HOW do O-S-I WEBSITES and the NETWORK WORK?

HOW is INFORMATION OBTAINED?

Every piece of information in the O-S-I data base has been sent from the citizenry - primarily by email. Each submission, so received, is subject to inspection by a statistically random subset of network viewers. If a consensus of those viewers deem the submission to be of public importance, it is inserted into the 'Our-Shared-Info' distributed data base.

The following are hints of what might constitute a submission:

• A collection of lessons on a topic such as electricity and electronics.
• The background history of a current international conflict.
• Aspects to consider when purchasing a house or renting an appartment.
• An employee report of a business wrong-doing.
• The video and spoken testimony of a newsworthy event.
• An account of any event that concerns governance, or any comment or criticism of behavior or action pertinent to governance - with the proviso that it adds to our understanding of a genuine issue.
• When someone, who visits or maintains a web site in this network, finds a package of information of interest in another site of the network - he or she can grab that package and submit it to her/his 'home' site for inclusion in the data base portion in the home site.
• But any information, found (legally) anywhere, that is of public relevance, can be submitted for inclusion.

The process progresses in the following way:

1. An information packet is composed by the submitter by inserting the intended material into a .txt, .pdf, or .odt file. That file is attached to a email composed for and directed to an our-shared-info site. [The gmail address of the recepient site is just its website URL with the '.com' omitted and the '@gmail.com' part added. E.G. 'our-shared-info-xxxxx@gmail.com'.]


2. The received file is screened to ensure the content is not intended to discredit the database. For example: defamatory material, foul language, material completely unrelated to governance or personal needs. Unacceptable submissions are just discarded.


3. 'Clean submissions' are posted into the NEWLY SUBMITTED section of the recepient site. The newly submitted items can be reviewed there. Viewers can submit their vote to insert the item or not.


4. In order to insure information accuracy and pertinance, there is a public review of submitted material based on random sampling of examiners selected from among users of the network.


5. How is the submitted material validated? The submitted item is placed into the NEWLY-SUBMITTED area of the website for a period of time where visitors indicate YES or NO to it, or make a comment about it. The webmaster group of each 'shared' website acts upon these responses and removes the submission from the NEWLY-SUBMITTED area after a period (1 month is suggested).


6. After a period of time, the system viewers votes are counted. If a consensus is evident ( > 70%) then the submission is considered 'approved.'


7. Approved submissions are made available by insertion into the recepient OSI site's database and menu heirarchy, and then other O-S-I websites are notified of this new material for possible inclusion there - or for those sites to make a reference back into this site.


8. O-S-I websites maintain lists of othe O-S-I sites it knows of. Whenever it learns of data in another O-S-I site that it would like, it can simply take that data and install it on its own site.

This is how OSI sites collecting data communicate naturally with other structurally similar websites.

OSI websites thus interact to form a NETWORK. The very useage of existing interacting sites (the NETWORK) encourages the creation of yet more such sites by visitors accessing the network. This is how the originating O-S-I network is expected to grow!