Recent years have seen an increase in the use of online deliberation platforms (DPs). One of the main objectives of DPs is to enhance democratic participation, by allowing citizens to post, comment, and vote on policy proposals. But in what order should these proposals be listed? This paper makes a start with the principled evaluation of sorting methods on DPs. First, we introduce a conceptual framework that allows us to classify and compare sorting methods in terms of their purpose and the parameters they take into account. Second, we observe that the choice for a sorting method is often ad hoc and rarely justified. Third and last, we criticise sorting by number of approvals ('likes'), a method that is very common in practice. On the one hand, we show that if approvals are used for sorting, this should be done in an integrated way, also taking into account other parameters. On the other hand, we argue that even if proposals are on a par in terms of those other parameters, there are other, more appropriate ways to sort proposals in light of the approvals they have received.

翻译：近年来，在线审议平台的使用日益增多。此类平台的主要目标之一是通过允许公民发布、评论政策提案并对其进行投票，以增强民主参与。但这些提案应以何种顺序排列？本文开始对在线审议平台的排序方法进行原则性评估。首先，我们引入一个概念框架，使我们能够根据排序方法的目的及其考虑的参数对它们进行分类和比较。其次，我们观察到排序方法的选择往往是临时的，且很少得到合理解释。第三，也是最后一点，我们批评了实践中非常常见的按赞同数（“点赞”）排序的方法。一方面，我们指出，如果使用赞同数进行排序，应采用综合方式，同时考虑其他参数。另一方面，我们认为，即使提案在其他参数上相当，根据其获得的赞同数，也存在其他更合适的排序方式。