Interview with Nick Oliva on whereIstand: Citizen reporting meets opinion comparing

Glad to be here. I'm looking forward to my first online, real-time interview, Dave!

It's quite an interesting and exciting format and I love the "viewer" participation possibilities, so everyone throw your questions at me and I'll do what I can to get to them.

For us, it's part of our mission: to be the site where you go to find the opinions of any person or organization on any issue, and in any language. To do that, whereIstand.com aggregates opinions of members, public figures, and organizations.

Users and editors propose issues and collaborate "wiki-like" to approve the ones that best frame arguments, and that are written in ways that are "open" enough to capture the opinions of public figures and organizations. These issues are translated into other languages, which is how we can show the same opinions in any supported language - regardless of the language in which the opinion was stated.

You can ask your friends to take a stand on an issue, of course, but you can also "request" the opinions of public figures - and users will jump on the ones with many requests and try to find the answers.

Take a look at our issue, Should Congress fund a troop surge in Iraq?

http://whereistand.com/Opinions/18520

When you hover over Obama's picture, you see an excerpt of what he said. If you click on it you see the full post, who posted it, who voted to agree or disagree with the evidence, and a link to the original source. Enough users have to agree (and not enough disagree) with the post for the opinion to be approved.

We had a complaint on this issue once from the campaign of one of the other candidates for President. We pointed out that the candidate had been quoted in a well known Web site, and noted that what he said was pretty clear. We didn't hear back from them again.

I just like bookmarking the people that interest me and following their latest opinions and commenting when they entertain or annoy me, or taking a stand if I haven't already.

When you search google, for example, for "opinions" or "comparisons" you'll frequently turn up whereIstand opinions that are probably favorites of other users.

Search "fund troop surge" and you'll see among the top links the Obama opinion I just linked above. Search "mccain politics" and his opinions on political issues on whereIstand.com shows up as the first result. Also, "jordan athletes overpaid"... since it's not all politics.

One of the implications for politics is that if you've already taken stands on the issues that interest you, you can quickly compare yourself to anybody on the site... a politician you just heard about, or a friend you invited... and quickly see where you agree and disagree. It's surprising to find where you disagree with friends or politicians you thought you agreed with! There was an interesting study a few years ago about people "thinking" they agreed with their politicians.

Using this creatively, if you're trying to pick potential VP candidates, go to the page of the presidential candidate and search for comparisons. For example, go to John McCain's page and search "giuliani" you'll get to...

http://whereistand.com/JohnMcCain/RudyGiuliani

...where you can focus in on where they agree and disagree.

The social networking aspects are certainly important to what we're doing... if anybody meets their perfect match through whereIstand.com... awesome! Love to hear about that.

In the first instance, any user posting evidence of a public figure's opinion, or voting on evidence posted by others, is participating in a form of citizen journalism.

Also, one of the features we're beta testing is where bloggers register on whereIstand, link their accounts to their blogs, and take stands on issues that they blog about. When they link their blog entries to whereIstand content, we'll show their entries as trackbacks on those pages, and group them by their opinions. So you'll be able to see and rate blog entries of "citizen journalists" that think, for example, that Obama and Hillary should be on the same ticket... or to those that don't.

In this sense, whereIstand is a platform for helping people to find bloggers based on their opinions.

I've heard from about a dozen people that think it's a good idea for internal use, but it's really not on our radar screen.

The way we'd like to see organizations engage is for them to get involved in proposing issues that are relevant to them and which interest other users. Then they become a part of the dialogue and can really add value that isn't just internal to them.

That's a good question. There are certainly anecdotes where people say they understand aspects of the election that they previously didn't.

We have an issue on the site that asks, "What is the effect of citizen journalism on news reporting?"

http://whereistand.com/Opinions/28676

There's also, "What effects do blogs have on politics?"

http://whereistand.com/Opinions/21044

To the extent that whereIstand.com helps voters discover information about the candidates, I'd say we're definitely having a positive impact.

Any registered user can propose an issue. Click the "issues" link in the header, then click the "proposed" tab and you can see the ones that have not been approved yet.

Click through the topics at the right to find the one most relevant to the issue you want to propose, and you can propose it there... again, only if you are registered. You can also send messages to the editors of that topic if you have any questions.

Once an issue is proposed, other users and site editors comment and suggest revisions. The editors of each topic approve issues when they meet the guidelines for a "good" whereIstand.com issue... these include that the issue be relevant, that the language is free from bias, that the wording works for finding public figure opinions, etc.

If you want to be an editor in a particular topic area, send a message to the current editors letting them know.

We'd eventually like to see any issue on which people disagree be represented on the site. We'll add functionality to let you do just that... limit the scope of an issue to a particular region.

For the foreseeable future, though, whereIstand.com editors probably would not approve this issue as written. It isn't going to be of much interest to people that live on "Elm St."

Instead, they would probably suggest something with broader appeal, such as, "Should all residential streets have sidewalks?"

One of the challenges (and benefits) of the structure is finding ways to frame an issue to increase the size of the interested audience.

This is true, I think, just with users "taking stands" and networking with their friends and contacts that have done the same. And, of course, it certainly helps extend the reach of their blogs to people that are more likely to be interested... if you're writing anything of substance, that is.

As a side note, I've found that knowing where you agree with people helps reduce the impact of the areas in which we disagree.

The most obvious is that we're working on presentation and usability improvements, like the ones we just rolled out a couple of hours ago!

We've been putting development effort into integrating with social networking sites so you can see how you compare with your Facebook friends, request their stands on issues, etc.

The biggest feature we're working on is something we call search by opinion (SBO). It's like doing a google search but then filtering the results to those from just people or organizations that have one or more particular opinions... such as "only show results if agreed with invading Iraq, but disagree with invading Iran".

And... we're going to roll out a mobile interface so people can quickly find that public figure opinion that will settle the big argument they're having... so they can get back to enjoying dinner!

Thanks! If I can squeeze this one in... oh...right to left languages are brutal!

We're looking forward to people posting evidence of opinions in other languages so you can compare where you stand with every leader of the world, for example, on a particular issue regardless of what language you speak. Definitely check back for that.

Thanks, again....

Let's hope so!

I'd say to definitely check out the "people" page. You're going to see more of this on the site soon, but basically, you can go through there to see opinions of people that fall into particular groups. So you can see just the opinions of celebrities on an issue, or of health organizations, for example.

Thanks, Dave. It's been a lot of fun. If anyone has any other questions or feedback, please send a message to help@whereIstand.com and we'll do our best to reply.