Yes,No?Maybe will prototype an experimental tool for graphic design, which generates layouts which reflect a deliberative group process rather than creating a single 'final' outcome. You can follow our progress on our wiki, http://tiny.cc/yesnomaybe.

Background Information

When we create collaborative documents, what does it mean to 'consense'?  This project will prototype an experimental system for curating text publications, which allows for and records users' ambivalence. 

Most tools for curating crowdsourced or collaborative content encode politically-loaded assumptions about how individuals make decisions. We 'like', vote up, approve, or blame the texts of others. The "most  popular" content wins; the "best" of online content gets printed. But our social decisions are not really so simple. This project draws on emerging feminist theories of how we reach consent - as a fluid, ongoing and often ambivalent process. 'Yes' doesn't always mean 'yes'. So how can we encode 'maybe'? 

Writers, editors and programmers are invited to explore how we might allow for this uncertainty in our collaborative editing tools. Rather than treating printed publications unproblematically as edited  "best-of", such tools will produce consensual publications that record and reflect the ambivalent process of decision-making inherent in any collaborative project.