Pull me back in
Hugh champions another project, the Visible Politics wiki for Civic Access. I’ll have to give this some thought later, but I’m just way too busy right this minute. Of course, it would have to be bilingual… and I’m not sure I share Hugh’s enthusiasm completely. I’ve seen Cogitateurs-Agitateurs struggle for the last few years with no real sign of taking off. Not saying why shouldn’t try, given the success of LibriVox for example :)
Also, I was wondering if we really want a wiki, or something more formal to do this, since we know in advance the sort of structure we’ll be aiming for, and loose ends can be compensated with tags.
ideally it would be a wiki with set templates – possibly a webform to fill out when you “Add a Politician”, so you have a bunch of fields to fill with set info (bio, website URL, finance data) etc.
The wiki format is *too* loose in my opinion, but I can’t see another easy way to let anyone edit, to get the info in to start, which is the main problem.
Comment by hugh — 2007/01/31 @ 13:38
Any web tool can provide an “edit this” button, for anyone. A wiki is something else, loose like you say.
I’m going to have to get back to this tomorrow or much later tonight.
Comment by Robin — 2007/01/31 @ 13:48
I like the idea but I don’t know how you could avoid editorializing by submitters, and not just during election campaigns. The major difference between a wiki of politicians and a good old fashioned static list of politicians with biographies would be that instead of applying the effort towards gathering biographies you’d be forced to apply the effort towards maintaining the integrity of biographies, while still having to gather them when not supplied by other users.
My other thought on the subject is that Wikipedia already offers this service, and most Canadian politicians are already there, and any not present can be added for legitimate reasons. Where’s the benefit of duplicating this service?
Comment by Chris — 2007/01/31 @ 20:53
P.S. Sorry that my first post has to be a critical one, it’s still great to see Montrealers implicating themselves in technology and politics.
Comment by Chris — 2007/01/31 @ 20:54
R:”Any web tool can provide an “edit this” button, for anyone. A wiki is something else, loose like you say.”
H: a wiki can grow however users want it to grow, and can get formatted in lots of nice ways. i think wiki is the way to go here.
R: “I’m going to have to get back to this tomorrow or much later tonight.”
H: Good!
C: “I like the idea but I don’t know how you could avoid editorializing by submitters”
H: guidelines about what is acceptable. the objective is not to have policy discussions, but to gather info all in one place. for instance: rss feeds from technorati, google news, and howdtheyvote; campaign funding info; links to official website. etc. the tricky part is figuring out what to do about policy issues. maybe the best thing is to have a policy something like “you may quote the politician, with URL reference” but “you may not make political comments about those quotes.” need to think about it further.
C: “and not just during election campaigns.”
H: Yeah one worry is that there would be interest only at certain times. maybe the tool gets locked down between election cycles?
C: “The major difference between a wiki of politicians and a good old fashioned static list of politicians with biographies would be that instead of applying the effort towards gathering biographies you’d be forced to apply the effort towards maintaining the integrity of biographies”
H: many hands make light work
C: “while still having to gather them when not supplied by other users.”
H: if all goes well, I don’t have to do anythign at all ;)
C: “My other thought on the subject is that Wikipedia already offers this service and most Canadian politicians are already there, and any not present can be added for legitimate reasons. Where’s the benefit of duplicating this service?”
H: It sort of does, but the focus is on encyclopeadic content, which is very different from what I am thinking about – or at least somewhat different. I see this as a tool to decide who you will vote for.
But bigger than that, the idea would be to have a focal point on the web where canadian politics info of this kind is, all alone. rather than being buried in wikipedia. one stop shop. if all goes well wikipedia copies our info and visulapolitics copies wikipedia’s info.
Finally, this is a call to arms, mostly to the folks at civicaccess.ca to do something concrete – and it’s easier to rally around a new project than to say – hey let’s fill in wikipedia – though that could be part of the process too.
Comment by hugh — 2007/02/01 @ 17:53