A New Wiki for Participatory Politics

About: Campaigns Wikia - Central Campaign Wikia

source: Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia

It's time for politics to become more intelligent, and for democracy to really involve the people. Broadcast media tells you what to think and doesn't let you get involved. It's time to focus on what you need, what you care about, and the messages you want to get out.
...
Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, you can share with me my sincere desire that the process start to be about substance and thought, rather than style and image.

Yes indeed, Jimbo ... I signed up to contribute

Comments

Seth says

M 2006-07-07 17:03:25 3875

This is NOT wikipedia. It is Wikia. It is made with mediawiki which is what Wikipedia uses so that that is why it looks that way.

Sometimes you state the obvious as if it were informative. But now that you mention it, i'll change my title to clarify. Not only is campaigns.wikia.com not a Wikipedia, but it not even a political type of Wikipedia. Jimbo is not positioning it as a enclopedia of political argumentation, but rather to be "a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent.".

Mark de LA says
I like the idea about politics becoming more intelligent. I think it will end up being very polarized. Witness this article on what it means to be an American. Vote.com does a fair job on what the issues are (at least those from the news) & they also have discussion groups. I don't see what Wikia's mission statement brings to the table beyond another (nicely made) discussion blog like , say FastBlogIt.

. I think that politics is inherently polarizing & polarizing inherently leads to the right-wrong game !!

We used to have a rule about 2 items that were not supposed to be discussed in the officer's mess on the ship I was on because they could lead to fights - one was women & the other was politics.

Seth says

M 2006-07-08 08:10:52 3875

I think it will end up being very polarized.

Yes that is also my concern and has been the topic of discussion on the mailing list ... witness Going down the wrong path? by Stephen Abbott ... and witness Jimbo's response which i reproduce here verbatem ...

source: Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com

Stephen Abbott wrote:
> What I find a *tad* disturbing is someone just created a list of "Corrupt
> Politicians." (http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Corrupt_politicians).
> 
> It's not a coincidence that they are all from one party, considering the
> political tenor of Washington these days. However, I thought we were aiming
> for something different here -- a bit less ... predictable.

Per the discussion on the talk page, I have deleted it.

My style, as most of you probably know, is to have a very light touch.
I do not want to be heavy handed in any way about what the exact
direction of various parts of the site should be.  But I would like to
provide some light guidance early on, to set a joyful and productive
tone where we (ironically enough) leave politics at the door. :)

I have friends on all sides of the political spectrum, and there is a
really unfortunate tendency to assume that "the other side" is filled
with morons, or benefits from stupidity, etc.  I don't think that is
true, and this whole attitude is part of what I want us to try to cure. :)

As you can see, his response is not unlike the

deleting leftrightism from the proposition node room.

A New Wiki for Participatory Politics

About: Campaigns Wikia - Central Campaign Wikia

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