Update what-is-decidim.adoc (#74)

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-.Video: https://youtu.be/zhMMW0TENNA[Decidim: Free Open-Source participatory democracy for cities and organizations].
+.Video: https://youtu.be/f6JMgJAQ2tc[Decidim: Free Open-Source participatory democracy for cities and organizations].
 video::f6JMgJAQ2tc[youtube, width=720, height=390]
 
-*Intro*. Decidim [http://decidim.org[http://decidim.org]], from the Catalan "let's decide" or “we decide”, is a digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, a digital platform, built entirely and collaboratively as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software[free software]. More specifically, Decidim is a web environment (a _framework_) produced in _Ruby on Rails_ (a programming language) that allows anybody to create and configure a website platform to be used in the form of a political network for democratic participation. The platform allows any organization (local city council, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood or cooperative) to create mass processes for strategic planning, participatory budgeting, public consultation, collaborative design for regulations, urban spaces and election processes, etc. It also makes possible to connect traditional in-person democratic meetings (assemblies, council meetings, etc.) with the digital world: sending meeting invites, managing registrations, facilitating the publication of minutes, etc. In addition, Decidim enables the structuring of government bodies or assemblies (councils, boards, working groups), the convening of consultations, referendums or channelling citizen or member initiatives to trigger different decision-making processes. Yet, the Decidim project is much more than that.
+Decidim [http://decidim.org[http://decidim.org]], from the Catalan "let's decide" or “we decide”, is a digital platform for participatory democracy.
+More specifically, Decidim is a web environment (a _framework_) produced in _Ruby on Rails_ (a programming language) that allows anybody to create and configure a website to be used in the form of a political network for democratic participation. It is built entirely and collaboratively as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software[free software].
 
-*Definition*: _Decidim is a public-common’s, free and open, digital infrastructure for participatory democracy_. It is convenient to explain the terms of this definition in inverse order. By “participatory democracy” we mean that form of “government of the people, for the people and by the people” in which people take part as equals or peers (from latin _pars_, part, and _capere_, to take). By taking part we mean that, under the current political model, that people take the part _of_ the sovereign power that belongs to them. And this should be an equal part for each. Moreover, we also mean, under an alternative model, to take part _in_ the autonomy of the social and political life, in the construction of collective potency: the capacity to coordinate and commit to collective action. The term “digital infrastructure” makes reference to a set of tools, resources, data-sets, documents, codes (legal, computer, etc.), interfaces and services that are digitalized or made accessible by digital means. This infrastructure is primarily a software platform for participatory democracy. Participants can create proposals, sign and support them, comment, receive notifications, attend public meetings or receive the minutes of the session. Administrators can design participatory processes, define the structure of democratic organs (like councils or committees), configure types of initiatives or set up consultations. The infrastructure also includes documentation, design (icons, images, logos, etc.), legal documents, datasets or training resources, among others. All these make possible to deploy a participatory democratic system in any organization (be it a municipality, a cooperative, an association, a union or a community). By “free and open” we mean that the project’s goods (the assets of the infrastructure) do no fall under the form of private property that excludes others from accessing, using, copying, modifying and re-publishing or reusing these resources but, instead, displays all the legal, technical and social means necessary to share them and open them to collaboration. Finally, the term “public-commons” indicates that the project is mostly financed and made possible by public institutions and is managed and designed by an open community constituted by public-servants, members of different associations, university researchers and students, activists and staff from foundations, workers from different companies or simply volunteers that commit to the principles of the project. For this infrastructure to be a common’s it is important that these partners organize democratically in relation to the project. In this sense Decidim is a reflexive infrastructure that uses the very infrastructure to democratize itself through the MetaDecidim community.
+The platform allows any organization (local city council, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood or cooperative) to create mass processes for strategic planning, participatory budgeting, public consultation, collaborative design, etc. It also makes possible to connect traditional in-person democratic meetings with the digital world: sending meeting invites, managing registrations, facilitating the publication of minutes, etc. 
+In addition, Decidim enables the structuring of government bodies or assemblies (councils, boards, working groups), the convening of consultations, referendums or channelling citizen or member initiatives to trigger different decision-making processes. Yet, the Decidim project is much more than that.
+
+*Definition*: _Decidim is a public-common’s, free and open, digital infrastructure for participatory democracy_.
+
+ - By “participatory democracy” we mean that form of “government of the people, for the people and by the people” in which people take part as equals or peers (from latin _pars_, part, and _capere_, to take). By taking part we mean that, under the current political model, people take the part _of_ the sovereign power that belongs to them. And this should be an equal part for each. Moreover, we also mean, under an alternative model, to take part _in_ the autonomy of the social and political life, in the construction of collective potency: the capacity to coordinate and commit to collective action. 
+ - The term “digital infrastructure” makes reference to a set of tools, resources, data-sets, documents, codes (legal, computer, etc.), interfaces and services that are digitalized or made accessible by digital means. This infrastructure is primarily a software platform for participatory democracy. 
+
+ Participants can create proposals, sign and support them, comment, receive notifications, attend public meetings or receive the minutes of the session. Administrators can design participatory processes, define the structure of democratic organs (like councils or committees), configure types of initiatives or set up consultations. The infrastructure also includes documentation, design (icons, images, logos, etc.), legal documents, datasets or training resources, among others. All these make possible to deploy a participatory democratic system in any organization (be it a municipality, a cooperative, an association, a union or a community).
+
+ - By “free and open” we mean that the project’s goods (the assets of the infrastructure) do no fall under the form of private property that excludes others from accessing, using, copying, modifying and re-publishing or reusing these resources but, instead, displays all the legal, technical and social means necessary to share them and open them to collaboration. 
+ - Finally, the term “public-commons” indicates that the project is mostly financed and made possible by public institutions and is managed and designed by an open community constituted by public-servants, members of different associations, university researchers and students, activists and staff from foundations, workers from different companies or simply volunteers that commit to the principles of the project. For this infrastructure to be a common’s it is important that these partners organize democratically in relation to the project. In this sense, Decidim is a reflexive infrastructure that uses the very infrastructure to democratize itself through the MetaDecidim community.
 
 *Platform features and functional architecture*. Since the digital platform displays and embodies both the means of project organization and its democratic principles, it is important to explain how the platform works. Users of the platform (participants) interact through participatory mechanisms known as _components_ within different participatory _spaces_ that channel their democratic power to specific results. Participatory spaces are the frameworks that define how participation will be carried out, the _channels_ or means through which citizens or members of an organization can process requests or coordinate proposals and make decisions. _Initiatives_, _Processes_, _Assemblies_ and _Consultations_ are all participatory spaces. Specific examples of each of these include: a citizen initiative for directly changing a regulation (_Initiative_); a general assembly or workers’ council (_Assembly_); a participatory budgeting, strategic planning, or electoral process (_Processes_); a referendum or call to vote “Yes” or “No” to change the name of an organization (_Consultation_). The more notable components that are combined into spaces to deliver participatory mechanisms include in-person _meetings_, _proposals_, _blogs, debates, static information pages, surveys_, _results_ and _comments_. So, for example, the various phases of a participatory budgeting process (where members of an organization are called to decide how to spend a budget) can combine components in the following way: at an early phase, public meetings can be opened for citizens to analyze different needs classified by districts. In turn these meetings can lead to the design of a survey. The survey results can next be used to define a set of categories for projects to be proposed. The proposal component might then be activated for participants to create and publish their projects as solutions to the identified needs. These proposals can be commented on. After a period of deliberation, the voting component can be activated to select among the projects using a budget-expenditure system. Participants can then be called to a public meeting to evaluate the results and an assessment survey can then be launched for those who could not attend the meeting. Finally, the accountability component can be activated to monitor the degree of execution of the selected projects and people can comment on it. This is but one example of how components are combined in a space, but there are many other combinatorial possibilities. What makes Decidim particularly powerful is this combination of components within spaces, which provides an organization with a complete toolkit to easily design and deploy a democratic system adapted to its needs.