the authors, or a significant proportion, would like their suggestions regarding oil spill containment to be confidential, possibly in the hope of deriving financial benefit from them through the "intellectual property" they might be considered to represent.

Any suggestions database designed to gather insights rapidly is clearly faced with processing capacity challenges -- reducing the backlog. In addition to automatic indexing, extensive use could be made of text/concept analysis and mapping software. A notable example of this is Leximancer (see illustrative gallery), as discussed with respect to Mapping the climate change context of Copenhagen (Insights for the Future from the Change of Climate in Copenhagen, 2010). This can also be used for the automated generation of reports, presumably to the point of providing a preliminary identification of vital links between many proposals.

There is however an additional challenge to the Wiki process which is already evident in the handling of biographical entries of living persons. Many of the issues are discussed in a case study (Abusive Wikipedia Biographical Editorial Process: a case study in problematic alternative forms of governance? 2007). With respect to remedial suggestions, the question is whether the Wiki process can constrain the dynamics of voluntary editors potentially biased in favour or against the framing of problems and their solutions. This became dramatically evident in the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 2009), given notable focus by the "climategate" e-mail hacking crisis, when it emerged that a senior Wikipedia editor had been manipulating the content of 5,428 climate articles such as to undermine the objectivity of entries on anthropogenic global warming and on the Climategate incident itself (Lawrence Solomon, Wikipedia's climate doctor, Financial Post, 19 December 2009; James Delingpole. Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia. The Telegraph, 22 December 2009). The entry on Lawrence Solomon in Wikipedia refers to his criticism of Wikipedia.

The concern is therefore with how to develop a collective intelligence facility that enables people to check out ideas currently under discussion "on the table" -- as well as those that have somehow "fallen off the table", or been "designed off the table" by agenda-setting game-playing. Controversial issues subject to the latter processes are those relating to territorial disputes (most notably Jerusalem) and anything associated with constraints on population growth.

Of related interest is the ability for people to note explicit relationships between proposals still on the table, those that have been rejected, and those which have emerged as preferable or more relevant for cost or other reasons. This would offer a means of moving beyond a flat rejection and indicating why some other proposal had been preferred. People could then enrich the pattern of links or position their own preferred suggestions in relation to that network.

The Gulf of Mexico oilspill has resulted -- after significant delay -- in the creation of multiple solution suggestion schemes, from those named to many associated with other media. A key issue in terms of "collective" intelligence gathering, under conditions of emergency, is the extent to which suggestions gathered within different facilities are juxtaposed and interrelated, rather than being isolated from each other. A related concern is the assumption in each case that valuable ideas -- whether they coalesce with complementary insights or not -- will be rapidly channelled to where they can be reviewed and acted upon. This is of course a well-nourished illusion.