While wikis rule, they need rules as well. Collaboration just flows better when participants have experience and knowledge of how such forums function. That’s why Wikipedia works; it has rules and a committed set of wikipedians who police changes made in the virtual encyclopedia.

However, launching a new wiki and expecting it to — abracadabra— completely work is rather optimistic. That is why it is interesting to observe Politicopia, the new public political wiki in Utah, that I profiled a few days ago.

Politicopia has broken some barriers between state legislators and who they represent, but it has also had a few hiccups. Like in virtually all things politics, some wiki contributors aren’t that cool — despite Steve Urquhart’s, who launched the wiki, explicit plea on the homepage that participants “Be cool.”

Former U.S. candidate Pete Ashdown — who pioneered the use of wikis in political campaigns during the 2006 election — unfortunately encountered some unhip interlocutors who deleted comments. He states on his blog that, “For some reason my concern of tax dollars [for school vouchers] going to extremists was not only scoffed at, but edited to remove references to America’s and Utah’s history of extremism.” The pro and con arguments that he added to the abortion discussion were also eliminated. Such actions defeat the whole purpose of Politicopia to serve as an on-line forum for politicians and citizens to discuss legislation.

So, is some moderation of the wiki in order? In a blog comment response to these complaints, Ashdown argues that since some Politicopia participants weren’t cool that the wiki “still requires some steering from above to prevent the kind of actions that I have seen so far” — just like Wikipedia.

Ashdown further opines that he wonders why so many state legislators claimed that they monitored the wiki but failed to participate and missed the opportunity to harness the wiki’s power to defend their bills and legislative action to the public. Wiki newbie Urquhart countered that he didn’t want to stifle or direct conversations in any direction, but conceded that perhaps he should participate more and encourage his colleagues to do the same.

Hopefully, Ashdown and Urquhart can work together to alleviate these initial problems as it seems that Politicopia is still in its beta stage as there are some hurdles preventing the wiki from truly serving as a true connection between politician and citizen. However, these learning experiences don’t negate the wiki’s power to enable extreme democracy to function.

——-

Petersen works for a web development firm as a search engine optimizer (SEO) and also writes for his blog.