"Wiki the Vote" Project Open-Sources Candidate Info

Gabriela writes "Wiki the Vote was just launched on Congresspedia.org for citizens, professional researchers, and even candidates to collaborate on profiles for each and every candidate for Congress in 2008. The project is non-partisan and, in true open source fashion, is free for anyone to participate — even the candidates themselves. Unlike Wikipedia, people connected to the subjects of articles are free to add to them as long as their contributions are rhetoric-free and comprised of fully documented, verifiable facts. The citizen editors are assisted and fact-checked by professional editors. The project is starting with nearly 300 basic profiles of candidates that 2008RaceTracker has identified as definitely running, and will eventually expand to cover every candidate on the ballot in the primary and general elections next year. When the OpenSecrets.org 2008 congressional campaign contributions database goes online in a few weeks, the candidate profiles will also display live feeds tracking the money race and who is funding them."

Comments

Future collaboration using Wiki

[NetSettler]

Ho hum. Another wiki. Useful, sure, I guess. One can never have too many places for bored people to use up their energy documenting the past and present, I suppose, but geez, when it comes to politics, could we not think about the future a bit? How many people even like how things are going right now?

Forget documenting what politicians do and have done. When is someone going to make a forum for discussing what should be? There's a real challenge for the wiki... creating tools for collaborating on a common view of the future rather than the past.

Or how about, as a middle ground if the future is too hard to discuss, even a wiki for each candidate so that we could discuss what made a coherent position/platform for that candidate right now, based on various issues before the candidate made a fool of him/herself by saying what he/she thought we wanted/thought/etc. Rather than let the candidate define him/herself, let the people define what they see in the candidate. Might be better in some ways. Candidates seem to be maleable about what they have to say to get elected anyway, why not duke it out online and see what ends up being stable?

Normal discussion forums have to be read from beginning to end to make sense. A wiki statically records the present state of a conversation in summary form so that anyone can pick up from there if they don't have time to read all of what's been said before, which is kind of like what a politician's platform does. It seems like it should be possible to figure out how to make that work... or a fun experiment to try.

I hope this isn't off-topic. I got all excited when I saw a political wiki and thought "maybe this is it". But it wasn't, and I figured I'd at least record the fact that I had hoped it might be.

Re:Wikipedia edit wars redux

[Skrynesaver]

Unfortunately politics seem to have been reduced to two different spins on any issue which are wholly unrelated to the facts.

Each side then believes what they wish and objective truth, science or even video evidence are then discounted, the various media channels then publicise the spin of their chosen side and no one even gets to hear the facts.

I'm afraid democracy may not survive, this is not a problem exclusive to the united States but exists throughout modern western democracies.

The demos needs open honest moderated debate, instead we get two groups of PR agencies promulgating their opinions without ever interacting with each other.

I genuinely fear for the health of our democracies</rant>

Or maybe I've become an old fart when I wasn't paying attention and the world is suddenly going to hell in a handcart

Re:Oh yeah. Great idea.

[Xtravar]

It's good for business, though. Imagine, the candidates all have to hire someone to monitor their articles now.

I should start an Interweb Public Relations Firm.

Fools Game

[NEOtaku17]

Trying to eliminate bias is a fools game. I would much rather read news sources which don't hide their bias and proclaim them out in the open, rather than "fair and balanced" news sources. When I know the bias of the news I am reading I can have a good idea of the types of things they will leave out or spin. When a source claims to be bias free I have a hard time with exactly where I should look for the bias and which "facts" I should check. This is one of the reasons I prefer "advocacy" journalism. I know where they stand and I can act accordingly.

BTW I am myself biased:
I am suspicious of elected officials motives
I am very skeptical of government intervention into the economy beyond the role of a referee
I prefer a smaller, less intrusive, government than the one we currently have
I tend to think that the cons of foreign intervention outweigh the pros almost all of the time

There you go. There are my biases. Now you can weigh those against my earlier comment. I wish news reporters would do the same instead of trying to appear "non-human".

Re:Oh yeah. Great idea.

[Conor Kenny]

Until the professional gig pans out, why not come and edit Ron Paul's page on Congresspedia?