Canonizer.com is a wiki based open survey system. "Topics" can be created by anyone on any controversial issue, to survey for what a crowd believes on that issue. The goal is to develop "camps" that concisely describe the views of all survey participators for that controversial "topic".

When you participate in the survey process, if a "camp" already exists which adequately expresses your views on that topic, all you need to do is to "join" that camp. There are two ways to join and support a camp. You can either be a direct supporter, or you can delegate your support to some other trusted camp member. If you are a direct supporter, you are expected to receive camp forum posts, via e-mail, and notifications of all camp modifications, and to be generally involved in and responsible for camp development. If you are not interested in receiving such e-mail and being this involved, or if you even consider yourself to not be an expert at all, on that topic, you can delegate your vote to someone else you trust more. If the person you delegate your vote to, jumps camps (if the camp is falsified, for example), you're vote will automatically follow them to the new camp.

The numbers before each camp indicate the total number of people that have joined that camp, in the default one person one vote mode. You can change this canonization mode by selecting various canonizer algorithms on the side bar. For example, if you want to find out how the expert consensus of a crowd differs from the popular consensus, you can change from the default one person one vote algorithm, to something like the "Mind Expert" algorithm on the side bar. When you do this, the numbers for each camp change to represent a quantitative measure of expertise, as dictated by that selected algorithm. The topic camps in the outline re-order themselves according to whatever canonizer algorithm is selected. You can also set the filter level to filter for camps that do not fit your required level of support.

The camps of a topic are organized in an outline hierarchy with a single root camp at the top called the "agreement camp". If you join a camp, not only is your vote counted in that camp, it is also counted in all parent camps of the outline, including the "agreement camp" at the top. The "agreement statement" for this top camp can be thought of as the survey question. It is what defines what is being surveyed for in a topic. Of course, questions should be stated in a way that everyone agrees is not biased towards any one camp, and why it is called the agreement camp.

If there is not yet a camp which represents your views, you can create a new camp. Traditional petitions, and other published material, must be perfect before it is submitted. This is not the wiki way used at Canonizer.com. The idea is to simply get the camp started, as a rough draft, and then all people that agree with you can then join you and help further develop it in lots of easy wiki steps done by everyone.

By default, non supported camps are set to be filtered, and will not show up until someone is supporting it. Any time anyone is creating a new camp or topic, it is recommended that the creator first turn off the default filter by setting the filter less than value to zero on the side bar. That way the newly created camp, with no support, will not be filtered. Once the camp is supported, the filter can be turned back on by restoring a filter value > 0. Turning the filter off also has the advantage of making any abandoned camps appear. In order to maintain the goal of never losing any history, most things cannot be deleted. Instead, cleaning up abandoned topics or camps by recycling like this is preferred to creating new ones.

The goal is to have the most efficient representation of what everyone believes, with as few camps as possible. The responsibility of finding the most important issues that should exist in the highest level super camps, and building as much consensus, in the fewest possible camps, is the responsibility of all survey participators.

If two camps are similar, it is advantageous for the supporters of each to recognize such and then work together to "merge" their camps, so as to increase the amount of consensus that camp has. If any minor disagreeable issues do show up, while negotiating a new camp merge, or when recruiting new members to a camp, such can be pushed out of the way into lower level sub camps. Each camp has a discussion forum where proposals to improve camps in any way, including such mergers, required changes to win recruits, and so on, can be negotiated.

Anyone can propose any change to any camp at any time. If there are no supporters of a camp, any proposed changes go live instantly, just like Wikipedia. If there are supporters of a camp, any proposed changes first go into a review mode for one week. All direct supporters are notified when a proposed change has been submitted. If no supporters object to a proposed change during the one week review period, unanimous agreement is assumed by all supporters, and the change then goes live.

If anyone does object, it is polite for the objectors to describe why, in the camp forum, so that everyone can know what everyone wants, and seek to find the best way to build and negotiate as much consensus as possible. If real differences are found, camps can be "forked" into new camps, or the disagreeable doctrines can be moved to supporting sub camps.

If you want to change the attributes of a "Topic", you select the "Manage / Edit Topic" link in the topic section on a page. If you want to change the attributes of a camp, including if you want to change a camps outline structure by changing various camp's parent camps, you select the "Manage / Edit Camp" link in the camp section. Finally, if you want to make a wiki change to the camp statement, itself, you can do this by taking the "Mange / Edit Camp Statement" link. These "Mange / Edit" links take you to a history page for that element. The currently live version is green. Proposed versions are yellow. If you are a supporter, this is where you can object to them before they go live. When anyone does object to a change, it turns red, and will not go live. Historical camps are blue. To make a modification, simply select the version you would like to start with and select the "Propose modification based on this version" link. Anything in the system can be modified by using one of these 3 types of edits: Topic attributes, Camp Attributes, or Camp Statement. At least, that is, if all supporters agree with any such proposed change, and do not object during the one week review process before it goes live.

The red icons on pages can be clicked on to pop up relevant description or help information.

For a step by step set of instructions to create or start a new topic go here.