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The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

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Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#91

Post by slurgfest »

brandoncapecci wrote: post #80
taligent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Just wow. How about the fact he is contributing and trying to make the government better and more open instead of whinging like an immature, sanctimonious dick. I have 100x more respect for people that at least try.

It's humorous to me how many people attempt to turn anything remotely criticized into a positive by justifying it with effort. Since you escalated into name-calling so fast, I can confidently say that you don't have one hundred times more respect for anyone or anything, you are simply under the false notion that those you support actually try harder.

Please describe how the programmers on this project can solve or mitigate the problem that some people will post petitions demanding legalization of marijuana (not necessarily a majority opinion in the US) and then be incredibly angry when this does not singlehandedly reverse the administration's policy.

Otherwise it is pretty mindless to attack the programmers for that.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#92

Post by slurgfest »

rndmize wrote: post #67
daenz wrote: post #12

And, in the spirit of the project, they'll reject all pull requests with a patronizing response about the way things are.[1][2] 1. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regul... 2. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-us...

So you expect serious government action from an online petition system?

Yes. Every policy decision of the executive should be made by an online vote, weighted toward those who have their friends sign up under many different email addresses.

People who do not use the website should be totally ignored, regardless of their votes in the actual election.

Otherwise, the President is ignoring petitions and hates Democracy.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#93

Post by slurgfest »

sneak wrote: post #41
ceejayoz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-signatory-count petitions? 0.024% of the US signed that one, and it wasn't ignored. A response was given. Not liking the response isn't the same as it being ignored.

You assume that I don't like the response. You also skipped over the part where the response given was bullshit boilerplate and amounted to ignoring it. At that point, why have petitions at all? It's just handwaving.

I like bullshit boilerplate too.

If you really want petitions, start a real petition. The website is for something much more informal and you shouldn't get depressed just because 4chan isn't setting policy now.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#94

Post by slurgfest »

csense wrote: post #55
kyebosh wrote: post #15

Certainly an interesting microcosm of a type of democracy... I wonder how feasible this kind of model would be for actual policy making.

The more influential the channel gets, the harder people will try to game the system to push their own agenda. I.e. fake or hacked registrations, buying signatures, or trying to promote comments favorable to your point of view while burying opposing ones. Right now the influence of this app is zero, so we don't have these problems. It's just a marketing dog-and-pony show where they can say "Look we're actually respon…

Oh I don't know, it isn't much different from a system which analyzes emails to see what motivated constituents with email are saying - it's just public. I think it's an interesting experiment and a starting point. I don't think it is ever wrong in a democracy to give people a way of publicizing a message or to give elected officials visibility into relevant things people are saying publicly.

I don't know where the high expectations came from. But I might speculate that many people are starting from dislike of the President's policies and then from there tarring the website, rather than actually responding directly to the idea of the website.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#95

Post by aaronbrethorst »

daenz wrote: post #12

And, in the spirit of the project, they'll reject all pull requests with a patronizing response about the way things are.[1][2] 1. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regul... 2. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-us...

If you want to see the cause of #1 advanced, donate some money to Washington's "Yes on 502" group, http://www.newapproachwa.org

It looks like we're at or just barely over the 50% mark in favor of legalizing marijuana here in Washington, but there's a lot of moneyed interests (e.g. medical marijuana sellers) who are doing their best to kill the initiative.

Please note that I don't smoke pot. I might if it's legalized in the state, but choose not to because, among other reasons, it helps fund narco-terrorism.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#97

Post by taligent »

brandoncapecci wrote: post #80
taligent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Just wow. How about the fact he is contributing and trying to make the government better and more open instead of whinging like an immature, sanctimonious dick. I have 100x more respect for people that at least try.

It's humorous to me how many people attempt to turn anything remotely criticized into a positive by justifying it with effort. Since you escalated into name-calling so fast, I can confidently say that you don't have one hundred times more respect for anyone or anything, you are simply under the false notion that those you support actually try harder.

Because: (a) Developers don't make policy decisions ; (b) In enterprise environments it takes a lot of effort to get an open source project approved ; (c) We should be actively encouraging more openness and transparency in government.

So I don't know what your argument is. But I assure you I do have 100x more respect for someone who does SOMETHING in the right direction as opposed to do someone who just whinges.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#98

Post by crag »

brandoncapecci wrote: post #80
taligent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Just wow. How about the fact he is contributing and trying to make the government better and more open instead of whinging like an immature, sanctimonious dick. I have 100x more respect for people that at least try.

It's humorous to me how many people attempt to turn anything remotely criticized into a positive by justifying it with effort. Since you escalated into name-calling so fast, I can confidently say that you don't have one hundred times more respect for anyone or anything, you are simply under the false notion that those you support actually try harder.

Com'on guys. Give these guys (the WH dev's who released the code) a break. If the tech community starts throwing mud around, we'll never ever see another project open sourced from the administration again.

Give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, they have good intentions; clone the repo and and say, "Thank you".

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#100

Post by BenjieGillam »

stblack wrote: post #83
ef4 wrote: post #49

> "President Obama is committed to creating the most open and participatory government in our nation’s history" I'll believe that when his administration stops being one of the most secretive and most aggressive prosecutors of whistleblowers in recent history. Sources: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_... http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistlebl... http://tpmmuckraker.ta…

I reckon this was simply a first-pass readme -- hands-up, who likes writing those? I submitted a pull request that tones down the hyperbole somewhat: https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/pull/5 I sense it's essential for them to keep the project focused on the software. Partly what makes this interesting is managing the partisan nature of discourse. That's a unique non-functional requirement here. It's a good test…

Rather than piling another pull request on top... you've put

  [@WHWeb](tyyp://twitter.com/WHWeb)
I assume you meant http? Other than that extremely minor issue these look like some solid modifications to me - well done :)

(In case it's relevant: I'm from the UK.)

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