[Campaigns-l] Some Thoughts

[Michael Coupland]

Greetings all.

Here's an initial list of thoughts, concerns, and ideas I've come up with.
Campaigns being a Wiki, I realize that some of these are things that I could
just go do on my own, but it seems worthwhile to post them here since
they're a bit higher level, and I'd like to hear what others have to say
before rooting around too much. (Not to mention I'm probably not familiar
enough with Wikis to do it all properly...)

- The direction that Campaigns seems to have started in, and what I'd like
to see (among other potential functions) is to act as a clearinghouse for
information regarding various political topics. For any given issue, it
seems that there should be a few standard sections: off the top of my head
I'd like to see
     "The Issue" - an unbiased nonpartisan overview (perhaps a summary of a
relevant Wikipedia article?)
     "Viewpoints" - summaries of the major opinions on the issue
     "Action" - information about prior, pending, and future relevant
legislation etc.
     "Resources" - links to outside sources of information, ways to contact
major players involved (companies, congresspeople)

- To avoid ping-pongy and hard to follow arguments, it might make sense to
encourage some sort of standard argumentative form, eg. in a given
discussion follow something like a Lincoln-Douglas form, where each side has
a limited number of rebuttals. The California voter information guide Tom
Cross just mentioned seems to have employed this approach.

- It would probably be helpful to have a big link to a "Guide to Reasoned
Discourse" on the front page, and a small link on every page. This might
help reduce flaming.

- As Tom mentioned, I know Wikipedia has had problems with vandalism on
topics that are "controversial." Unfortunately, most pages on Campaigns are
likely to fall under that classification, so special handling by
administrators might not be an effective solution. Is there a meta-page in
Wikipedia discussing the decisions they made and what other options there
may be?

- I've always admired the site http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ and the way it
tries to publicize some of the workings of the British government. It's
probably a good source of inspiration for Campaigns.

- Given the phrasing of the mission statement, I have been assuming that
this is (for now at least) intended for politics in the United States (and
relevant international topics...) While I'm all for international discourse,
I would expect such wide scope is likely to result in chaos. I would propose
starting off with an restriction to US politics. (Parallel wikis for other
countries would be suitable, just as Wikipedia has branched into many
languages.)

I'd love to hear comments on / criticism of the above topics. Thanks!

   Michael


PS. As with Tom, I feel obligated to give a shout out to BoingBoing for
leading me here.
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