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Comment by astazangasta | Hacker News Reader

While software tools are great the question of the user base is a more difficult one. Should I just set up an instance for my city and go to? What if there are 6 competing instances? Who gets membership? Who controls membership? These questions seem fundamental to "start using decidim" and are unaddressed by the site, which seems to present usage as similar to an individual trying out a new text editor.

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The most successful cases involve the city council setting up the platform for all citizens, it is otherwise difficult to avoid overlaps and become the "official" website. However, the software equally useful for other types of organizations (NGOs, cooperatives, social movements) for them to coordinate their action and decision making. It is already been used for that purpose.

Software like Decidim or CONSUL [0] are meant to be used by the city council or maybe at the regional or even national government level, like is the case of CONSUL. If you really want Citizen Participation having real decisions made in the platform are key to the success, and for that you need high level political support. In the case of Madrid City Council, who wrote CONSUL, citizens have already decided what to do with 260M euros, have voted for the remodelling of one of the main squares in the city and several other spaces, have had their input in the writing of local ordinances, etc. You can see that in action at [1].

[0] https://github.com/consul/consul [1] https://decide.madrid.es

The idea is that if you have any big organization where you want to make decisions (like a City, a Cooperative, an Asociation, a Foundation, an Union, a Politica Party).

Who gets and controls membership (aka verification or authorization) is a decision made by this organization:

* Sending a SMS code to users to verify that their have a valid cellphone

* Allowing users to upload a photo or scanned image of their identity document

* Sending users a code through postal code

* Allowing users to go to to a physical office and check their documentation

* Checking some information through other systems (as a Municipal Census on the case of Municipalities, Cities or Towns)

* Having a list of valid users emails

More information regarding verifications at https://github.com/decidim/decidim/tree/master/decidim-verif...

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