[Campaigns-l] Needs a narrow focus on the Political Climate/New Politics

[Stephen Abbott]

I fear the ideal of allowing the maximum amount of freedom here (i.e. the least possible amount of guidance and direction) regarding format, mission and policy is creating some rather divergent views about what the Campaign Wikia is all about.

Creative chaos can create some interesting things, I admit. But it can also simply create simply ... chaos, a mind-numbing jumble of competing visions that leaves visitors scratching their heads in confusion (and perhaps anger) and wondering what the heck is supposed to be going on here.

The analogy I would give is if, at the founding of Wikipedia, instead of being specific, Jimbo had *not* spelled out that it's an encyclopedia. Instead, someone simply saw the space and said, "Hey, it's a chat board." another: "No, it's a social networking site." and another could have arrived beliving, "It's an experiment in creative anarchy," and then (to keep this analgy going) they had not been diasbused of carrying out these notions, all of which would have been at variance with one another on several important levels.

While the results are quite a bit different here from those hypotheticals, a lack of directions in the mission and failure to define parameters is creating some potentially damaging conclusions as to what the real mssion is here. (And I'm assuming, because I like to think positively, that this isn't the way it was planned.)

For example, the messages I'm seeing from the categories and articles being created are:

"This is the ELECTIONS wiki." - Categories in this scenario include "California United States Senate election, 2006" "Maine Gubernatorial election, 2006", etc., and a listing of every candidate in these races. While not far from the original intent, how does that contribute to a debate on a NEW approach to politics? Isn't it instead just a rehash of what several other very good sites already do? (including Wikipedia!!!)

"This is a REGIONAL ELECTIONS wiki" - "Dallas County, Texas" and "Irving, Texas" popped up today. That may lead us to a great listing of local elections, but does that get us to creating a NEW political climate? (Note: There are 254 counties in Texas, 67 in Florida, and over 10,000 local governments in the U.S. - do we get pages for all of them, and to what end?)

"This is the DEBATING wiki" - The idea?: "Let's list every issue in the world and debate it, pro and con." Again, close to the mission, but this, too, is fraught with danger and can lead (is leading already, really) to endless debates over *how* those issues are presented, both in their wording and format. The naming of the issues will become increasingly contentious. Minor scuffle over "tax relief" vs. "Taxation" already, but what about "Corrupt politicians" - the first attempt deleted, but hinting at what's to come.

In fact, each of these wikia are co-existing at the moment. Perhaps "co-habitating" is a better, less warm word, since I'm not sure they can exist happily as the name "exist" implies, for very long. 

Someone may say "Why can't the Wikia be ALL of these things - or whatever anyone *wants* it to be?" I'd answer: Because it would make this wikia totally useless, not to mention unnavigable.

I suggest some serious discussion about how we can narrow down the focus of the wikia to ONLY bettering electoral democracy - call it "New Politics" or "the Political Climate" or whatever you will. A VAST amount of "creative chaos" can be unleashed and harnesed in accomplishing that project alone, so this isn't a case of tying people down and stiffling them with too many rules.

But the *overall parameters* of how this project is set up need to be set up, and set SOON, so this project isn't turned into something ugly.

- Stephen A.
(Nhprman)
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