User profiles

Read about the OpinionFirst profiles:

Visitor

As a visitor, you are not registered or logged in. 

①  Your votes have limited impact.

You can 'support' a proposal.

②  Your votes are anonymous.

No one can see your votes. Your votes are not registered, so you cannot change or remove your vote.

A visitor can read everything on OpinionFirst. Without registration, there are limitations on how actively you can participate, and not all the OpinionFirst benefits will be available for you. Only through the registration, you can vote for proposals ('Give your vote!' buttons). A visitor can always give support to proposals ('Give your support vote!' button). Your votes are not registered, so you cannot change your vote.

Voter

As a voter, you are registered and logged in.

①  Your votes have a full impact.

You can 'vote' on a proposal.

②  Your votes are anonymous.

Only you can see your votes. Your votes are registered, so you can change or remove your vote at any time.

③  You have full access to all the OpinionFirst benefits.

You instantly use your influence as a registered voter to vote with impact on topics you consider to be important.

Once registered, you can immediately benefit from all the possibilities that OpinionFirst is offering you. Only a few basic contact details like your name, e-mail address, and hometown are required which makes the registration process quick and simple. Your votes are always anonymous, so your choices are only visible to you.

As a registered voter:

• you give more weight to your votes and will immediately increase your influence, just as in any democracy or organization based on democratic principles.

• you can publish topics, proposals, and 360°'s.

• you can immediately see the topics, proposals, and 360°'s in your own neighborhood, town, province, country, or group.

• you can create your profile.

• you can store and change your votes.

• you have the option to become a representative, opinion leader, ambassador, translator, or moderator.

• we can provide you with relevant information.

• you avoid messages asking you to enter a verification code.

• you benefit from an enhanced user experience.

• ... and much more!

Updating

You can change your registration at any time.

Removing

You can remove your votes at any time. 

Ambassador

You become an ambassador when you support a proposal and decide to make this visible for everyone. Ambassador's support is very important to the success of a proposal.

As an ambassador, you promote a proposal publicly. Your presence will attract more voters, which will give more influence to realize your favorite proposal.

• Promotor, diplomat, representative

Updating

The ambassador status can be changed at any time.

Opinion leader

You become an opinion leader when you submit or join a proposal on a topic. Voters can vote for you and your proposal. Decisions on a topic are based on proposals. 

As an opinion leader, you choose to actively represent your proposal publicly. Promoting your proposal attracts more voters, which allows you to obtain more influence to realize your proposal.

• expert, spokesman, representative, member of topic parliament, 

If you have a plan, a solution about a problem, or a proposal on how certain things could be better handled, then you should become an opinion leader. Anyone can become an opinion leader for a proposal, but in particular, we urge experts with extensive knowledge in their field to become opinion leaders and present their already existing proposals around topics.

Someone who publishes a proposal becomes an opinion leader and thus will become publicly known with their full name on OpinionFirst. You can only become an opinion leader for any topics belonging to your home place, province, country, or group. Outside of these places and groups, you cannot become an opinion leader.

As an opinion leader, we ask that you maintain a calm and respectful tone when expressing your proposal, and avoid generalizations about religion, parties, left, right, etc.

It is not always necessary to publish your proposal. You could also recommend an existing proposal by using a '360°'. This is often a much easier method to quickly publish your ideas or suggestions, without the need to become an opinion leader.

Success

Success is certainly often a team effort! It is definitely an advantage to have several fellow opinion leaders and ambassadors supporting your proposal. Together you could be able to obtain enough power and influence to realize your proposal. You become a team with one common proposal.

The more votes your team of opinion leaders and ambassadors are able to obtain, the more influence you will have and as such the more likely it is that positive changes will be possible. The results of your team efforts can be monitored under 'Results'.

As an opinion leader, you should realize that OpinionFirst facilitates your proposal but that you will have to attract your votes yourself. You can actively promote your proposal using any means at your disposal: pamphlets, social media, radio, TV, and others. As an opinion leader, you will have to compete with other opinion leaders to attract as many votes as possible.

Personal information

An opinion leader can change his or her personal information at any time by selecting 'My Profile' under the personal button.

Stopping

An opinion leader can’t just stop if people have voted for him or her, as this would not be fair to those who supported their proposal or plan. We recommend you inform your voters that you will be stopping as an opinion leader and that you will transfer your votes to another opinion leader.

Representative

Every opinion leader is automatically representative. In the case of more opinion leaders than that there are seats at the table available, representatives are selected based on the number of votes they collected. 

As a representative, you actively represent your colleague opinion leaders and the persons that voted for your plan.

• expert, spokesman, representative, member of topic parliament, 

A topic can have many proposals. Some proposals are popular and will collect many votes, while other proposals have just a few votes. Each proposal itself has one or more opinion leaders, some of which have many votes and others just a few.

There is only a limited amount of seats available around the table or in parliament. Only opinion leaders who have collected enough votes will have access to a seat. These opinion leaders are the 'Representatives' of their proposal.

The representatives together will meet to make decisions about a topic. A decision can be taken if a majority of the representatives support this decision. For some decisions, the representatives of different proposals will have to negotiate in order to obtain a majority for a decision. This is exactly the same as in any democracy or organization based on democratic principles.

OpinionFirst allows you and other citizens or members of groups to exactly indicate which proposal should win and which opinion leader should represent you. With your vote on proposals, you have direct influence on what you want to see happen and who will represent you. 

For 'Places' on OpinionFirst we use:

• Place 11 available seats (majority 6)
• Province 17 available seats (majority 9)
• Country 35 available seats (majority 18)
• Region 99 available seats (majority 50)
• World 199 available seats (majority 100)

For 'Groups' we have no seats defined since every group is specific.

The results can be submitted to politicians, policymakers, managers, and directors who can weigh the outcome of modern democratic decision making in their decisions. They may also decide to make their own use of Opinion First to align their proposals on citizens and members.

Example

For an important topic in a small town, there are a total of 23 opinion leaders promoting 16 different proposals. There are 11 seats available, so only 11 opinion leaders will be representatives. These representatives are the opinion leaders who have collected the most votes for their proposal as well as for themselves. A majority of 6 or more representatives are necessary to take decisions in this small town.

Calculation

The total number of votes for a topic is divided by the number of seats. This gives how many votes are necessary to win one seat. The remaining seats are calculated and divided over the different proposals and opinion leaders.

Candidate

You become a candidate when you choose to be considered for a leadership position. Voters can vote to support your application.

As a candidate, you will be elected by your community as the new leader. Promoting your candidacy by your promotion, ambassadors and activities attract more voters, which will help you to realize your ambition.

• expert, spokesman, representative, member of parliament, 

Delegate

You become a delegate when you want to be considered for representing other people's votes. Voters can decide to delegate their voting to a delegate in case they have little time or interest.

As a delegate, you will be elected by voters as the person to vote for them. A voter can always decide to change any vote for whatever topic at any time, regardless of what the delegate did vote for. before

• representative, agent, deputy, ..

Moderator

Moderators have an important role to protect and safeguard the quality of the contributions on OpinionFirst. A moderator has the control to ensure that contributions on OpinionFirst are constructive and fit within the objectives of OpinionFirst and the local law. As a moderator, you ensure that OpinionFirst will remain a pleasant and constructive environment.

You want to become a moderator if:

• You support democracy and the cause DemocracyFirst is trying to achieve.
• You are convinced that you are able to judge with decency and neutrality.
• You are willing to dedicate time to moderation.

If you would like to become a moderator then let us know through email.

Stopping

A moderator can terminate their status and responsibility as a moderator at any time.