Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Participatory Observatory

💡 In simple words: WikiDeal wants many friendly watchtowers, run by the people themselves. Anyone can raise a topic, everyone debates it, and the most trusted voices help choose what gets looked at next.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): Participatory Observatories (or Citizen Observatories) are unlimited in number: citizen-run, created by theme by user groups (online community moderation, whistleblowing, obsolescence risks, fundraising awareness and competition, and many others). They are intended as the bases of decision making, founded on the Slashdot karma model: debates earn karma, high-karma contributors control the debate agenda, findings feed open calls, deliverables and sometimes Condorcet votes, until innovations are adopted collectively. The purpose is reliable information plus whistleblowing against any re-privatization of the platform.

Participatory Observatories

Innovation, WikiDeal R&D

Origin	🟢 WikiDeal concept (on the Slashdot karma model)
Status	Under study (July 2026, proposal)

What is it?

Participatory Observatories (or Citizen Observatories) are unlimited in number: what counts is not a fixed count. They would be run by citizens and created by theme by user groups: online community moderation, whistleblowing, obsolescence risks, fundraising awareness and competition, and many others to come. They are intended as the bases of decision making within WikiDeal.

The karma model and "karmic democracy"

The observatories are founded on the model of Slashdot, a historic late-1990s site and an underestimated symbol of free culture, whose karma moderation later inspired the reputation systems of many community sites, such as Hacker News, Stack Overflow and Reddit.

Debates and comments earn karma points through honest positive and negative reader ratings. Contributors with the best karma obtain admin rights and choose which articles are submitted for publication, that is, control of the debate agenda: a mechanism the project initiator has nicknamed "karmic democracy".

From debate to adopted innovation

The intended flow:

1. article proposals in the observatories;
2. acceptance by high-karma admins;
3. debates and comments (ratings feed karma);
4. open calls issued from the findings;
5. deliverables, and possible complementary fundraising;
6. sometimes Condorcet votes for the more complex decisions;
7. innovations adopted collectively.

Reliable information and whistleblowing

The purpose is reliable information plus whistleblowing: alerts against any mechanism aiming at re-privatizing the platform, reducing trust, or weakening the approach of a global marketplace owned, run and sustained by its users. The same logic then applies to market tools, arbitrations and other components: the observatories are intended as the home base of the whole open calls dimension.

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See also: Open Calls · User Groups · All innovations · R&D Portal