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."

Comments

am I too cinical about this?

[utnapistim]

"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."

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:

• "give me your votes"
• "how to look good in front of the voters in X easy steps"
• so on...
• you are sheep! let me/us/our group lead you

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?