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Jimmy Wales Starting Campaign Wikis
Billosaur writes "Jimmy Wales, self-described creator of the Wikipedia, is apparently trying to bring the functionality offered by the Internet encyclopedia to a new realm: politics and political campaigns. He is starting a new website, the Campaigns Wikia, which 'has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.' Sounds intriguing, but one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation."
"Sounds intriguing, but one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation" How unlike the home life of our dear Queen.
Pete Ashdown, running for the US Senate in Utah against Orin Hatch, has had a wiki for most of his campaign. http://vote.peteashdown.org/wiki/
Hmm, why does this sound so familiar..? Oh right, it's because it's just another forum based around politics with a wiki-based software and format. And it happens to be run by Jimmy Wales.
As much as I respect Wales and Wikipedia, I don't really think that this is truly much to shout about. It's just another forum.
This kind of thing has been attempted by a Dutch newspaper http://wethepeople.nrc.nl/. The subject under discussion was/is how to go forward with European integration after the people France and The Netherlands had not accepted the proposed constitution. The software used was not really user friendly, and the discussion was channeled by allowing only 3 alternatives to be discussed, but the experiment is interesting, also because some politiicians of name joined it.
At least an initiative like this will bring the discussion more in the open and make the process of policymaking a little more transparent.
If this catches on he should be careful that he won't get shot by some people that might not like smart people or meaningful discussions in DC
"Sounds intriguing, but one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation." -- Isn't that how all wikis work anyway?
"Sounds intriguing, but one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation"
/. stories in the summary. Let us make up our own damn minds.
No... you provide the facts, we provide the opinion. That's how this works.
I wish people would stop trying to put their own spin on
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I see where this is going... wiki + politics = nothing good (deleted articles, spam, advertisments, flaming, trolling, huge font sizes, TYPING IN ALL CAPS, and much much more)
... [/FONT]
[FONT size=HUGE]VOTE FOR !BUSH VOTE FOR !BUSH VOTE FOR !BUSH VOTE FOR !BUSH
Scott Swezey
Poli want a Wiki?
Call me cynical, but this sounds idealistic to me. It is my opinion that in most parts of the world politics stopped being about "serious ideas of inteligent oponents" to transform into:
In a word, mostly propaganda.
Also, I think arguments, hovever intelligent they may be, don't change anything by themselves, but only if people listening to them are actually willing to listen (and I wouldn't bet much on that willingness).
Maybe I'm of this opinion only because I'm coming from one of the countries that was behind the iron curtain; Who knows?
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Surely that's the point, by giving them a home maybe he can keep all that crap off wikipedia.
I'm sure this is at least in part his reasoning - after all the "Politicians editing there candidates wikipedia pages" scandals.
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/ - A site for the Renaissance man and woman
I think this is a good idea. It looks to have the potential to raise peoples
awareness of the practise of politics and a central area where peoples opinions
on political issues and agendas can be seen in near real time. Much different
than the "write a letter to your congressman" or (in Ireland), "go meet with
your local councillor", where you have to account for the time it takes for
your opinion/issues to filter up and down the food chain.
There is also the "mob mentality", whereby if enough people have the same
views on a certain issue, then it has the potential to sway political thought.
How about developing this further, into a Wiki for other nations and political
regimes similar to (or dissimilar to) Republican Democracy.
Note: Republican here means the method of democracy practised, not the party.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
The nature of politics is so that whoever puts down something in writing in defense of a certain view will be attacked by the most fundamentalist, sharp and no-holds-barred opponents.
The reason for this is that allowing something to be put down on paper in a way implies that the view is "legitimate" - "it has been formulated, therefore it must be viable".
This is again tied to the principle that 'will' weighs ten times that of 'facts' - since nothing can ever be proven or beyond attack in humanistic subjects. The complexity of human interaction is so that any connection can be argued, and any refuted - e.g. if a reduction in alcohol prices is followed by a reduction in drink driving, you can just jump on the (often justified bandwagon) that "A did not cause B, rather third factor C caused B". And the relevance of any historical experience is in doubt, since all situations are fractally different.
For this reason, as stated, "Will" and "Formulation" is what it's all about. Formulate your arguments in a good-sounding way, and go a long way towards having them relied on. Destroy your opponents formulations, and destroy their capacity to influence politics. This is why political information wars now is so heavily dominated by the credibility of sources - if you discount a source as irrelevant (CNN, Sky News, WHO, UN, World Bank, IMF, Grandmothers for AIDS), you implicitly seek to attack their formulations and will. Chains of arguments and logic are much more rarely sought to be attacked, because of the mentioned difficulty of doing so.
Also relevant is that, usually, the more fundamentalist someone's opinions are, the more vehemetly he or she states and fights for them. 'Fundamentalist' doesn't neccessarily imply 'wants to cook with rocks', rather 'unwillingness to consider validity of other points of view'.
The result of these is that you will get a wiki where, occasionally, a Joe Bloggs will come in and formulate an argument - "I think we should add a tax to petrol, so that more people will buy cars that use less fuel", or "I think we should have more work in prisons, so that prisoners can do something good for society and learn something useful as well".
This will immediately be pounced on by said fundamentalists, and utterly destroyed. As in, Joe Bloggs is made to look like a fool and an ass. Note that the chain of arguments is impossible to attack, since society is too complex to predict an entire chain of causality and morality - it may well be that positive results _will_ happen with few adverse consequences. Because this is impossible to prove or refute, the destruction of Joe Bloggs will simply rather happen through an appropriately shaped rhetorical package, approximately three times the length of his post (length matters). By destroying Bloggs' formulations in the easiest way possible, you implicitly destroy his will and influence to try those formulations in real life. Joe Bloggs predictably leaves.
For this reason, any 'political' blog is very likely to end up with a lot of posturing, a lot of rhetorical barbs and kicks on the shin, a lot of attacks on formulation sources ("was this proposed by X? I think that says it all"), very little actual intellectual discussion of causality and morality, and only containing people with a combination of rhetorical acuity and enough fundamentalism in their guts to supply the stamina to write every day.
The established politicians will be making a big and costly push to tilt things in their favor, and the small fries will be on the outside looking in. If that can't be accomplished because of the way it is put together there will still be the little "B" word, bias. I love Wiki, but every once in a while there is an article reaking of bias. They don't always last that way, but there is a time that they appear very tilted. If the casual observer who is not likely to come back comes across something biased, they have been misinformed/underinformed at best and lied to at worst.
In all fairness, this is just an announcement at this point. This all might change when it gets out of the initial announcement with no details phase, but I'm skeptical. I don't think blogs are changing politics per se. I think "inside the beltway" it is still business as usual. I think blogs are changing how politics are being reported to us. They are a challenge to mainstream media outlets. In that regard, I think this is just another drop in the bucket.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I'm really pessimistic on whether this is going to work or not. Wikipedia articles, IMHO, are best when they are on obscure subjects that people really get nerdy about, such as science fiction, video games, mathematics, etc. Where it is weakest is anything with a bit of politics to it where people will try to define their opinions into reality or try to write about a subject that is very ill-defined. Look at articles like (sorry, East Asian heavy because that's my thing): 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Asia Some kind of weird hodge-podge of random bits on South Asian and East Asia culture... I personally can't see any connections among them. 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China An attempt to create a meaningless distinction between the two to try to support the view that either Taiwan (a democracy where there is little support for unification with China) is really a part of the PRC or that Taiwan, an island maybe not even 1/50 the size of the PRC, is "the real China". Clear evidence of the insanity of the two articles is that, apart from the historical stuff that happened in China, is the large overlap of the two articles. 3) And specifically on American politics (I assume that this is going to end up mainly being an English language thing), we all know what happened to the Bush and Kerry articles during the campaign--protected pages due to vandalism. For people that think that's a "solution", it also freezes the pages and prevents them from responding to various attacks at a critical time--a lot of things get unveiled when you're campaigning for president. I can't say that there aren't really interesting, informative articles. I found this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_propaganda pretty informative and interesting, probably because it's focused on a single topic and doesn't necessarily attempt to do so much with the PRC's modern propaganda, which would be touchy and I assume would result in a lower quality article (but if it could be done without bias and maintain its status without getting reverted back and forth, then it would be good of course).
to give the people who like to argue about politics a forum to do so.
...'internecine feuding' is nearly redundant.
Original definition: 'carnage' or 'bloodshed' as a result of fighting within a group. Today, it is used more to mean 'internal struggle', in which case it is clearly redundant. But if we consider that today's politics routinely prompt carnage by promoting battles in far away places, then we have our answer regardless of the decade.
Please turn in your Pundit card and step to the end of the line...
I've got bad news: groupthink sites like wikipedia generally don't bring out the best and most intelligent ideas. Generally a new bright idea is only going to be shared by a few people, and a democratic process will squash those ideas. Combine this with the fact that a majority belief in a statement doesn't make it true and you have serious problems for a site that wants to create an intelligent debate. For a more detailed analysis of the failings of sites like wikipedia see this article.
Philosophy.
from the how-long-until-the-religion-wiki dept.
What, like this? Or this?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I think it's a great idea to allow more intelligent people get involved and discuss policy. We (I don't live in the US any more, but it's not any different here) now have "vote for me because i'm your buddy" lame campaigns, and almost no real debate. Very few people can stand the endless meetings and useless bickering of traditional politics, unless of course they want to be elected or get something in return.
./ ?) be useful in filtering the manipulation attempts, and all the garbage one usually finds in forums ? I am wondering whether a wiki is really the best tool in this case ?
This should get a lot more honest people interested.
But wouldn't some form of moderation (ala
Think of it like redirecting a river. It'll allow good ideas and politics to grow and flourish in the absence of the rotting quagmire that is popular opinion.
Deleted
If political debate on Wikipedia is any indication I don't hold high hopes for this. From my experience there are many edit-wars and the complexity of discussion (as in discussing page-lengths about small details of political standpoints) is too high for people who don't have the time to read a book a day on a particular subject and I doubt that there will be any useable "results". I wish my fears will not turn out to be true because I think it's an interesting idea and I am a fan of political debate myself.
Gee,now polistooges will be able to lie about themselves and others and it will be waiting for the choir to read daily.
This is a bigger waste of bandwidth than popups.Anyone here who thinks they'll be more politically informed,go stand on your head in the corner.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
It requires a visionary to come up with something new. Sure, many people, often the same people every time, will say it isn't going to work. It won't happen. It's just another blog / forum, etc, etc. Booring. Can't you come up with something new?
;)
/., are not optimal for that job anyways. It is more important that experts are making the calls, than voting on a topic for something like Wikipedia.
;)
It's hillarious how quick people are to grab onto the negative, when everybody really wants to be happy.. So you have to fight for your cause and ignoring the negativity.
Someone who started Wikipedia.. That speaks volumes to me. I remember when I was a kid 15-20 years ago, and saw a show on Discovery how our society would turn into an "information based economy", or some such phrase.
To be short: I was completely turned off! In my mind, I thought "If we will be able to share all information with everybody, store collections of books online, meet anyone on the planet, virtual tourism, etc, etc. Why shouldn't it be free? Why wouldn't people collaborate to make up information about every concept known to man?
The show touched that subject, but insisted somehow that there had to be money involved, that our society would value information more. Brokers would buy- and sell bits of information, as if it was a scarcity. That can only happen with DRM and stifling IP-laws, and is not natural at all. I just don't understand this way of reasoning. Sharing is very natural I feel.
Jimmy Wales has clearly understood the real power of the internet and how to tame it. To take on such a project and succeed where everybody else has failed, takes talents in many areas.
Yes, information can be shared indefinately. However, doing so, increases the value of the information to humankind. While if you share a bread with everybody, everybody will die of hunger.. unless you have special connections
To avoid bias, ways of moderating and collaborating on changes are also needed. I'm not saying Wikipedia meets the highest vision of automatizing that, but it does a very fine job because of dilligent and serious editors (hats off). Maybe automatizing is, like K5 and
To get the project known, used and collaboration started, is an enormous feat which is hard to quantify, wether it's luck, PR or good looks
What immediately comes up in my mind why a Wiki for political discussions is a good idea:
Wiki's are made to make a consensus. The further in time you get, the articles should become more and more correct, brushed-up and representative.
Democracy also has an interest in making a consensus, with both majority and minority interests in mind. This is solved today by representative democracy.
Politics is today far removed from the actual people. Also, topics tend to gravitate towards the scandalous, superficial, sex or fear-full, rather than important topics.
Forums do NOT make a concensus. They have many conflicting opinions, but moves very quickly on the next topic disregarding the work that has been put in previous topics. Such a waste of time and effort, so MUCH goes into the drain!
Blogs are also limited to just one author, and the commenters. They gravitate towards news and hot topics, but are not trying to systematically cover everything.
Wiki's on the other hand are supposed to converge into one piece of information, or many collaborated articles, about the whole topic.
I am very interested in how to portray conflicting views though. Maybe each article should have links to the related discussions? Or you could use DHTML to hide much of the discussion behind every paragraph, then choose the view you want to see.
Just see here: http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Terrorism
After reading this, don't you feel compelled to fill in the blanks, or further the argumentation. The idea is to make the articles more whole
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
After all, Kinky Friedman's campaign for Guv'nor of Texas is already rather odd. Someone send Jimmy Wales one of the T-shirts, maybe the one that says "Kinky for Governor: How Hard Could It Be?"
(this is not a
If you're going to vandalise a political web page what you do is carefully insert and delete words like "do", "not", "does", "doesn't", "will", "won't". and so on. The result is far more subtle, far funnier and probably won't be discovered, ever.
See, that's how adults do it.
Deleted
YAY!
This rawkz...
- a wiki that changes too fast for Google to cache, or
- a wiki that will fill up the archives to the brim with all the changes, or
- a wiki that will truly reflect the state of U.S. politics i.e. a mess !
and more...
Free ?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount ?!
This message was
While still being groupthink, I've developed an open-source (Affero GPL) and open-content (GFDL) website at debatepoint.com that is a more democratic means of deliberation than wiki's. With moderation like slashdot, I would think points would be argued over in a manner like science.. the ability to falsify or approve of arguments. The few people with the bright ideas would be moderated up and falsify their parent argument, which in turn effects the validity of the grandparent, etc. It's still not ready for heavy usage, but try out one of the debates on the front page or in my sig for an example.
The fundament of good, insightful, pertinent, polite, relevant, reality-relevant discussions are to formulate them in terms of two aspects: Causality, and Morality. Any proposal will be made in terms of causality and morality (though many could prefer to argue about causality alone), and disagreements will be about either.
To exemplify:
Joe thinks that the police force of a city should get extra funding, and states it loudly. Peter rather thinks that the emergency health services of the city should get extra funding, and states it equally loudly.
In most discussions, would there be any agreement? Any enlightening discussion? No, not at all. Productive political discussions are as rare as mammary chickens.
If discussing in terms of causality and morality however, something like the following could be revealed:
Joe thinks that the city has a higher crime rate than the surrounding countryside, and feels it is morally objectionable (moral). He also places very high moral weight on criminals being removed from other people (moral). He thinks increased funding will allow more hiring/longer shifts, leading to more cops on the street and cleared cases, reducing crime by a significant amount, thereby achieving the stated objective (causal). He does not feel emergency health is equally pressing, as he feels health is something people have a bit of responsibility for themselves, unlike robbery (moral). In any case he does not believe that the proposed emergency helicopters would give much health for the buck in an inner-city environment (causal).
This suddenly gives a massive basis for discussion. Moral issues are not something for facts, and having several factions or sides is viable - per democratic principle. "Expert opinions" on these, "sources", are meaningless.
Causal issues are very different - here, there could be very interesting and stance-changing debates. Whether emergency helicopters are useful in an urban environment and how many lives they are likely to save is a matter of sources and expert opinion. Joe's stance could change on the basis of information.
For the NY migration debate;
- how many illegal immigrants is in NY is a causal question
- what effort/cost the deportation would take is a causal question
- how many you would be able to deport is a causal question
- economic gains/losses is a causal question
- whether it is right to seek deportation is a moral question
- which social changes there would be is causal, while the morality of each possibility is moral
I feel there is no better way to immediately structure a discussion in a productive way.
Yes, indeed, a Good Discussion(tm).
But... I wonder, how can one have a good discussion if the previous comments/statements have been edited or deleted from the wiki page?
hmmm... ?
Free ?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount ?!
This message was
One solution to the edit-wars problem is to have separately-edited and moderated pro and con cases, displayed alongside each other, point-by-point. In this way the cross-border interaction leads to iterative improvements in each of the cases.
A solution to the information overload problem is to have the information both presented and discussed/edited at a hierarchy of detail levels.
Both these are implemented at Makethecase.net.
Maybe it will move some of the political edit wars off of Wikipedia.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The sole purpose of this is, I think, to protect wikipedia from having every page with even vaguely political themes being torn apart by edit wars during elections.
Its sacrificial protection, but it won't work, because political trolls need attention and won't willingly walk into an area designed to make them easier to ignore.
PS Vote out Busholini!
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
In order to better serve the users to whom this is directed, the familiar "Edit This Page" link will be replaced a row of links such as "Flame This Page," "Fill This Page With Ethnic Slurs," "Compare This Page to Hitler," "Replace This Page With Tubgirl," and the all-important "Spin The Extremely Unimportant Data On This Page To Favor My Side."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Wikipedia insists on the posters expressing a neutral point of view. I probably don't understand this new concept of Campaigns Wikia really well, but if it tries to be like wikipedia it will fail in being neutral. There is no neutrality in political points of view. If there is no neutrality, how can any piece of information be considered a common point of view? Even if something is considered a common point of view, is that really what politics should be all about? Shouldn't politics get into the UNcommon and UNpopular points of view and deal with those as well? How can you have that and not have constant flamewars on every single page?
I don't get it yet.
You can't handle the truth.
The various wiki's will probably just get hammered by zealots on the left and the right - I'd say cast a vote over at ugly Democrats and/or ugly Republicans for your unfavorite candidate.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
...but then it was posted on slashdot and the crowd killed my enthusiasm.
Who walks around with "internecine" in their vocabulary? Seriously...
So a political wiki could be a good thing supposing it is executed correctly. We all know the major issues with most web forums, but we have also seen large, popular web forums frequented by the socially inept moderated properly (ahem). Aside from the question of whether or not Wales will get it right, can we all at least agree that if done right, a political forum open to the public and free from lies would be a boon to American "politics" and more importantly society in general? Isn't the whole problem the fact that ordinary people who hold the vast majority of the world population and actually have the same beliefs don't communicate or coordinate-- but the psychos and crooks do? Isn't it the fact that governments can control what we see and hear that prevents any political change?
Imagine if politics was moderated like
I know some of Pete Ashdown's campaign staff, and they tell me a lot of people are enthusiastic about unseating Utah's premiere nutcake. But They face an uphill battle in a heavily republican state, as well as competeing with Hatch's mountain of cash. Personnally, I'd like to see a monetary slashdotting of contributions to Ashdown's campaign. Just like the sudden onslaught of individual clicks can bring a web server to its knees, if /.ers contributed $20 (or more, if you can) en masse to Ashdown's campaign, he'd have a much better chance to bring Hatch's reelection bid to its knees.
For those who don't know, Ashdown is running for Orrin Hatch's US Senate seat. One of the interesting things about his campaign is that he uses the Internet heavily for communicating with potential voters, and intends to continue using it if elected -- one of the planks of his platform is that government should be more transparent and that the Internet provides the tools to make it that way.
A key feature of his site is a Wiki that sets out his positions on all of the issues. The wiki is closely monitored for vandalism, but serious changes are allowed to stand for a time, to generate discussion. In the end, Ashdown decides what his opinions are and changes the site to reflect his stance, but he does modify his opinions when he sees what he considers to be good ideas. He also uses the discussion pages to conduct an interactive debate on the issues. I've modified a few of his positions and he adopted some of my ideas (e.g. on the problems with current copyright law) and rejected others (e.g. on nuclear energy).
I think a wiki works extremely well for that purpose.
<plug>
BTW, if you dislike Hatch's politics (as most geeks do -- this is the guy who thinks it's a good idea to give the RIAA the power to destroy the computers of those they think are sharing their music illegally), you should consider donating to Ashdown's campaign. If he can get the funding, Ashdown has a real shot at unseating Orrin Hatch, because per recent polls, most Utahns think that Hatch has been in power too long, and think it's time for someone new. Ashdown is a Democrat, which is an instant handicap in Utah, but he's a conservative Democrat with positions on the issues that can win in Utah. Further, even Utahns are largely disillusioned by Bush's administration and Republican party support is weaker than normal. Pete Ashdown's biggest problem is that the normal Democratic party funding sources don't seem to believe that Hatch can be unseated, so he's having a tough time raising the money he'll need to get his message out. If geeks around the country toss Ashdown a few bucks, though, and demonstrate that he can raise significant capital on his own, the normal funding will flow.
So if you'd like to see senatorial politics become more open and transparent, if you'd like to see a guy in the Senate that actually understands the Internet (Ashdown founded Utah's first ISP, and it's still one of the best) or if you'd like to see that wacko Orrin Hatch out of office, send Ashdown some money.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Sounds great for politicos, too bad a vast majority of voters are more like this:http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33878/
...one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation.
Of course it will be. The whole idea of democratic politics is to simply take the bloodshed out of all the bickering and arguing. Instead of killing to get your point across, you vote. All the arguing and bickering and fighting remain. I really don't understand what people who complain about the process expect it should be like. If everyone agreed about everything, we wouldn't need politics now, would we?
>
Why does one have to wonder?
Just look at the wrangling that occurs over certain Wikipedia entries, such as GWBush's.
If it's open to public editing, then political manpulation will obviously occur.
Done. I hope others will join me.
audioLibre - freedom of music
would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites
This is just the sort of garbage I'd expect some granola crunching, long-haired, pinko lefty idealist to spout. I say we should stick with plain-folks politics and salt of the earth politicians, who understand that people don't care about economics, education, or the environment, but about whether those funny-boys can marry each other.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
The elected nutbubbles of this state (California) are selling us out to a foriegn country, falling over themselves to give handouts to criminals for which even citizens could never qualify, and having difficulty in understanding why people get upset when released sexual predators return to their old habits. They make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again like broken robots. If they announced tomorrow the revelation that the Cal state legislature was under the control of insane alien parasites, I wouldn't even blink, because they are the biggest pack of zero intellect scumpuddles ever to walk this world.
And Bush & Co. are right there with them on the immigration issue with same old tired lies and same old tired rhetoric.
And even with term limits, the districts are so gerrymandered that you just wind up with a clone of the previous extremist that occupied the office. And when Gov. Arnold introduced a proposition to take the redistricting task away from the politicians, the dumb sacks of pigshit voters turned it down mainly, based on post election polling and interviews, because they were too fucking stupid to understand what it was.
In the end, all we have is that vote in that booth. There's too much money that determines what names appear on that ballot in the first place. You think a wiki is going to help? I know web surfing technical professionals who still don't know about the original Wikipedia.
Seriously, I look at the situation here in California, and I can't any workable solution other than armed insurrection (a concept I mention only in the theoretical, dear NSA spooks.)
would be a cheap way to fix a lot of these issues. Limit 3 minutes per speech and to candidates only. Vote on your top speeches. Comments should stay on topic with some moderator support. With a little inginuity, this could go a long way.
Nothing stirs things up and annoys more people than new ideas. Just look at Newt Gingrich. He is about three things: Politics, History, and Ideas. I think people will forgive him for being a historian, but combining politics and ideas creates a violent reaction, not a civil dialogue. You could say the same thing about Hillary and her infamous health care plan. It was a big idea thrust into the political arena, and we know what happened to that. We could wish it were otherwise, but as long as the politicians are running the show, substantive discussions about ideas aren't going to happen.
The BBC has a cool website that encourages action that sounds a little like this the action network that used to be called iCan. I also like they work for you, a great resource for holding your MP to account. Pledgebank gets to the root of empowerment - getting people to amplify their efforts by working together.
I have to say though, just from the Mission Statement, this "Wikia" really doesn't sound like anything new at all. Diverse people have been talking about politics on the internet since before there was an internet! Of course, just because it's not anything new, doesn't mean it might not be useful or be the first to make a big impact. Still any resource that helps hold politicians to account and encourages participation is important in modern democracies. Good luck to him I say, even if I am a little cynical about the ideas value.
I wish people would stop trying to put their own spin on
If you want objectivity and spin-free news, watch Fox News. This is Slashdot.
Also in a political election there is usually an opposition. Oppositions are more interested in winning than they are in helping their opponent create a consensus view of the issues on their web site and will be much more likely to introduce information and viewpoints that would not benefit the candidate who owned the wiki.
I'm sorry. That is just naive. When is the last time you've seen a useful discussion on evolution, conservative vs. liberal, Iraq war, Linux vs. windows, that didn't spiral down the drain into name calling. Why exactly would this be different?
Debate today is much more about selling your message. If the Wiki can't be used for that it won't be used widely by campaigns.
The Internet *should* make a lot of sense for democratic decision making and many of the tools and means used to develop the web *should* apply to the wider world. Democracy should be like a distro - you use it, or you get involved in a project to make it better, for you and others. The cults - politics, religion - want rules and regulations on the Internet, and right now they are in control, not that that will be forever. Consequently, a lot of content that undermines everything they have ever said, did and believed in doesn't make it to the net.
We scoff at the Great Wall of China, deluding ourselves into believing that 'our' web is not controlled, by the 'political' cults with their dodgy doctrines, bizarre creation myths (al-qaeda), 'intelligence infrustructure' and corruption from arms and other deals that are implicit in government.
Censorship is like nuclear weapons - our governments are allowed such things but 'their' governments are not. This is appreciated by the silent few that know what really should be written and shared on the www in this day and age. However, they stand aside, still partially believing in a political cult and all the media stories. They are not taking a stand against the Special Administrative Measure legal devices used to enforce censorship beyond censorship.
We live in an age of extreme self censorship when it comes to useful content. Anything straying far off the 'al-qaeda' belief system leads to all the wrong reactions from the devout believer, i.e someone that believed everything everyone else believed that fateful day - you know when.
Do penguins need to know the politics of linux to evolve - computationally speaking? Does Open Source have a 'left wing', 'a centre' and a 'right wing'?
Maybe politics isn't so redundant! Maybe Open Source needs tired, stereotypically semi-obese arms-traders running the show, complete with their weirdo political cults to believe in? Maybe when Tony Blair retires he could take Linus's job?
Anyone putting useful democracy on the web is doing the right thing - Ruby on Rails 'Parlement' anyone?
Have you ever seen Wikipedia?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Needs a few more suffixes. How about wikiableologyville?
Gee, I wonder if you're a hippy-dippy liberal like Jimmy (or are Jimmy)? A liberal-biased, libel-accused, contentious, free-form anarchic content system organization is opening a new site, and you think it will raise people's awareness of something? How un-surprised I am that on one on this site has anything bad to say about gay marriage, but it's soundly defeated at the polls every time it comes to a referendum.
And "mob mentality" is supposed to be a bad thing.
Wikipedia has verged toward raving liberal and libertarian views for the same reason. It's not that the ideas are bad per se, but they are unopposed and unsupported because dissent is edited out in about 1.2 seconds and most normal people don't get paid to edit-war like Jimmy's disciples. Groupthink from the editors and friends of Jimmy Wales means that the entire site is laced with useless opinion and irrelevant POVs, which is why this website is already farther left than NYtimes, and as "bipartisan" as the democrats' moveon.org.
If you think the gov't is f'ing up, it's because everyone hates compromise. If you think change is needed, try voting, joining a party, putting in a little effort unlike all the complainers, eh? And don't cry "cheater" every time you lose. If you think people are resistant to politics, well everyone plays politics at work, please explain that. If you think Americans are not presented with open forums, welcome to the Internet, my friend. If you think Americans can fix the country, who exactly has been breaking it? The North Koreans or Al-Qaeda?
I hate all this non-stop, useless whining about our gov't. Politicians are corrupt, politicians lie to us, politicians are ruining the country, but if I was in charge, things would be perfect, blah, blah, blah. Here's a news flash: Americans don't have the same beliefs, a lot of us are selfish, or lazy enough to vote for selfish reasons, and 95% of you don't even understand Islam. Is there corruption, deceit, actual lying? Of course. Welcome to the world, politicians are just like you but get paid less for their status. That attracts the vain and the power-hungry. And their children. And they are a reflection of our society.
Let me ask, what has this whining ever got you? The Democrats and Republicans both tick you off because they have incentives to do so. People want to work as little as possible and want to pay as little taxes as possible, and have government pay for as much as possible in their own lives. This is selfish and small-minded and corrupt. Since we all live in different towns, we've all taken turns whining to our representatives for personal favors. Not that any of us would do that, unless our job is threatened, or our company is downsizing or our family member is going to Iraq. I mean, Medicare SHOULD pay for my Viagra, I paid into the system. I've made more money than most people, I've worked harder than most people. There's still so much money, it won't hurt, right?
So I'd like everyone to grow up and stop saying "liar, liar". But that's too much to expect, isn't it? Because "liar, liar" is easier. And picking on a minority group like politicians is easier.
Sounds intriguing, but one has to wonder if it will be plagued by internecine feuding, punditry, and political manipulation."
No. One does not have to wonder. One already knows that it will be. You can't have politics without those things without eliminating the politics themselves.
I'd be more worried about how bad vandalism and the like will be. There will be a lot of angry people who hate a candidate and what he or she stands for. These people will gladly delete an entire page of discussion and replace it with "John Doe SUCKS!!!11!111oneone He shudnt be alloed tu een get oot of bed in da mornin." As much as one may be used to ignoring such things, they will still disrupt the conversation and generally annoy. Don't take my word for it, look at the Wikipedia and what they had to deal with. Their solution? Lock political pages down so that only a very few can actually edit things. So long for "active public" huh?