User:KatSn/sandbox

Assignments

Article Evaluation

The article I chose to evaluate was “Delegative democracy”, which a search for “liquid democracy” redirected to.

The first section, “The delegative form,” primarily references information from a particular paper “Delegative Democracy” by Bryan Ford. However, this information has been expanded on in a 2014 journal by the same author, which could indicate out-of-date information about his particular viewpoint. The following paragraph does state that variations exist based on the stated general model. In this case, these differing viewpoints are be underrepresented, and the general model is overrepresented by a single source (the model is prototypical, so this may be permissible).

There is a possible formatting issues with an image of delegated voting—on my computer, it overlaps on text when the window is small, but randomly appears in the References section when the browser is in full screen.

There are some grammatical revisions that could be made, but they’re minor and towards personal taste.

In the section “Examples,” a link to an article on “Mikael Nordfors” is red, and doesn’t exist. However, there is a citation that leads to a Wikipedia article on him, but it’s in Russian. The most notable aspect is the last paragraph referring to Democracy Earth—there is a spelling error, and the short description can be developed further to fit the style of Wikipedia.

Citations work, but citations are needed in many different sections. The last citation for Democracy Earth doesn’t seem to fit the format of the rest of the References. Overall, the article seems to be unbiased, but the sources aren’t completely reliable—it’s difficult to fact-check some, since they’re in other languages (i.e. Dutch, Russian), and some are self-published online sources.

On the Talk Page, the article has been rated as Start-Class, so it is a developing, incomplete article with sources of unknown reliability. The article was also stated to be within the scope of WikiProject Politics. It was interesting to see early history of the Talk Page, where users debated whether or not it was worth keeping the article. There are large gaps in conversation as well—from 2013, to 2016, and finally 2017 (which was written by a bot to modify an external link).

Choosing Possible Topics

Web Literacy

• Web literacy is a short, underdeveloped article. The Talk Page confirms this—the ‘History’ section needs to be expanded upon, and the language of the article Is ‘written like and advertisement,’ and is majorly sourced to Mozilla’s pages.
• Possible improvements include:
  • Adjusting the article to introduce a neutral point of view
    • Although utilizing several sources, the article heavily focuses on Mozilla through a semi-biased use of language.
  • Differentiating web literacy from other forms of literacy (i.e. digital literacy)
  • Expanding on the history section, which is currently just a few sentences.

Delegative democracy

• The current article for delegative democracy is somewhat underdeveloped, and many of the sources seem to be unreliable. With this topic, I’d prefer to conduct paper research, so I can contribute exclusive information from Berkeley’s vast library system to Wikipedia. I’ve been looking into the Berkeley Library catalog, and have found reliable, peer-reviewed journals as a starting point for research.
• Areas of improvement, or topics for new sub-sections:
  • Separating the definition of delegative and liquid democracy, rather than letting them be known to be synonymous with each other
  • Use of delegative democracy in political parties vs. on the organizational level
  • Creating a history section of delegative democracy—this would require much more research, given that there is currently and ‘Examples’ subsection of the page
  • Possible sub-topics include paper vs. online forms of delegative democracy, and how it has changed over time
  • The recent use of the term “liquid democracy,” and its origins

Hustle

• A page for the company Hustle does not exist on Wikipedia yet. Hustle a 4-year company according to it’s founded date, with series A funding. Although the company is still relatively new, it played an important technological role in the Bernie Sanders campaign.
• If I end up choosing this topic, some possible new sections to write for the article are:
  • History
  • Use of the app in political campaigns, and
  • Investment history
  • Overview of company information
  • E.g. founders, products, users, status, headquarters, etc.
• Because the content matter is so recent, the sources I’ve gathered are mostly news articles. Sources to begin with include but are not limited to
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/magazine/are-get-out-the-vote-efforts-targeting-latinos-working.html
  • https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hustle-inc
  • https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/hustle-texting/
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/magazine/are-get-out-the-vote-efforts-targeting-latinos-working.html
  • https://www.recode.net/2016/5/2/11634146/bernie-sanders-organizing-app
  • https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-virtual-ground-game-221748
  • https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/hustle-app-bernie-sanders-texting/
  • https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/hustle-partners-with-ngp-leaving-its-non-partisan-roots-behind
  • https://civichall.org/civicist/when-it-comes-to-fixing-politics-tech-needs-a-reality-check/

Finalize Your Topic / Find Your Sources

• Possible Sections
  • History
  • Use of the app in political campaigns, and
  • Investment history
  • Overview of company information
  • E.g. founders, products, users, status, headquarters, etc.
• Starter Bibliography
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/magazine/are-get-out-the-vote-efforts-targeting-latinos-working.html
  • https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hustle-inc
  • https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/hustle-texting/
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/magazine/are-get-out-the-vote-efforts-targeting-latinos-working.html
  • https://www.recode.net/2016/5/2/11634146/bernie-sanders-organizing-app
  • https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-virtual-ground-game-221748
  • https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/hustle-app-bernie-sanders-texting/
  • https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/hustle-partners-with-ngp-leaving-its-non-partisan-roots-behind
  • https://civichall.org/civicist/when-it-comes-to-fixing-politics-tech-needs-a-reality-check/

Peer Evaluation Responses

Inaara: Thanks for the feedback! Based on some comments, I'll likely revamp the Product section's language to make it sound more informational, rather than the explanatory/casual language it has right now.

Mary: I love your suggestion of sectioning the history! However, I feel like each sub-section would be relatively underdeveloped, since there are not enough historical events to make a substantial section.

Hustle (company)

Hustle

Headquarters	San Francisco, California , United States
Founder(s)	Perry Rosenstein, Roddy Lindsay, Tyler Brock
URL	https://www.hustle.com
Current status	Active

Hustle is an American company that provides a peer-to-peer text messaging platform for areas such as politics, higher education, and non-profits. The platform initiates personal conversation between organizations and their targeted supporters or clients. Hustle was founded in December 2014, by Perry Rosenstein, Roddy Lindsay, and Tyler Brock.

Product

Organizers use the product to assign imported contacts to agents and compose message scripts. Agents deliver messages by repeatedly pressing "Send." This process differs from blast messaging, in that receivers can respond to agents and initiate conversation. When a text message is received, it appears as if it was sent from a local area code.

History

Hustle was founded by Perry Rosenstein, a 2008 Obama campaign strategist, Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook software engineer, and Tyler Brock, a former software engineer at MongoDB. The lobbying group FWD.us, an organization Lindsay volunteered for, became Hustle's first client.

Hustle was one of several digital platforms used for Bernie Sander's 2016 campaign strategy. The Text for Bernie Team, consisting of around 1,200 volunteers, used Hustle to reach out to voters and volunteers. In Oklahoma, four members of Zach Fang's campaign team brought 381 individuals to the first official campaign event, and later, 338 in Tulsa.

As of 2016, over 10 million text messages have been sent over Hustle, and the largest volume of messages on a single day is 700 thousand. As of 2017, Hustle has initiated more than 38 million conversations with more than 25 million people. In the company's spread into higher education, 30 schools have used Hustle for fundraising.

In 2017, Hustle created a partnership with NGP VAN, integrating their My List tool into the Hustle product. Using My List, organizers can import contact lists directly into Hustle. Originally a non-partisan company, Hustle supported their Democratic exclusivity with clients through their partnership with NGP VAN.

Funding

In November 2015, Hustle raised $3 million in their seed round, led by Social Capital, followed by investment firms including Matrix Partners, Index Ventures, Designer Fund, and Canvas Ventures.

In August 2017, Hustle raised $8 million in venture capital during their Series A funding round, also led by Social Capital. This round, which included new and existing investors such as Salesforce and Twilio, puts the company's total funding at $11 million.