Hi tonyk,
Thanks for asking. You are right about that but you are still missing something that most everyone seems to miss. On example I like to illustrate this with is the sex education survey topic. (see:
http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/69)
Whenever any government asks for public input on this topic, everyone shows up and divides into liberals on one side and conservatives on the other. It often seems like they are almost gnashing their teeth at each other, and will never agree on anything. Government officials are always afraid to speak or do anything, fearing no matter what they say or do, the other side will crucify them. This is precisely the problem that is deadlocking congress today.
But when you bring this into Canonizer.com, what should be obvious, and what everyone is missing, finally does become obvious, is easily recognized and this quickly rises to the top so it can be focused on. That most important doctrine is: "Education is important" which everyone agrees on. It is just that one side is OK with education being done in public school, while the other camp simply prefers to have it done in a family or more private setting. Everyone getting so involved in far less important issues like this blinds everyone to the obvious most important issue that always ends up being a lost casualty of the war that results.
The ability to push lesser issues to a sub camp, where it can still be valued and tracked, enables the focus and consensus to finally return to the most important actionable unanimous consensus issue which can stay in the top level supper camp. It is techniques like pushing lesser important issues to sub camps that enables the most important consensus items to build consensus around them in a way that values and bridles diversity of opinion to drive the consensus forward, not tear things apart. Where disagreement remains, often far less than everyone normally realizes, you can find creative ways to get everyone all they want, take turns, focus on finding out what kind of scientific proof would falsify competing camps for its supports, and focus on demonstrating that, or whatever, so it can drive things forward instead of ripping things apart.
The purpose of the different selectable Canonizer algorithms is a bit different than this kind of consensus building. When you are measuring for expert consensus, in a way that enables the comparison of this to the popular consensus, and so on, everyone asks "Who are the experts?" So, we give everyone the ability to select whatever Canonizer algorithm they want, which is basically giving the people the ability to specify who the experts they trust are, then canonize and finally for the first time communicate accordingly.
These are a few examples of the consensus building and communicating techniques we are developing at Canonizer.com and we welcome any other helpful ideas from anyone.
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