compdemocracy
Evolve visualization method as participation thresholds are met
Right now, the participant interface doesn't show any visualization until at least 7 participants have contributed. This is a lower bound to ensure that some sensible meaning can be derived from the processed data. But it poses some challenges in kickstarting small polis conversations, as there is little indication of what the visualization might turn into later.
Related: Proposal to show placeholder where visualization is: #307
Rather than just showing a placeholder image, it might be interesting to show something interactive, like a simple count or traditional poll visualizations of the current data, just to help motivate the first arrivals with some very low grade insights about the live data. Obviously, polis is aspiring to offer deeper insight, but cheap insight (more like traditional polling software) might help get people to the deeper stuff, and might help their chances of returning.
Maybe this could be framed as "unlocking" new insight tools, to help encourage people to work toward that via sharing more widely.
This "unlocking" pattern of rolling over to using new statistical tools (as data becomes less sparse) might be useful for other aspects in future (perhaps something like this is already done silently in background by tuning parameters -- not sure)
Thanks @patcon — I think a simple list of 'significant comments' with votes, which might be shown all the time for the rest of the conversation in some way, is likely to be a winner in this regard.
