Critiques on My Peers’ Apps and/or Pitches (Part 3) ​

Knowsy ​

At times I have imagined what it would be like to have people vote on the civil projects/laws in their neighborhoods. Seeing your team actually tackle this field makes me really excited! Your app definitely seems to be planned out very well based on the pitch!

One concern I had is the representation of minorities when voting on community projects being nullified by the voice of the majority. Without the perspective of the underrepresented, we risk infringing on people’s rights and making policies that have an uneven spread of benefits and consequences among different residents. Say there is a petition to construct a new building many residents will visit. Perhaps the majority does not want to deal with construction and busy streets on their side of the neighborhood and will only approve the petition if the building will be constructed on the other side, which happens to be where the minorities reside. Maybe the only place available on the minority side is near a religious building that many minority-residents go to. It would be really unfair to simply let the majority decide and not consider the perspective of the minority-residents. The (spiritual) lives of the minorities could be severely disturbed by having such an active public building beside one that is essential to their lives. Making sure the app is inclusive just as it is democratic is an important goal, I believe, to consider.

This brings up another question. Who is allowed to vote on and create petitions for a community? For local development projects and laws, it makes sense to only allow residents of an area to vote. But how broad should this area be? Within cities there are often multiple boroughs/districts, and within those, multiple counties. Projects and policies can affect entire cities or just a small neighborhood. Perhaps establishing who is allowed to vote on a petition would be decided by the government when creating one. Regardless, I think this is something worth considering.

I think this project can have a large positive impact in local communities globally. Allowing citizens to connect with their local governments much more directly and easily through Knowsy is a great way to keep residents engaged in their communities and get valuable feedback from them, resulting in projects and laws that will indeed be beneficial to the residents. I look forward to seeing how your app turns out!