The requirements and design principles for large-scale collaborations and decision-making on the web

In order to allow for collaboration on a large scale that the internet can make possible, forum-like software need to have new tools, new policies and a fresh design. This paper presents the web collaboration project, a web-based software system that is built to allow a large number of people to collectively work together and arrive at intelligent decisions using scales that are currently not possible. This project allows numerous users to discuss topics and make decisions while keeping the signal-to-noise ratio low and resisting attacks from spammers. The main objective is that this project can tap into the vast amount of intelligence that is available on the internet, supporting a variety of worthwhile online endeavours that are taken up by large groups of collaborating people. Copyright © 2009, Inderscience Publishers.