🔩 Usage
Getting ready to run a Polis conversation? Awesome! Here's a framework for thinking about running conversations, and a checklist.
Setting up your conversation
- Log in
- Head to conversation configuration in the admin interface
- Choose a topic
- Decide how you'll handle 👹 Moderation
- Decide how you'll handle participant 👩🎤 Identity
- Head to distribute and grab the embed code, see: Embedding Polis on Your Web Property
- Decide whether to turn the visualization on or off: see example scenarios and their configurations
- Consider educating participants about the issue at hand
- Consider 👷🏾👷 Roles and who will fill them
Distributing and marketing your conversation
Who needs to be invited? How will you invite them? Organizations have found that putting a minimal (low hundreds of dollars) amount of advertising spend towards either a general population in a location (everyone in San Francisco) or to relevant populations (healthcare workers) has been effective at generating cost-effective 500-2000 person conversations, though this does not ensure a representative sample
Planning the duration of your conversation
If all participants are in the same place at the same time, a conversation can be run in 10 to 15 minutes. This is less common. More often, conversations are run asynchronously over a period of 1-3 weeks. You should communicate to participants that they will need to regularly revisit the conversation to vote on comments that have been added since they last voted. Consider closing commenting early
Monitoring your conversation
Use the real-time monitor and report
Handling reasonable concerns
See: gaming the system, trolling
Framing and context
If there is a formal decision-making process to which Polis conversation results will provide input, see facilitation
After the conversation
- Examine the report
- Get the full dataset from data export
- Learn about the ultimate value delivery of your conversation (see: services)