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Liquidizer User Guide
The Liquidizer is a highly interactive online platform for
political discussion and ongoing opinion polling. Its focus lies
in the simplicity of the voting system and the rich visual
feedback displaying current interests, trends and
interdependencies. The system provides swift and precise feedback
to the user's expression of preferences. Optimizing their impact
on the polling result users must allocate a limited total voting
weight. This leads to a game like experience where the formation
of allys and coordinated voting tactics can reveal the innate
structure of rivalling political fractions along side each
participant's political profile.
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A summary of all queries in the system. From this list, you can
navigate to each queries detail page showing voters' behaviour and
graphical analysis options.
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A summary of all users registered in the system. From this list,
you can navigate to each user's profile page.
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This help page.
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The home button is only shown when you are logged in. From here,
you can change your profile, see your voting behaviour and
delegations.
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Voting
The voting system of the Liquidizer is based on limited overall,
such that participation on each query must be well balanced. The
maximal weight which can be used to support (or reject) a
proposition is 1. If a user supports multiple propositions, the
voting weight on each proposition is reduced. To optimize voting
influence, you need to log in at regular intervals and pay close
attention to what propositions you support. The total voting
weight also decreases over time when you do not log into the
system, such that the influence slackers and dead accounts is
diminished.
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The user can express her preferences for individual queries on
scale between -3 and 3. By clicking on a positive number you
declare your support for a proposition, by clicking a negative
value you reject it. The preferences are not directly visible to
other users, but they define the proportions between your limited
total voting weights.
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Your can also assign a positive preferences to other users, in
which case you delegate a part of your voting weight. Based on
delegation strength between 0 and 3 this user's votes will be
considered in the calculation of your final voting weights.
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The most influential strategy to gain support for your political
initiative still consists in placing a good argument. All places
that show this edit icon can be commented by the user who is
logged in. Except mail addresses, postings are visible to all.
The texts you type can include links. To create a list, type
an asterisk (*) at the beginning of each new row. The html tags
<img>, <em>, and <i> are allowed.
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Popularity
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If you are using the Liquidizer you are doing so because you want to
find a good solution not only for you, but also for your group. The
popularity factor that is displayed next to the users' profiles tells
you how well you are doing. If all participants agree perfectly then
everyone has a popularity of 100%. In case the group fights fiercefully
over each and every question then all members will have a popularity
close to 0%.
Obviously, you should try to increase your popularity factor. In doing
so you will actively participate in finding a good group compromise. As
a result you will see more happy faces not only in the system but also
in real life.
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Emoticons
When you are logged in, your relationships with other users is
visualized with the help of emoticons. The generation is based on
the components Sympathy, Excitement, Strength and Distance.
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Valence
The Valence component depends on the extent your positions
coincide with the positions of the selected user.
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Arousal
The Arousal component shows whether the other components have changed recently.
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Potency
The Potency component shows how many topics you and the selected
user have in common (i.e. you both voted on them), independent of
the positions on that topics.
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Distance
The Distance component shows how you and the selected user
influence each other through direct or indirect delegation.
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You can test the emoticons at:
http://liquidizer.org/emoticons
Voting system and tactics
The voting system of Liquidizer is optimized from a
game-theoretic point of view. As each user's voting weight is
limited, they have to optimize their influence to achieve a
favorbale result. There is no time limit on polls. Thus, the final
goal is not to "win", but to make ideas, proposals and topics more
visible.
The voting weight of a user on a single topic lies between -1 and
1. The sum of the weights' squares across all topics is equal to
1. Thus, if you vote on a high number of topics, your vote's
weight on each one will be low (e.g., you can participate in 100
topics with a weight of 0.1 each, as 0.1² = 0.01). If a topic is
important or controversial and you want to influence it more
strongly, you may choose to vote on that topic only (then the
weight of your vote will become 1).
In the following example, users A and B participate in the polls
on three topics. A is indifferent about topic 1, is strongly in
favor of topic 2 and rejects topic 3. B favors all three topics,
with A being most important.
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A's Preference |
B's Preference |
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| Query 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Query 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Query 3 | -1 | 1 |
When A votes according to his preferences, the voting weights for
the respective topics will be 0, 0.95 and -0.32, as
02 + 0.952 + (-0.32)2 = 0 + 0.9 + 0.1 = 1.
B's voting weights will be 0.90, 0.30 und 0.30:
0.902 + 0.302 + 0.302 = 0.81 + 0.09 + 0.09 = 1.
The voting weight's ratios are equal to the preference ratios, but
the weights are limited by the constraint on their absolute value:
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A's Voting weight |
B's Voting weight |
Sum |
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| Query 1 | 0 | 0.90 | 0.90 |
| Query 2 | 0.95 | 0.30 | 1.25 |
| Query 3 | -0.32 | 0.30 | -0.01 |
In this example, both A and B "waste" a part of their limited
voting weight. Their votes on topic 3 "cancel out", so both can
increase their influence by shifting more weight onto topics they
agree upon.
If both A and B decide to change their voring behaviour to
(1,1,0), the summed result would be preferred by both:
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A's Voting weight |
B's Voting weight |
Sum |
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| Query 1 | 0.71 | 0.71 | 1.41 |
| Query 2 | 0.71 | 0.71 | 1.41 |
| Query 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Thus, it is worthwhile to look for allies with similar
positions. You may, for example, delegate your vote to another
user and look whether your resulting voting behaviour is still
acceptable.
Analysis tools
The following analysis tools are available on a topic's detail
page. They provide in depth visual feedback about the voters'
behaviour. This might be usefull to understand trends or to
discover frauds.
| Charts |
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Charts show the history of votes on a topic. The line at the top
shows the history of positive votes and the line on the bottom
shows the negative votes (weighted). The sum in the middle is
shown yellow (if it's positive) or red (if negative). As voting
weights decrease with time, the trend lines converge towards 0 if
users do not refresh their votes.
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| Histogram |
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The histogram shows how many users are participating in a poll and
what intensities (preferences) they have. All votes have a weight
between -1 and +1, but only few users would spend all their weight
on a single topic. Thus, lower weights in the center of the graph
are more common.
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| Delegation graph |
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The delegation graph shows the influence of delegations on your
votes. You may choose multiple users to whom you delegate, in
which case your resulting voting weights will be cast as a
average of your delegates. Even if you have delegated
your vote, you need to log in to check your resulting voting
behaviour regularly, otherwise your voting weight will decrease
with time.
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