An online quorum

Michael Weiksner '95 graduated with a degree in computer science and a certificate in the Wilson School. He recently co-founded a nonprofit, non-partisan online town hall called quorum.org — which is a platform for open discussions of political issues. He recently spoke with 'Prince' Executive Editor Michael Koike.

'Prince': How did the idea for the Website start?

Weiksner: It started about a year ago on Labor Day at lunch. I asked another person . . . what would he want to be doing if we weren't working in our company. He said he was interested in the political movement over the Internet. And we both thought there would be some interesting things that would be happening.

P: What makes your political Website unique?

W: It's a unique site because it's very participatory. All the content on the site is user-generated.

P: What is the purpose of your site?

W: We're promoting open discourse, and we actually have some features to try and promote multiple productive discussions at the same time. So when you register [to use the site], you take a political values survey.

P: How do users take advantage of the site's features?

W: There are two kinds of scenarios of how you use the site. You can come and if you'd like to alert other users to an article or something else, you can post the article. When you post, you can submit a short twoor three-paragraph article of your own — it's kind of like when you forward a friend an article over e-mail. The next thing that happens is that every article that is submitted as a post is guaranteed to be viewed at least 10 times. If you click on it, then you can encourage or discourage it. Then based on the random 10 people that are the first ones to use it, that will determine how much prominence it will get on the rest of the site. It's sort of like a trial by jury of your peers.

P: How do you become a registered user and is it required?

W: You can register on the spot. You need to put in your zip code, and we encourage people to use their full names although that's not required. You can opt to take the political values survey, but you don't have to.

P: What kinds of issues are addressed most often?

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W: What's happening organically is that people are using the site to talk about the impact the media has on politics. They also talk a lot about voter apathy, why some people are disconnected. Why is it that 25 percent of young people ages 18 to 24 can't name both presidential candidates? And then 75 percent can't name both vice presidential candidates. Is it the young people's fault? Is it the media's fault? It is politicians' fault?

P: Do you edit a lot of the messages that are posted?

W: We don't really. But if you don't have some sort of filtering system, the flames and unproductive speech can dominate. We want to create a platform where everybody can participate, but that doesn't mean that every comment gets equal prominence.

P: What's the most interesting feature on the site?

W: We have an interesting feature called "Townhall eDebates" where we have both Senate candidates for New Jersey and Pennsylvania and then two closely contested races for House seats. They have agreed to answer the top questions that our users pose.

P: What will happen to your Website when the election season is over?

W: We want to know where people are coming from and have meaningful discussions about these issues. That will persist. The second part will be doing things like eDebates, trying to engage elected officials.