Factors That Can Improve a Dotmocracy Process

1. Trust in the facilitation, sponsoring organization and fellow participants.

2. Diversity of ideas.

3. A large number of participants.

4. Diversity of people.

5. Education of participants on the issue.

6. Quality information available about the issue.

7. Participants have something at stake from the outcome.

8. A cohesive spirit of co-operation and common aims within the group.

9. Willingness to use the Dotmocracy process.

10. A  high number and wide variety of well thought out proposals.

11. Enough time time for in depth deliberation, reflection and reformulation of ideas.

12. Providing opportunity and support for participants to recognize and discuss important patterns in the results.

13. Multiple iterations of the process (i.e. multiple stages of repeating the learning-discussing-drafting-dotting process). Each stage reflects on previous results and learns from new investigations.

14. A high number of repetitions of similar and related questions over time and within different contexts. Recognize the continuity and differences among results from different sessions.

15. Trusted, knowledgeable and experienced people interpreting results and making the final decisions.

Each of these factors is rather subjective, but as one becomes more experienced at Dotmocracy facilitation it will become more apparent which factors need more attention depending on the situation.