Co-constructing politics

My exposure to wikis in 2005 led to a 6-month experiment, PoliticWiki, that asked participants to build a political platform from scratch. There were several issues that kept it from blossoming, not the least was the convenience but political death sentence of tying the project into an existing party. Even though 3rdParty.org—a pipe-dream political project my friend Jeff and I started a decade ago—was itself wiki-like in its self-organizing formation, any pre-existing identity is going to be a barrier for someone. Now, as that project lingers in a near dormant state (one day, I’ll be able to invest my limited time in it again), I’ve found myself concentrating on the dynamics of community and how emergence can be designed.

My panel on Tuesday will touch on those ideas, but here I will just provide an update on the state of politics and wikis.

The most recent entry into this arena is PoliticalBase. The company was founded this month by Shelby Bonnie (formerly of CNet) and uses a structured Wiki to encourages research and debate about local, state and national elections. That is essentially the iterated mission that came out of PoliticWiki, influenced heavily by OpenPolitics and their IPA model to separate issues, positions and argument. PoliticalBase offers some nice integration with other content communities, like YouTube. It will most certainly focus on national campaigns at the start, but if it can use the 2008 elections as a catalyst to raise membership, there is a good chance that energy can be redirected immediately into local politics. This is where the collective wisdom is really valuable—one town’s problems are not identical but very similar to that of another, so connecting local issues is potentially very powerful.

That is the main trick in building a wiki: inspiring a community. Internet Duct Tape posted some great advice and observations on building a wiki community. Included in that was a table that related success with the size of the community, implying that it is easier to build a small or a massively scaled wiki than it is to do anything in between. This points to an importance of leadership and active behavior modeling by members in sync with the mission. It also suggests a definition of success measured against the vision of the wiki founder, not necessarily the community that forms around the space. Being able to adjust to the will of the crowd is an important if not sometimes painful skill for an administrator.

Luke Wroblewski relayed some interesting thoughts from proprietary wiki companies on wiki usability and how decisions impact user experience. Building a community with a computer-mediated system does demand that attention be given to the mediation.

When I gave my WikiSym talk in Odense a year ago, I took an inventory of all of the political wikis I could find. The intervening months haven’t been kind to all of them, but here is the list:

• OpenPolitics.ca—Facilitates the evolution of civics from politics-as-usual toward efficient civics, by providing non-partisan forums, increased transparency, accountability and performance of governing institutions.
• SpaceDebate.org—an effort to expand the debate on the weaponization of space through a collaborative wiki-like tool for structured debate on a topic.
• Campaigns (Wikia)—quoting Jimmy Wales: “Blog and wiki authors are now inventing a new era of media, and it is my belief that this new media is going to invent a new era of politics. If broadcast media brought us broadcast politics, then participatory media will bring us participatory politics.”
• Participatory Democracy—a new political party that will focus on formulating political agendas rather than fielding candidates for election.
• More Perfect—an innovative website site for involving the public in creating and collaborating on laws and public policy.
• WikiCongress (Wikia)—there are two goals: (1) To introduce legislative ideas that may ultimately be taken up by Congress, and (2) To educate people about existing legislation currently in Congress.
• Wicracy—allows political party members to determine the agenda or platform of a political party, establishing a non-binding form of democracy at the issue or plank level rather than simply at the candidate level.
• Australian Bill of Rights Initiative—ABRI is a web-based organisation dedicated to the creation of an Australian bill of rights, written collaboratively by volunteers.
• Issuepedia—the encyclopedia of issues, analysis, thought, and opinion, includes rants as well as carefully considered analysis.
• Platform for Pittsburgh—aids local politician (and former PoliticWiki participants) Mark Rauterkus in crafting policies and priorities for his city, region and state.
• Congresspedia—a collaboratively written “citizens’ encyclopedia on Congress,” designed to shine more light on the workings of the U.S. Congress. Congresspedia is part of SourceWatch, a wiki-based website documenting the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda.
• Connecticut Election 2006—a collection of user-submitted information about the 2006 Connecticut elections.
• Our Campaigns—an internet community formed in 2002 to discuss politics and elections. Members earn points by predicting the outcomes of future elections, and enter historical election information.
• Unity Supporters Wiki—wants to organize at least 20 million Americans to hold an online convention and elect a moderate centrist presidential ticket composed of a Republican and a Democrat who will focus on pragmatically important issues.
• E-democracy—a non-partisan organization trying to improve citizen participation in democracies and communities through the power of information and communication technologies and strategies./li>
• dkosopedia—a political encyclopedia written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side’s take. Dkosopedia was started in April of 2004.