 Welcome to the hack AF channel today under the title patching democracy and today we're talking about the era of digitalization as well as about the understanding of the more enormous importance of digital tools in both private and public life Because like we needed to reduce the world's complexity to an amount that we can actually handle This is something that is very important for example in democracies Especially when talking about decision-making Like for example the voting advice application that we have in germany the valo mat Is a very good example of making parties comparable to like common people all over the place But those machines are like those valo mats are very expensive and thus they are only available for like larger elections and This is a problem that is actually Handable. This is what till sander does with his voting advice application that is called With his open election compass He actually was approached by the small city of lüdenscheid to Develop something that could actually do something that the valo mat also does and when he found out that This is actually something that needs to be provided also for smaller elections and that is actually affordable He he is actually a web designer Decided to do it in a bigger in a bigger way So he wanted to make it an open source and thus created his platform that he now talks about in his lecture that we Provide to you right now you can also ask questions that will be Yeah answered in the following Q&A in on twitter as well as on the IRC under the hashtag rc3 hack and The channel tech rc3 dash hack now enjoy the talk Welcome to patching democracy This is a short introduction to applications like the german valo mat and why we might not need to hack democracy In this talk, I will demonstrate how we can improve elections and political education everywhere Thanks to free and open source software Researchers of the friedrich ebert foundation found that only a third of the population believes in the brighter future Less than half of our society is satisfied with how our democracy works In parts of germany this drops even further to about a third Even worse three out of four germans feel like politicians don't care about their concerns and lastly Many people even agree that it doesn't make a difference Which parties form the government studies like these question the state or democracy as in Is our democracy broken Let's take a look at some other results of the same study Only 1.3% want an authoritative figure with extensive powers to make the law With the rise of the extreme right. This is a good thing Why 88% of us think that politicians make more promises than they can keep The majority acknowledges that politicians do have a difficult job And out of several problems a great majority identified a lack of participation in elections as the biggest problem Our democracy generally fails to make everyone happy and to be fair That's somewhat the point But why many people have issues with our democracy? They also seem to believe that it is still the way to go Democracy is not broken It is just our implementation of it that is experiencing technical difficulties Hi, my name is still and i'm here to fix this Not alone, of course, but i'm happy to be, you know A small aren't just doing what he knows best And I like all those numbers might suggest I'm not even a political scientist I am in fact a designer and web developer And as such what I enjoy most is the challenge of making complex concepts easily accessible Preferably with beautiful user interfaces I'd like to first introduce you to the idea and short history of voting advice applications We will then dig in a little deeper and establish important principles that make vAA successful There's also going to be a little hands-on with the FOSS project I have developed in the last year Once I've shown you the tools, I'll talk about how you can run your own election compass And what to consider when doing so And off we go Our story begins in the Netherlands In 1989 the Dutch Citizenship Foundation the documentation center of Dutch political parties And the faculty of political management of the University of Trenten Start a collaboration to develop the STEM visor A booklet containing 60 statements found in the programs of political parties And the discount Well, it's 1989 The idea proves popular and evolves to the first internet election compass for the Dutch parliamentary elections in 1998 Although the project can only attract six and a half thousand voters Subsequent implementations in 2002 and three Attract about two million voters which quickly become five million voters In 2006 which is about a third of the entire Dutch population Success began spreading to other countries The first election compass I myself ever came across Was the German Valomad Based on the STEM visor itself The federal agency for civic education, the BPB Released the first Valomad in 2002 It's fair to say that the VAA concept is now well established in Germany and other countries Usage in Germany has increased to 33 percent of cast votes in 2017 Think about that for a moment One in three voters has used the Valomad at some point before going to the ballot As software projects of the German government go this might well be the most successful yet Lovely serve you consider the costs of some spectacular failures in the past So what did the first voting advice applications actually look like? Let's take a look at the first Valomad from nearly two decades ago The internet was quite different back in those days Many user interface patterns were yet to be discovered or refined and users were less experienced On a side note technically this website from 18 years ago still runs perfectly fine in a modern day browser Web technologies are amazing Anyway, despite these slight difficulties and the Valomad being a new concept. There are very few instructions This is because the core concept was and still is incredibly simple You are presented with a sequence of statements or a thesis You can choose to approve reject or remain neutral to a thesis If you don't really understand the meaning or the issue behind it, you can also skip a thesis After about 30 statements, you can choose categories that are more important to you. So they are counting double The political parties or candidates answer the same thesis At the end your answers are compared to those of the parties showing you potential matches Fast forward to today The idea is about 30 years old now In this time it spread not only to Germany, but also to Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Sweden Austria, Switzerland And many other countries continents even The teams behind STEMWISE are inspired most European countries and others around the world Let's talk about VAAs in more depth What are they actually good for? Why do people use them? How do their mechanisms work? And does their popularity make them dangerous? So what do we actually want to achieve? What is the purpose of voting advice applications? Since their inception the target group are actually young, even first-time voters I guess the reasoning behind this is that the older people get the more experienced they are with the political landscape Or at least they should be The term voting advice application suggests that the purpose is to advise users on who to vote for Now I must say I've been struggling with this name I find it counter-intuitive because from what I've seen This is actually not the purpose of these projects And that's good because imagine for a second what this would mean Many VAAs are designed and controlled by government agencies So Who would want to live in a democracy where the government gives you advice on who to vote for in the election? So although it is calling it's called a voting advice application The Valomad does not actually want to give you advice It's even written there on the very first page right above the start button The Valomad is not a voting advice But an offer of information about elections and politics I found this disclaimer in every VA I have come across so far Okay, so the purpose of VAAs is Despite their name Not to give voting advice good except They kind of do Don't they We don't give you any advice. Well, we do but don't take our word for it We've warned you not to take this as an advice now go ahead and get not an advice Maybe it's just me But I think this is quite German VAAs have a positive impact on political education This might be the main aspect they have originally been designed for VAAs want to have a positive impact on political education As I understand it this topic sadly needs more research But with the research done so far, we can assume that this is indeed the case It appears to be uncertain to what extent exactly and this will also depend on the individual VA But there is a positive impact VAAs do not improve the knowledge about political structures Like how the ballot works or the allotment of seats and parliament works, etc But they can improve knowledge about the policy issues what the upcoming election is about What parties there are and where the parties stand VAAs also lead to discussions about these issues and parties which can also improve political knowledge in peer groups So as far as we know today, this claim is true And it is an important benefit of election compasses or VAAs Because as research shows most people in Germany are able to place parties on the spectrum of left and right correctly But at the same time many people are unable to place parties correctly when it comes to policy issues So missing political knowledge and misinformation can actually lead to people voting against their own interests VAAs promote electoral participation What makes people vote? To answer this question we can take a look at the reasons why some people don't And one of the main reasons why some people don't vote is because they don't feel like their position is reflected By any of the existing parties Our political system is complex and our political landscape our parties and their programs doubly so People that have a better understanding and more knowledge of the choices They have a more likely to cast a vote Just imagine you are helping a friend who has no clue about computers decide on a graphics card They either get confused as hell very quickly Or they'll be like, well, I don't know. Do I even need one? My laptop runs fine and it doesn't have one. Can we get pizza now? You see being able to make an informed decision can make a huge difference And VAAs can help with that And research tells us that VAA users can be two to twelve percent more likely to go to ballot The last important background topic I would like to touch on is the matching algorithm These algorithms are still subject to debate and some are frequently criticized I'll spare you the history and instead we'll jump right in because one This topic deserves a talk of its own and two that talk should not be held by me But I'll share with you what I know The matching algorithm is responsible for calculating your result After you answered all the all the theses Your answers are compared to those of the parties The parties get more points the more you agree with them Sounds simple But how do you calculate this exactly? Say we have an agreement scale of 10 to minus 10 I reply to a given thesis with an agreement of three Party a is even more into this and goes for nine Party b is not a fan of this thesis and answers with minus three How many points will party a and b get for this thesis? There are two approaches to this The first has been coined the proximity model and as the term suggests it focuses on the distance between two points In this case party a and party b Are in the same distance to my answer so they will get the same amount of points Seems logical at first, but is this really the best approach to this? I might not fully agree with party a but I am on the same side Whereas party b is on the other side Wouldn't it be safe to assume that party a is a better match for me? Well Probably yes The idea is called the directional model It was more points if the voter and the party go in the same direction In our scenario party a will receive more points than party b because it is on the same side as I am Following these models one can easily create a matching algorithm While not all VA's make their algorithms public There are a few well-known ones The first is the famous city block algorithm It belongs to the proximity model and is still used by the Valomad I buy it with only three options which has been criticized in the past In this chart you can see the user's answer in the rows and the party's answer in the columns In the cell where they meet you find the score for this thesis For example, if I choose to strongly approve the thesis I'm in the first row if the party agrees on that We meet in the first cell and the party gets the maximum score of one for this thesis If the party however rejects the thesis First row fourth column It will only get a score of minus five You see the city block algorithm strictly follows the proximity model The closer user and party become The higher the score The classic example of the directional model is the scalar algorithm The direction or side is far more important here and the party cannot receive The positive score as long as it is on the other side of the user's opinion Note also that this must mean that if either the user or the party choose a neutral position The score will always be zero So while both algorithms have their strengths Our goal is to find a model that's prediction is as close as possible To what the user votes for in the end And there's another group of algorithms that tend to yield better results I'm talking about hybrid algorithms that try to combine the approaches of the proximity and directional model As you can see proximity as well as direction play a role in the scoring Looking at the colors you can see that this now looks a bit like the first algorithm the city block algorithm But the green line fades a little in the center This is the influence of the scalar algorithm focusing on the direction So which one is best? I'm afraid we don't know for sure As always data will tell It also depends on your intentions and design choices What we do know is that algorithms based on the proximity model tend to favor temperate parties While those based on the directional model gently pushes users to the extreme ends Considering this hybrid algorithms should yield more balanced results We must not forget though that at the end of the day They're still only models So don't expect any of them to be incredibly accurate The open election compass is a free and open source software with a simple mission Making voting advice applications available to every election to support political education and democracy everywhere Running your own election compass can be a costly endeavor No more with the open election compass. We have a system that is free transparent user friendly and accessible Unlike agencies who only run an election compass every few years The project like this can focus on continuous improvement But enough promises let's take a look at the features The open election compass was designed to be easy to use and accessible The design is minimalistic So users are not distracted Unlike solutions like the valumad It makes use of the available screen size with big pcs and buttons Clear color coding provides visual feedback and as you can see The navigation is not based on previous next buttons But scrolling This is quicker and far more intuitive Especially on mobile devices To make this experience even smoother a big friendly green button helps guide the user through the entire process Whenever it's time to move on it just pops up ready to take you to the next step The open election compass is the first vaa software to pioneer this navigation concept With great success i might add Everything you're seeing here is also screen reader and keyboard friendly These things get easily overlooked, but as I said Being a continuous project we can focus on important details like these After we have finished the theses we are guided to the selection of the parties Notice that unlike most vaas There's no additional step here where we would be asked to select some theses that are more important to us This is another way open election compass is improving and speeding up the process We're removing the cognitive overhead of going through all these theses again Instead you can mark theses as important right while you're answering Usability wise this makes a lot more sense But back to the parties We simply select the parties we would like to compare Again keyboard and screen reader friendly and proceed to the results Here we have the classic percentage based result view With most vaas this is pretty much it Usually you can go into the theses one by one and see the statements of the parties But I believe this is the most important part and should not be hidden away Showing these statements should be the default So I made it the default When we scroll further we can read the answers of all selected parties in an easy color coded chat like format And that's it A simple to use accessible beautiful state of the art and free voting advice application Now comes my favorite part How do you get all this content theses the parties the statements into the open election compass Well of course by using a big jason configuration file That's hardly exciting But you know what jason is simple But for a non programmer this is a pretty daunting task And even for programmers working with big jason files to manage content in multiple languages Is not something particularly fun Especially if it involves countless emails back and forth to incorporate small changes So guess what there's a tool for that Now everyone can read and write the jason configuration files using a friendly visual editor called the configuration editor It makes adding parties theses and statements a breeze Simply fill in the forms and download your ready to go configuration file It even supports adding every content in multiple languages and handles images for you There is 100% feature parity between the configuration files and the editor And while this is only the first step in making the creation of the ace more accessible It is a big step up from any other tool And there's more Let me introduce some of the smaller features that make the open election compass special I really want to make this technology accessible for everyone So I took the time to create a single file deployment solution That will fit the software your content and images all in a single html file Is that the most performing solution? No But let's be reasonable It's perfectly fine for a small town definitions These these must be short and precise Sometimes this makes it difficult for users to understand them because of words or abbreviations. They might not know To help with this you can easily provide small helpers Solid navigation as we have seen the one page design approach comes with lots of benefits To make sure no one gets annoyed by too much scrolling around An intelligent menu is always right at hand That and the big green button helps getting around in no time at all multilingual The open election compass has been multilingual since the very beginning And not just the interface no You can easily provide theses and answers everything in multiple languages Even though this is not a big issue in germany I was thinking about countries like switzerland where this can be essential really kiosk mode You can set up a terminal in a public place and put your election compass in kiosk mode This mode will ask users nicely to reset the application Once they are done or will do automatically after a period of inactivity Algorithms the open election compass has a flexible matching implementation that allows it to support different answer styles and algorithms Because we don't know what might be the best fit for you Privacy first statistics The open election compass now comes with an integrated tool to collect statistics in the privacy privacy first design Users can opt in to submit their answers anonymously for research They can also help to improve the quality of the dataset by answering more questions regarding their age, gender, education and more I know that this is a difficult topic. So i'm taking extra care to get this right We certainly don't want to become a privacy nightmare We want to help people support science in the most privacy caring way possible By now you'll probably want to get started building your own election compass Next up DIY There are a number of principles when creating a vaa written down in the losan declaration If you want to run your own election compass, I encourage you to read it. It's not even long Let's go over the most important points quickly In order to contribute sustainably to the good functioning of democracy The aas should be open transparent impartial and methodologically This is important because if you're not transparent, there's a good chance That some people or even parties try to deny your legitimacy or impartiality You should really follow the approach. We have nothing to fear because we have nothing to hide A vaa should be freely accessible to all citizens This is fairly obvious, but anyway Make sure that your vaa does not require any form of payment This could be the payroll of a media outlet you've partnered with for promotion But this could also be less obvious a mandatory collection of statistics And lastly keep in mind that there are probably more people with disabilities That then you might be aware of The open election compass helps you with that As it provides decent screen reader support and generally follows accessibility guidelines But you should also apply these design principles for any other content you might create around your vaa A vaa should aim at the inclusion of as many parties or candidates That are on the ballot as possible The criteria for the exclusion of parties and candidates should be publicly available and justified And also parties and candidates should not be excluded from the tour for ideological reasons I think this might be the most obvious rule But also the most important We want to help voters make informed choices. So we need as many parties to participate as possible This might at times be a little difficult when parties don't want to partake But more on that later Vaa's should be designed in a simple and intuitively understandable manner Open election compass This is the reason why the design of the open election compass is not fancy at all A bit boring even because I genuinely believe That it's how it's supposed to be Many designers observe that web interfaces are starting to look alike too much And there's some truth to that But this is mainly because we have established a number of patterns that just work and are well known to users So with the open election compass, I'm in fact building upon that If you want an interface that is usable by as many people as possible Boring is better than fancy This is not art This is design The Losan Declaration holds ourselves to a high standard But as the original author stated It is meant as a starting point for discussion There are a few points I would like to add Vaa's should collect user data only on an unobstructive opt-in basis You might want to collect user data such as visitor statistics answers and polls There are good reasons to do so But it should only ever happen with a clear opt-in solution Preferably near the end of the election compass A project like this should not appear greedy Vaa's should collect user data for science Not for profit The collected data should be made publicly available If you collect statistics in your Vaa, do it for science Let political scientists handle their methodology and interpretation Not some newspaper And after the election is done make the data you collected and if possible your research available for free Vaa's should collect user data in a way that is not possible that it is not possible To trace political opinions back to an individual If you do collect statistics make it impossible to connect answers to a name Not only for everyone else but for yourself If you want to collect contact information for further research save it separately from the user's answers Users trust the Vaa So be trustworthy Okay, so where to begin? I prepared instructions how to run your own election compass consisting of 10 phases Phase number one Preparing Organization planning and communication are paramount Before you do anything else make sure you're all on the same page Do you really want to run an election compass? Who is going to manage everything? This person doesn't have to and in fact shouldn't do everything alone But it is very beneficial to have a single person feeling responsible That everyone else completes their assignments on time Write down your own timeline Get a tool to organize your team like Kanban bot or H2M Phase number two Your team You should never run a Vaa all on your own Not just because it's an awful lot of work and responsibility and requires an extensive skill set But because it is nearly impossible to do it in a legitimate way You want to support the democratic process so get a team of experts advisors and supporters working together Start with a list of people This might include political scientists for advice and possibly in charge of the theses A marketing specialist managing your marketing channel social media email, etc A web developer with technical skills to get the election compass online A media designer Enthusiastic citizens people with good connections to the administration Newspapers and other institutions Someone with great language skills for wording and spelling Think of people that might fit into these positions and contact them Organize a kickoff meeting for your entire team to present your project the plan the structure the timeline Establish your organization tools and communication channel Get everyone to work gather to lose and assign them and set deadlines Phase number three the parties it is important to get the parties on board Normally one party alone has no choice but just but to participate You wouldn't want to be the only party missing But if multiple parties aren't interested you have a serious problem You should not run an election compass with some parties missing One or two small parties might be tolerable You can simply ask for a gathering and give them a rough idea what you are planning At this point it can be very helpful to belong to a reputable institution whose invitation cannot easily be refused Most of the time parties should welcome your idea, but be prepared for some persuading anyways Phase number four Preparing the workshop the theses for your election compass obviously cannot be written all by yourself They need to represent the society as a whole The choice of theses decides over the quality of your election compass You need to get this right Your theses need to cover the most important matters for the next legislature They need to be objective and impartial The wording of the theses has to be simply enough to be understood and to the point Take this task seriously. It is the most important and the most difficult To achieve theses of good quality you should run a workshop with a sample of your audience Gather a group of young probably first-time voters, but if you like you can also gather voters of all ages Make sure the group is Representable for your audience No gender race or religion should be excluded obviously Set a date and find a large enough room with the projector Send out invitations and gather replies Your group should have about 20 to 30 members Get the political programs of all participating parties With the help of your experts gather topics of political interest from the programs and newspapers And sort them into categories like social environment, work, traffic, infrastructure, energy, economy, finance, tax Security, you get the gist This is your workshop material Now plan the workshop Help your group of voters discover the topics and create the theses What methods are you going to use? Teachers can be very helpful here What materials will you need? Whiteboards, pens, paper, etc Phase number five The theses Use the topics and information you gathered to conduct your workshop with your team and your group of voters In this workshop you will create a number of theses Most selection compasses gather around 50 to even 100 theses for whole countries at this stage It will take you a few hours at least take care of your guests with you know pauses lunch snacks and coffee Collect all theses and a list and don't forget to work on the warning Now regarding the theses there are some simple rules and some more advanced rules The simple ones are these Can the theses the theses be easily understood by everyone are there words that not everyone Will know the open action compass can provide hints on those over for those Might the wording be biased Does the wording match your style? Is this a good length? You know these kind of some rules Now for the more advanced rules it can be quite hard to follow these but you should at least try or maybe get some help with these Advanced rule number one Theses should not be about ideological values, but actual political policies. The first statement is completely vague Voters cannot get any political knowledge from this because Ideologically they most likely already know where the party is standing What's even worse voters can interpret these theses very differently. So be concrete number two Theses should not be double-barreled It is very easy to accidentally Merge two theses and that makes them hard to answer Every theses should be about one policy and not mixed through or more policies In this example voters might be okay with soft, but not hard drugs So how are they supposed to answer the first statement? Focus your theses number three Theses should avoid quantifications At first this theses looks fine. It's clear and short But what if you don't think there should be more surveillance surveillance cameras? If I reject this statement, what does it mean? It could mean that i'm okay with the numbers of cameras or it could mean that i'm completely against them It's not clear and this makes it hard to match parties and voters It's often difficult to avoid to avoid quantification, but sometimes it can help to get down to the real issue And in case of my hometown This was that some people Um don't feel safe in public places at night Now it's more of a boolean question So try to go for these and number four Theses should avoid qualifications as well This is a bit like the third rule only this time We don't merge related theses But add more depth to a thesis by adding an example This was taken from the Valomad of 2002 And while it was meant to just be an example It makes it more difficult both for the voters as well as the matching algorithm Voters might support gay marriages But draw a line when it comes to adoption So What do they choose? In this case, it might be helpful to be more specific or even split this into two separate theses This brings us to phase number six the positions Now it's time to let the parties answer and position themselves First decide on the algorithm you want to calculate the matches with This will also determine how many possible answers there will be Send the theses to every party You'll want to use an online form or similar As the task of collecting all answers can get very tedious Make also sure to collect the logos in appropriate quality And give the parties two to three weeks to answer Depending on your timeline In the meantime, prepare to publish the election compass Contact media outlets and tell them about your story Contact them administration and ask them if they're willing to put up a link on their website Contact schools teachers youth organizations and spot clubs And ask them if they are willing to share some graphics and link With their followers once you're done Phase number seven Evaluating the answers You know have a lot of theses and even more answers The next step is to select the most important theses You can do this in another workshop or in your team Go through every thesis and decide whether it should become part of the election compass Ask yourselves, is this thesis controversial enough? Is it helpful in telling the parties apart? At this stage around 25 to 40 theses remain Too few and the results lose accuracy too many and it will take too long for the voters to process them Phase number eight time for a test But now you should have everything you need Let's run a test Feed your theses answers and logos to the configuration editor to create the configuration file Try it out give it to your team and the people that participated in the workshops Gather their feedback make small adjustments until everything is ready for the big day Phase number nine Going public About two to three weeks before the election you should publish your election compass Tell your web developer in advance and when the election compass is online Tell everyone And lastly phase number 10 Observe Everything is up and running good The only thing left to do now is get your election compass into as many hands as possible Be available for questions and feedback from the public and then wait for the election Don't forget about yourselves And when the election is over Archive the election compass you can delete it of course, but if you can just keep it online It can still be a valuable resource resource of transparency If you collected any data for research make sure to share it with the world And lastly, please give back to the open election compass give feedback write about it Or improve our funding and here we are Nearly done Undoubtedly there are many issues with democracy Its implementations are incredibly complex and nothing that comes out of it is ever perfect It can be frustratingly slow inefficient and transparent and even counterproductive But it's also the only form of government that the majority so far managed to agree upon And it's also the only form of government that is evolving continuously We are right to criticize the system when it appears to be moving in the wrong direction But we should not be tempted to hack our democracy Hacking the system would mean bending it to our will We don't want that and we don't need to We don't need to hack a system that has the inherent ability to change We can however try and fix the flaws And I believe voting advice applications are a way to start doing this A way of patching democracy Thank you Sorry, thank you so much to sander's not only for your lecture but also for the development of this like very useful tool, obviously And we still have some questions that our community post on our social media platforms And I would start with the first one like Who would be moderating the content in such apps like would it be peer moderated? Would it be state election agency or would it be something third like what kind of yeah moderation would that be That's that's a very important question actually So in germany with the valomad, um, that's made by by the bpb government agency And they developed it in a workshop Like the one that I described in the talk Together with young first-time voters Because that's that that's their target group But apart from that they obviously have, you know, political scientists people have been doing this for two decades now And If you want to do it yourself, you won't have access to these to these kind of resources So that's that that can be a problem And So far it worked well We did this in in munster cologne billofeld and zing and We had a team of political scientists who did this so they had all the expertise And yeah There's there's no no perfect answer for this. Um, not not anyone not everybody has these these resources Um Just try to to do it as good as you can and maybe get some contacts who can help you And um, we must not forget it's only For political education or for actual voting advice So it will never be perfect But um to a certain degree that's okay But there's a question that is kind of subsequently to the previous one. Um, like If this person is wondering, how do you or how do we make sure that the data is not corrupted? Like that it's not abused for a political promotion, for example, or Something like this like they refer to a big removing of twitter of 20k paid accounts That we did political propaganda In kinds of millions of tweets and those were from a couple of countries that could have discovered in april 2020 So how could one prevent this in a way? Or is it like the same that you Already stated concerning the first question Yeah Well, that's that's also um a problem. It hasn't proven to be a problem so far So as far as I know, um, there has been no case where this happened But it could obviously happen Um, and since my tool and a few other tools, um open source There's no way we can stop this But Actually, that's the case for for many projects out there not only in this field So many many open source projects can can be abused Um, just look at carl. I think the developer of carl is still not allowed to enter the united states Because they think he's a hacker The only thing we can really do is, um Educate people about this topic in general And also improve education on the aas Themselves so don't take them Um too serious And then maybe take which ones Not honest Yeah, this is actually a question that uh bothers or bugs um that uses a lot because another question is like How could we ensure that there is no bias? Um in the questions which like actually connects Like to the previous questions as well But they were wondering um, for example if the questions the topic are not evenly Distributed, which yeah, actually Tends to uh lead to some kind of bias In the questions, but like this is the same problem like with open source material. Obviously, isn't it? Yeah Um, yeah, that's that's a problem. Um, so in in minster This year, um, there was another election conference based on the open election conference Uh, and it was from the the bund jugend So they focused on environmental issues And it was a completely separate project. Um And uh, it wasn't even the first time they were doing this in the past. They did it with um, like friars and stuff um And I guess their election conference probably was biased Because it was part of their Campaign you could say I mean they're not the party but still um And I think what's most important is that um, it's transparent Who is who's doing this election conference? Um So in dream side it was a general youth organization not affiliated with any parties. Um Funded by the government. Um, and I think that's that's a different Stand really to do that um On the other hand The project in in winster Wasn't bad. It was biased. Yes Um, but that doesn't make it a bad project. Just people have to be aware of that And um, I hope we can tackle all these problems in the future with um, something that's more like platform as a service Um, maybe maybe we can build an institution around this. Um that can govern all these projects and moderate them a little bit, but Maybe that's just a trade-in. I don't know Okay, but another question that popped up that I find quite interesting as well is Why vais can successfully approximate a given user's political stand in comparison to the party's answers to the thesis? Um, I thought like the user thought a lot about another issue the missing knowledge on a thesis actual context Like they were wondering if you have an idea how to solve that with a similar technology driven tool or something like actually Yeah, uh, that's a question I've had for a while I first did the the valomad. Um, that question popped up for me as well Um, because there were some questions I didn't know anything about um And the idea is um that you just skip those questions and they completely they are not counted um That's how they deal with it, but I always thought um, why don't they Tell me more about it so I can make an informed choice. Um So far I I haven't managed to find the definite answer to this but um Now I I believe They they don't do it on purpose They do it on purpose that they don't do it, you know, um, I I think I think um The risk would be too high to influence users Because when when the election compass itself tells you everything you need to know about this topic They decide What's true? What what information they give you about this topic? And um, I think it's incredibly difficult to be really objective when when creating such content um So I guess that's the reason why why they don't do it and I think it's a good reason actually So people should get information somewhere else multiple sources So you would not uh lobby for some kind of option that you could you know, uh expand like your open source project for example to Cover that one as well No, um, I I want to actually if you scroll down all the way you can see the party's answers um, and I did it on purpose that um, yeah that you can it's more like a chat Um, so they can actually discuss that in way and you can read their answers Um, and then decide what what who you believe Yeah all right, um, you are um, actually doing this, um By yourself you founded this a year ago or some Bit in prior because you saw the problems that were there But how could one join the party like how could one have out how could somebody work with you on this project? Yeah, well, so I have lots of ideas. Um, how you could improve this project Um, and so far i'm i'm managing fine to do it on my own in my free time And I don't intend to do it like full time Um, it's it's a good side project, but uh, someday I think more people should get involved involved And uh, there are several several ways to do so. Um, so the project is based on a vue.js And everyone who is familiar with that can easily Um join There are small and big to dos that that could be done um And many ideas will require um the server side application um So that's something I've been working on in the past a few weeks um So that's also something that could attract um contributors okay, um And um another question I have left would be will the slides Be available somewhere like uh, do you have your presentation somewhere uh online? So people who are interested uh, who love the design and content like the user who posed this question um could still grab it somehow Thanks first Yeah, surely um The project already has um a website And many Things in the presentation are also on the website um But everything but I will I will add them um in the next days. I think and um as far for the slides um I I can I will upload them somewhere unless. Um, I don't know you you do that um, I don't know you you have like um this hack media Side where you where you post some videos So we have the um, uh, we are allowed to put them online for you Yeah, sure. So They would definitely be available somewhere Okay, amazing. Is there something left for you to say to that you just want to get off your heart? um Well, I really enjoyed doing this. Um, and uh, I myself learned a lot about um via a simple process that was nice and um I'm just happy that so many people listen to it Thank you very much for being here for your presentation for your work, of course. Um, and uh, yeah for being here for joining us Uh, we will go ahead on this channel with um air filters. Um, it starts at eight um p.m. Of course, and it will be some sort of an Instruction how to build your own air filters. Um, that actually get your air clean and virus free By using your 3d printer. Uh, for now, we say, thank you very much and say, um, see you next time