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Referendum Glossary of Terms

Child Group
A group which is below another group, called its Parent Group in the community tree.

Community Tree
An n-ary tree of Groups where each node can have any number of children and any number of parents. The most important job of a referendum site administrator is to define the Community Tree. This is done by first analyzing an existing community and breaking it into Parent and Child Groups, then creating the Root Groups of the Community, and then any number of important Child Groups.

Discussion
A Bunch of comments posted about an Issue. Just Like all those other bulletin board systems out there, but in referendum every discussion is centered around an issue, and can therefore collect and analyze feedback from Members in the form of Votes

Group
An association of people united by a common interest. Each group can have any number of Parent Groups and any number of Child Groups

Issue
An item of interest to a Group. Presenting an issue to a Group invites either resolution or opinions about the item from all the group's Members in the form of Votes. The closest thing to an issue in a traditional bulletin board system is the subject line of a top-level thread.

Member
A person who belongs to a referendum Group

Parent Group
A group which is above another group, called its Child Group in the community tree.

Root Group
A group with no Parent Groups. Root Groups are created BEFORE a referendum site is launched. It is the set of initial Root Groups more than anything which describes the flavor of a Referendum community tree

Vote
A statement by a Member of his opinion on an Issue. Voting Collects information from members and thereby helps Groups and its members understand the group's makeup. This increased understanding helps the Group and its members to focus their efforts on goals which are important to the Group, thereby wisely spending the most important Group resource: the productive time of its members.

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