OWS experiments with democracy and diversity

http://www.opendemocracy.net/marianne-maeckelbergh/experiments-in-democracy-and-diversity-within-occupy-movements

"But, if we take the time to look more closely, we quickly see that the Occupy movement embodies a crucial and important political message that is clear to those who participate. And far from having no structure at all, Occupy inherited a complex political structure that has been actively developed for nearly half a century. The fact that this structure is not perfect, does not mean that it is not there. With the rise of the Occupy movement this political structure, referred to differently everywhere, began to get a common name: horizontality. Horizontality is a term that is used to refer to a fiercely egalitarian, decentralized, networked form of democratic decision-making and it is offered by this movement not as a demand, but as an alternative political system to replace representative democracy."

The article labels this new system as a "horizontal decision-making structure" that allows input from the people at a grassroots level.  "Horizontal decision-making today has built on this long history to develop highly structured, yet fluid systems of democratic decision-making that incorporate many of the critiques and lessons learned from these previous movements.  First, horizontality is premised on the rejection of fixed representation as a political structure. Second, it functions through the political structure of networks and not the geographically delineated space of the nation-state. Third, it embraces a rejection of uniformity as the guiding ideal of democratic deliberation in favour of a system that fosters diversity. Finally, the movement takes equality to be always desirable but never fully achievable and equality is therefore treated as something for which each member of the polity has to take active responsibility. This creates a decision-making process in which the participants are continuously challenging (with varying degrees of success) inequalities and discriminations as they arise within their own structures of governing. "

Each participant in this system is allowed input, either in putting forward ideas or contesting something the body might be about to agree on.  As you can imagine, this wonderful idea can drag out decision making into hours of debate.  I witnessed this in a broadcast of the Denver OWS group when they spent about two hours debating what to call one type of action they were planning.  So while I admire the notion that everyone has input, I also think there needs to be some mechanism to "stay on target" as Anonymous says.

Anonymous is a group that uses horizontal decision-making to a degree. But they can be heartless when it comes to the idea of letting everyone have input.  You can be shouted down for getting off-topic.  If your idea seems stupid, you will be told to go die in a fire.  I don't like this method of weeding out the crazy ideas either, but I can see why they do it.  It DOES keep them on target, and it DOES shut down crazy talk that would otherwise divert and delay deliberation.

So what I see missing from horizontal decision-making (not quite the same as ICA but close) is how to quash ideas that will only derail the process, and yet still allowing every participant to have input.  Let's face it, not everyone has good ideas.  Not everyone can articulate their idea well even if it IS a good idea.  I don't have a friendly answer to this dilemma yet.