A Saturday experiment · runs every market day · V3

The Saturday Board

Can a market crowd out-think the capitol?

Every Saturday we put up a board at the farmers' market and ask one real question — an issue the capitol has already debated and voted on, though we don't say which way the vote went. Over the day, one visitor at a time spends about five minutes at the board. Nobody runs the discussion. Nobody is in charge of the answer. By closing time the board has settled on one, and we compare it with what the politicians chose.

No single visitor solves the problem. The board solves it. Each person adds a little, trims a little, and moves on; the answer grows out of many small, honest contributions. That only works if everyone follows the same short procedure — so the procedure below matters, including its order.

The board

The board at mid-afternoon. Stack D is tallest, but the answer is read by neighbourhood: D with its neighbours C and E scores 17; B with A and C scores 16. Stack F stands alone beyond a gap and counts only itself.

Two long strips, one above the other, each a row of stacks of sticky notes. New notes go on top of old ones, covering them, so a stack only ever takes up the space of one note however tall it grows. The number in the top corner of each top note says how tall the stack is underneath it.

The Wall of Why — pink & coral stacks, upper strip — where it hurts. Every visitor's personal stake in the issue lives here. One stack per distinct pain; the number on top is how many people have said it. This is the problem, told by the people who have it. Nothing on it is ever taken down.
The Field — aqua & lime stacks, lower strip — the ideas. One stack per idea; the top note is the idea's current wording, and the number on top is how much the crowd has built on it. Stacks that are close in meaning sit next to each other; a hand's-width gap between stacks means "these are different kinds of answer, not versions of one." Position along the strip carries no rank — there is no good end and no bad end.
The Archive — a box, with a logbook. Notes the crowd has taken down. Nothing is ever binned or torn up: a lifted note goes in the box and gets a line in the log — what it said, which stack it came off, and when.

Board layout. Stack positions are about 10 cm apart (a 76 mm note plus a finger's width), so a 2.4 m board holds about 22 stacks per strip. Practical points:

The Wall of Why runs along the upper strip, the Field along the lower. Each Field stack has a small letter card (A, B, C …) pinned just under it — that is the stack's name in the log.
Height is the stack itself. Nothing on the board ever moves up, down, or sideways — a note only ever goes on top of a stack or beside one.
Need more room? Add a second board to the right, never a second row: neighbours must be neighbours along one line.
The Archive box and the steward stand at the right-hand end of the Field. The issue card hangs where visitors arrive, before they can see the Field.

Materials: pink, coral, aqua and lime sticky notes; fine-tip markers; a timer; the steward's logbook; small letter cards (A, B, C …) to label stacks; a hand stamp; and the issue card — one paragraph stating this week's question neutrally, with no options listed.

One visit — six steps, in this order

A visit takes about five minutes. The order is not decoration; the method fails if the steps are shuffled — above all, if you read the Field before you have written your own idea.

Say where it hurts pink or coral · ~45 s

The steward reads the issue card aloud. You write one pink or coral note: how does this issue touch your life? What does it cost you, or someone you know?

Then look at the Wall of Why — the top note of each stack on the wall. If one already says your pain, put yours on top of it and write the stack's number plus one in the corner. If none does, start a new stack and write 1.

Don't look at the Field yet.

First instinct aqua · ~60 s

Before you've read a single idea from anyone else, write your gut answer to the question. Half-formed is fine. Obvious is fine. There is no wrong answer at this step — a "bad" idea still teaches the board something, and the board will sort it out later.

Post it ~15 s

Now look at the Field for the first time — but your note is already finished. Post it exactly as written: no edits, no rewrites, not a word, even if you spot a note you like better than your own. Every aqua note on the board is a first instinct; that is the point.

Where it goes is a filing question, not a debate, and it is yours to answer:

If a stack's top note says what yours says, put yours on top of it and write the stack's number plus one in the corner.
If nothing says it, start a new stack: 1 in the corner. Put it beside the stack it is most like. If it isn't like anything on the board, leave a hand's-width gap.

Nobody chooses their own stack's standing. A stack grows because other people build on it, never because its author did.

Read ~75 s

Read the top note of every stack on both strips, with the number in its corner. That is the whole board as it stands: every pain and how many share it, every idea in its current wording and how much the crowd has built on it.

You don't need to dig into the stacks. What's underneath is history, and it is in the numbers.

Add lime, pink or coral · ~60 s · both optional

Two things you may add, one of each:

One lime note. If someone else's idea makes you think "almost — but I'd say it like this," write your version. Then either put it on top of their stack (a rewording or refinement — the stack's number plus one), or, if it is a real variation, start a new stack right beside theirs (number 1). Any stack is fair game, not just the tall ones. Judge with the Wall of Why: is your version better for pains that aren't yours?
One more pink or coral note — but only for a pain that is not on the wall yet. It starts a new stack on the wall at 1. If your pain is already up there, it has your number in step 1 and that is enough.

Trim ~45 s

You have three strokes. A stroke is a tally mark in the bottom corner of a top note in the Field — the note you can see, never one underneath. Put a stroke on a note if that idea, as currently worded, would make what is written on the Wall of Why worse.

Limits: no strokes on a stack you have added to today; no more than two strokes on one note; the Wall of Why never gets strokes.

Three strokes and it comes off. If your stroke is the third, lift the note and hand it to the steward for the Archive. The note underneath is now the top: taking a note off rejects that wording, not the idea. An idea is gone only when its stack is empty.

Judge with the Wall of Why, not just your own taste. The question for every stroke is: would this idea actually add to what's written on the Wall of Why — including the pains that aren't mine?

If others are at the stall: the table. When two or three visitors are at the board at once, after everyone has finished step 6 they may talk for two minutes about what's on the board — then each may place one extra stroke. Talk comes after the individual steps, never before: the board wants your own instinct first and your considered judgement second, not an echo of the loudest voice.

The steward

The steward keeps the board tidy and never touches the answer:

Never suggests an idea, hints, files a note for anyone, or places a stroke. Ever. If a visitor can't decide where a note goes, the steward says "it's your call" — and means it.
Reads the issue card, keeps time, hands out notes, stamps hands (one visit per person per Saturday).
Gives each new stack its letter card.
Slides stacks along the strip to make room — keeping their order, and keeping the gaps. Never reorders them, never merges two stacks, never splits one, never moves a note from one stack to another.
Takes lifted notes into the Archive and writes the log line.
Once an hour, fills in the logbook tally: new aqua notes, new lime notes (on-top and beside, separately), new stacks on the Wall of Why, strokes placed, notes lifted, number of stacks, and the leading neighbourhood.

Reading the answer

At closing time, for every stack in the Field, add up its number plus the numbers of the stacks immediately to its left and right — not across a gap. That total is the stack's neighbourhood. The biggest neighbourhood wins. Its middle stack's top note is the headline; the neighbours are the answer's family of variations — read them together as one position. The steward reads the numbers out loud so anyone can check.

Note what the rule is not: the answer is not simply the tallest stack. A tall stack standing alone — one nobody could rephrase or vary and still agree with — loses to a stack of the same height with living neighbours. An answer the whole market can live with beats an answer one group loves.

Settling early: if the leading neighbourhood has not changed for a full hour, the board is done — it can be read out before closing time.

The scoreboard

Each week, record three things side by side:

The board's answer	the winning neighbourhood, headline and family
The capitol's answer	what was actually voted, revealed only at close
What happened since	how the real decision worked out, where known

Over the weeks, that table is the experiment: a running answer to whether an open crowd, five minutes at a time, finds better answers than the people elected to find them.

Why the odd rules? (the short version)

Instinct before reading keeps each idea independent. If people read first, the board stops hearing a hundred minds and starts hearing its own echo. It is also the only way a genuinely different kind of answer ever gets onto the board: nobody reaches it by rewording what's already there.
Pain before ideas because nobody can judge solutions to a problem they haven't heard. The Wall of Why is the problem statement, written by the people who own it — and the reason a visitor can trim an idea for a harm they will never personally feel.
On top, never at the bottom because an idea's standing should be the amount the crowd has built on it, and nothing else. There is no climbing and no voting. To lift an idea you have to add to it.
Read only the tops because that is all anyone can honestly read in five minutes, and a small read that is actually done beats a big read that is faked. The numbers carry the history.
Three strokes, two per person so that no visitor — however confident — can take anything down alone. The board's opinion is only allowed to change a little at a time.
Lifting reveals because rejecting a wording should not destroy the idea under it. Only a stack that has been trimmed to nothing is gone.
Neighbours count because how many near-agreements an idea collects is information. Ideas that survive being slightly rephrased are the ones worth trusting; the gap rule stops unrelated ideas borrowing each other's weight.
The Archive, never the bin because knowing what the crowd let go — and when — is part of the answer. Nothing stops the next visitor writing the same idea again as their own first instinct.

That's the whole method. Put up the board, hold the order, trust the crowd.