In partnership with Carles Campuzano, a member of the Spanish Parliament, and NuestraCausa, a Spanish non-profit organization, MixedInk is excited to launch Spanish and Catalan versions of its collaborative writing platform!
To coincide with an important debate around immigration in the Spanish Parliament, Campuzano is inviting the public to craft a collective text that represents its most popular ideas and opinions about immigration using MixedInk. Campuzano has pledged to fully consider the public recommendations and hopes this will lay the groundwork for future participatory projects.
NuestraCausa is promoting MixedInk’s platform in Spain to bring citizens closer to decision makers – their goal is to enable people to influence public policy decisions. Among its many projects, NuestraCausa is partnering with Personal Democracy Forum to plan a European version of its annual conference, which explores the intersection of technology and politics, in Barcelona this November.
In the United States, government officials and agencies have paved the way for such groundbreaking projects. For instance, Representative Anthony Weiner used MixedInk’s platform to collect opinions about health care, and the White House used the platform to crowdsource policy recommendations for achieving open government. Needless to say, we are excited to see the same energy around citizen participation in Spain.
NuestraCausa is at the forefront of promoting citizen participation – and extending some of the lessons from the Obama campaign – into Spain and throughout Europe. We look forward to a fruitful, collaborative relationship with Marc, Javier, Gemma, Maria, and the rest of the NuestraCausa team as more and more leaders around the world recognize the value of citizen input!
If you’re interested in using MixedInk in any other languages, let us know by sending an email to info-at-mixedink-dot-com. With help from folks like Carlos Campuzano and the Nuestra Causa team, we hope to eventually make MixedInk available the world over!
As we mentioned, the Netroots (i.e. online progressives) have been using MixedInk to draft their platform online. This was the first time our beta tool’s been used by the general public, so this was a big moment for us – and it kicked butt!
Whether you agree with the Netroots or not, there’s no denying that the final result is a remarkably eloquent 29 pages of rhetoric, ranging from the lofty to the highly specific, that seems to capture the community’s viewpoint pretty well. Check it out!
The project’s been covered in the political and tech blogosphere, including DailyKos, MyDD, and TechPresident. [UPDATE: it's also been written up at ABCNews.com and Wired!]
From Nancy Scola’s write-up at Tech President:
How do you effectively harness the wisdom of the crowds when the goal is political ideas, not pinning down the weight of an ox at a county fair? [link added]
Does MixedInk point to a way of governing that effectively harnesses the intelligence and energy of bigger groups than we’re used to? It might offer some direction to a campaign like Obama’s that claims to tap into the wisdom of, for example, more than 300 foreign policy advisors. Managing all that smarts can’t be easy.
Here’s the press release we put together with a few members of the Netroots Platform committee.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PROGRESSIVE ONLINE ACTIVISTS ENGAGE OBAMA CAMPAIGN ON POLITICAL PLATFORM
Netroots Develop Policy Platform Aimed at Influencing Obama/DNC Platform Using Participatory Online Process
WASHINGTON, DC, August 13th, 2008 – Members of the “Netroots” – a loosely affiliated group of progressive bloggers, activists and private citizens-released their political platform this week, after three weeks of online collaboration.
The Netroots Platform was first proposed by Jerome Armstrong, a prominent progressive blogger and founder of MyDD.com. “The idea was for the Netroots to speak to the Obama Campaign and the DNC with a collective voice.” The project seemed to take on a life of its own after being introduced to the progressive blogosphere, as members of the Netroots used progressive community blogs, listservs, social networking sites and the MyBarackObama site to invite greater participation and keep each other updated about the Platform’s progress.
The platform was developed entirely online at www.NetrootsPlatform.org, a site where anyone was able to participate in the process and contribute their ideas. MixedInk, an Internet startup, created the democratic, collaborative writing tool that was used for the project. The company aims to empower the public to participate meaningfully and democratically in discussions once limited only to political insiders. “The process itself was truly a metaphor for the Netroots ideals of openness, transparency and democracy,” said Armstrong.
The final Netroots Platform includes 10 different policy planks addressing everything from National Security & Foreign Policy to the Economy to Food & Agriculture, in addition to an introductory “General Principles” section. Community members contributed by writing new planks, editing existing submissions, and remixing the best ideas from different versions to create new ones. Contributors also rated planks on a scale of 1 to 10, and the version with the highest average rating within each category at the end became part of the final platform.
While the official DNC draft platform and the Netroots platform overlap significantly on some policies, including net neutrality, the patients’ bill of rights, and greater federal investment in renewable energies, other policies advocated by the Netroots – amending the recently passed FISA bill, military budget cuts, and the abolishment of the electoral college – diverge significantly from the official Democratic party line.
“The people who participated support Senator Obama overall, despite some differences in our approach and results,” said Ellen Mendlow, one of the platform’s contributors and a member of the organizing committee. “Our platform is unique because of the collaborative way it was drafted. It’s a very positive step forward that we are part of the process, and I think we are all looking forward to developing even more rigorous opportunities for two-way dialogue between citizens and our government in the future.”
According to MixedInk, over the course of the process, thousands of people visited the site, 246 registered, and 164 contributed a total of 167 planks and over 925 ratings. “The Netroots Platform covers general principles as well as very specific language advocating the expansion of “the Nunn-Lugar program to guard nuclear weapons” and “catalyzing innovation by private space entrepreneurs.” “Some really smart and well-informed people participated in the process,” said David Stern, co-founder of Mixedink.com. “The fact that the most articulate ideas rose to the top shows how wise a crowd can be.”
The platform site launched on July 18th, in tandem with two workshops held at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin to introduce the idea and discuss the process. It ended three weeks later, on August 9th, with the submission of the platform to the National Democratic Platform Committee. The committee has acknowledged receiving the document and will be holding a conference call with the activists shortly.
The Obama campaign had previously asked supporters to contribute their platform ideas through its “Listening to America” initiative. Small groups of supporters met all across the country to develop short planks to be submitted through the campaign’s website.
“This project dovetailed nicely with the Listening to America platform sessions but with a spin that’s unique and that fits the collaborative, ensemble nature of the blogosphere perfectly,” said Mendlow. “We’re fully transparent and democratic in our approach to politics.”
# # #
About the Netroots Platform Committee
Support for the Netroots Platform was loosely organized by an ad-hoc committee of citizens that formed at the Netroots Nation conference held in Austin, Texas, in late July. It initially consisted of six individuals and grew to nine members over the course of the project.
To contact the committee or schedule an interview with one of its members, please email netrootsplatformcommittee [at] gmail [dot] com.
About MixedInk
MixedInk LLC is an Internet startup that provides an online tool for democratic, collaborative writing. MixedInk enables large groups of people to brainstorm and express a collective point of view by weaving their best ideas and opinions together.
The company was founded in April 2007. After launching in September 2008, its application will be available for free at www.mixedink.com. A white-label, enterprise version of the service will also allow organizations to integrate the application within their own websites.
For more information about MixedInk, or to schedule an interview with one of the founders, email press [at] mixedink [dot] com.
Got ideas for how MixedInk could be useful to YOUR group? Send us an email at info [at] mixedink [dot] com!
==========
Update – an fairly heated exchange about the Netroots Platform is happening on some of the leading progressive blogs:
This year’s Netroots Nation Convention marks the launch of a bold experiment in participatory democracy. The Netroots (i.e. the left half of the blogosphere) will use MixedInk’s collaborative writing tool to craft their very own political platform in advance of the Democratic Convention. At two working sessions, participants will kick off the initiative by putting their best ideas and language together.
If you’re going to be there, come visit on Friday, July 18th and Saturday, July 19th, and stop by our exhibition booth! These sessions are just the beginning of what will be an ongoing, public process that will continue in the weeks following the conference. The final, collectively written platform will be presented to the DNC before the convention in Denver.
If you want to be involved from the beginning but won’t be at NN, sign up at MixedInk.com, and we’ll email you the URL as soon it’s launched.
We’d like to thank the folks at Netroots Nation and wmtriallawyer for helping to organize this!
This effort builds on a growing movement to use online tools to make our government more transparent, representative, and accountable. Both Barack Obama’s campaign and the RNC have launched exciting initiatives allowing people to help shape their platforms. Using the Barack Obama website, Democrats can organize “Platform Meetings” in their communities, during which they can discuss and then submit policy “planks,” or one- to two-sentence policy suggestions. These planks will be reviewed by the team writing the Platform and some will likely be incorporated into the final document.
The Republican Party also has an exciting grassroots-driven platform development effort underway. The site highlights a range of issues and enables people to submit policies and comments that will be considered by platform authors as they prepare for the convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Also along these lines, 21st Century Democrats wrote their own Alternative Democratic Platform, which is currently being circulated as a petition.
We are thrilled to see the platform-making process opened up to the public – and proud that MixedInk will be the platform used by the Netroots. MixedInk was built to enable exactly this kind of participation, and we look forward to seeing the results of these incredible people-powered efforts!
Don’t forget to sign up if you want to be notified when you can help create the Netroots platform.
We just tested out the latest version of our tool, and I wanted to share the results. The short version: the test was a success!
Last week, 30 beta testers (read: friends) used MixedInk to help write a letter to the editor explaining why Barack Obama shouldn’t choose Hillary Clinton as his VP. (We did not select this subject on our own – we gave our participants a few topics to choose from, and this is the one where there seemed to be greatest consensus.)
Here’s what they created together:
Many of us have long admired Hillary Clinton. She has made public service and fighting for Democratic ideals her life’s work. She is smart, competent, and hardworking. Hillary Clinton is an American icon to some and a role-model to many, but she should not be Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate.
While we certainly don’t expect many Republicans to vote for Obama, there is a palpable lack of enthusiasm among conservative members of the party about his nomination. If there is one thing that would put an end to this ambivalence and inspire these conservatives to unite behind John McCain, it is Hillary Clinton. Hillary has long been demonized by the conservative right, and her presence on the ballot would mobilize its foot soldiers. With our country mired in two wars abroad, a failing economy, rising gas prices, diminishing civil liberties, and looming environmental disasters; too much is on the line to risk a vice-presidential candidate who will rally the Republican right-wing base.
Concerns about “Hillary Democrats” not voting for Obama are overstated. The people who are seen as Hillary’s base – working class, white Americans among them – identify with the Democratic Party and have reason to be skeptical of a McCain presidency. As the Obama campaign and the media turn their focus to McCain in the coming months, these voters will learn the many ways a vote for McCain would be a vote against their personal and national interests. Women who supported Hillary in the Democratic primaries will not migrate to McCain, whose slippery stance on Roe v. Wade would likely cost them their right to choose. Nor will blue collar workers elect another Republican who embraces NAFTA and dismisses their unions’ concerns. Americans who want an end to the war in Iraq will not back McCain and his decision to stay the course indefinitely. It’s true that Hillary supporters wanted this election to have a different outcome, but in the end they will not elect McCain simply to register their disappointment.
Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination because of his vision of a new America. His call for change is one that resonates with voters. It is not simply a call for much-needed policy change, but also for a change in the way government works, an end to old party politics, and a rethinking of the role of lobbyists and special interest groups. Hillary Clinton is part of the old guard. With Barack Obama’s appeal grounded in a new vision for our country and government, he risks undermining his own message with Hillary as his running mate. Barack Obama has earned the opportunity to choose his running mate. Aside from selecting someone who will help him win, he should also pick someone who complements his message and style and who he wants at his side as he navigates the challenges that he will surely face during his presidency. For all her strengths, that someone is not Hillary Clinton.
Disclaimer: MixedInk is emphatically nonpartisan. This letter to the editor may not represent the views of MixedInk, it’s founders, beta testers, employees, advisers, contractors, line cooks, chaufers, deep-sea welders, horseshoe fitters, and other associates.
Not bad, huh? We think it came our rather nicely, once again proving the age-old aphorism that 30 heads are better than one. (What, you’ve never heard that one?)
Obviously the credibility of the output depends on the trustworthiness and democracy of the process, but we’re still in private beta so we’re not quite ready to spill the beans yet… To gain access to the beans before or during spillage, submit your email address and we’ll invite you participate in future testing and you’ll receive an alert when MixedInk is publicly unveiled!
UPDATE: The letter to the editor was published in the Capitol Times in Madison, WI (you’ll notice that only 18 of our 30 beta testers were comfortable signing their names to this publicly), and at OANow, a news site for Opelika/Auburn, AL (but edited significantly to cut down the length – and they only let us attach one name to it!)
There’s always been a heavy anti-pundit streak in the online political realm.But lately, the volume of criticism seems to be growing.
The general consensus is that pundits are blowhards. They make statements – often absurd, offensive or false statements – for which they’re rarely held accountable.What is most frustrating is that they are granted unfettered access to millions of ears and eyes, regardless of the validity of their claims (or lack thereof).
This is not a left-vs-right thing; it’s a populist attitude that can be found on both sides of the aisle.Here’s Rightwing Nuthouse, from last August, pointing out what it takes to succeed as a pundit:
The trick in being a good political pundit is not in formulating wildly original analysis or penetrating insights into “what it all means.” Rather, it is much better to say exactly what everyone else is saying except be meaner, or funnier, or more serious, or more dismissive than the next fellow. A good turn of the phrase and an attitude will bring you stardom in punditland.
While their backgrounds and expertise may seem to qualify them to opine on political issues, the talking heads’ obsessive focus on strategy and tactics crowds out all but the most simplistic analyses of the government policies which are at stake.
Even when it comes to the horse race, politics is such a stubbornly unpredictable arena that the pundits seem unable to read the political tea leaves any better than their audiences.Or, at least, no better than those who follow politics closely (of whom there are a sizable number).
This rant from Colin Delaney at e.Politics following the Iowa caucuses calls the pundits out on their mistakes:
Well, who was the big loser in the Iowa caucuses? It wasn’t Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, and it certainly wasn’t Ron Paul. The big loser was political punditry.
…What was revealed to be vapid and empty last night was the endless, often cable TV-driven spouting of impression and prediction — when did political talking heads suddenly gain the ability to accurately foretell the future? Most of ‘em sure ain’t that good at it… even a cursory stroll down memory lane turns up plenty more. Remember when Fred Thompson was going to change the race irrevocably? Or when John McCain was doomed and should just pack up and go home? When Obama’s young-voter strategy was a waste of time, ’cause the damn kids never show up to vote anyway?
Political pundits: please stop telling us what you THINK is going to happen, because in the world of online communications, you don’t actually know more than we do. We have access to the same polls, we read the same on-the-ground reporting and scroll through the same blogs and we can see every significant piece of video the same day…
…Pundits, please just shut up and surrender some airtime to actual journalism.
Glenn Greenwald, a once-independent blogger who now writes for Salon, wrote about how wrong the pundits were on the Iowa Caucus results in a recent post, aptly titled “Worthless chatter.” He lists a number of quite damning instances in which pundits not only inaccurately foretold Governor Huckabee’s collapse in the Iowa caucuses, but did so with a degree of certainty which now seems absurd, if not downright manipulative.
Underlying much of the criticism is a belief that pundits are an undemocratic influence on the country’s political narratives, and thus, its political outcomes.Once a certain analysis or prediction becomes conventional wisdom among pundits, regardless of its initial veracity, it can serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy.Aware of this phenomenon, pundits often go so far as to make statements they know to be untrue in order to increase the likelihood that their preferred reality will be come to be.
So why is the pundit criticism getting louder now?
Pundits may be more extreme in their transgressions as they try to entertain for more airtime despite having no more material to work with.It also could be that the critics have more visible platforms than ever before.
But I would argue that on top of this, there’s a growing, organic, anti-pundit sentiment out there in the general public that the critics are beginning to tap into. People now have access to almost all the same information the pundits do – we’re savvier media consumers.We are seeing how frequently the pundits are incorrect, how their analyses are influenced by biases which may not be immediately apparent.And we’re justifiably angry.
Politicians recognize this.Both Republicans and Democrats talk about “the pundits” in voices dripping with disdain, instructing us to ignore their cynicism.Candidates in both parties claim they’re going to prove the pundits wrong, and brag of having exceeded expectations.Pursuing their own self interest, politicians are collectively stirring up a mini-rebellion, challenging the voters to show the supposedly omniscient pundits that this country is still a democracy (which, incidentally, means voting for them).It’s almost as if they’re arguing that proving the pundits wrong is valid enough reason for voters to support their candidacies in and of itself!This type of anti-elitist rhetoric used to be reserved for attacking corporate fat-cats, union leaders, and government officials and bureaucrats.
Bloggers definitely see it, too, and point out how wrong – and grating! – the pundits are.Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, two leading bloggers of the left, have long railed against the “DC cocktail party circuit.”But even on DailyKos, a leading left-wing blogging community run by Mr. Moulitsas, there’s been an up-tick in the criticism lately, with specialemphasisonChris Matthews (unaffectionately dubbed “tweety”).
“Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?”
That was the headline of a Maureen Dowd column in today’s New York Times.
Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was shocking. The performance of the national press corps in the days preceding the vote, unfortunately, was not.
Journalists have been replaced by a punditocracy that makes its living (and gets its kicks) by perverting our democratic process. The misogyny that was unleashed by the media’s feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg.
To be clear, we are not endorsing any candidate. This is not about who we choose for president, but rather how we choose our leader…
America is sick of [expletive] this year. From politicians. And especially from pundits.
So what’s the solution?Though their offenses seem greater than ever before at the moment, this situation is not new. And yet the pundits’ stature within the media seems undiminished.
Marc Andreessen, blogger and entrepreneur of Netscape fame, has a proposal:
If the world were a sane and just place, every pundit, commentator, expert, and reporter who predicted the things that didn’t happen and missed the things that did — which is to say, all of them — would resign their jobs tonight.
Since that won’t happen, the only logical response is to put one’s hands over one’s ears and say “Nanananananananananananana” every time one sees them on television from here on out.
While that’s certainly one solution, there’s got to be a better one, a more systemic one.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take the narratives that shape our politics out of the hands of a privileged few?
Sure, the blogosphere is a big step in the right direction.Because bloggers are more numerous than pundits, and because there’s room for more websites than there is room for major news outlets, people can choose the bloggers they agree with or like with greater precision than they can choose their pundits.The blogosphere is thus more meritocratic. Also, bloggers tend to be more up-front about their beliefs – they do not disguise their points of view as fact – so any efforts to manipulate the debate are more transparent, by definition.
Yet bloggers are still lone individuals, people with agendas, interested in imposing their own lens on the political discourse.No matter how much that lens align with yours, no single individual can always speak on behalf of an entire community. In stepping into the role of pundit, any single person would end up with too much control over the debate.
If, within the media ecosystem, there were some way for groups to speak with a single voice, we could collectively shout down pundits’ efforts to manipulate the debate.If only there were a way that people could create our narratives from scratch, thereby avoiding the undemocratic influences of those who would digest and interpret our news for us.Hmmmm…
By 2012, one quarter of entertainment will have been created, edited, and shared within peer circles, rather than coming out of traditional media groups. This is the conclusion of a global study on the future of entertainment, called “A Glimpse of the Next Episode,” conducted by Nokia and The Future Laboratory.
In carrying out the study, The Future Laboratory interviewed entertainment industry leaders as well as trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors. This was combined with Nokia’s own research from its 900 million consumers around the world to construct a global picture of entertainment over the next five years.
Nokia termed the phenomenon Circular Entertainment, noting that people are showing “a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups – a form of collaborative social media,” according to Nokia’s Multimedia Vice President Mark Selby. Trends Director at The Future Laboratory Tom Savigar added, “Consumers are increasingly demanding their entertainment be truly immersive, engaging and collaborative.”
At MixedInk, we have been very busy developing a collaborative writing tool to satisfy this demand. Where blogging has enabled anyone to share their thoughts online, MixedInk is excited about making it easy and fun to remix and mash up opinions within a group to generate newer, bigger, and more compelling ideas. “Key to this evolution is consumers’ basic human desire to compare and contrast, create and communicate,” notes Savigar. We agree. While wikis have allowed people to write together online, we are making it easy for people to compare and contrast what many different people think – and communicate easily about those opinions.
“Whereas the act of watching, reading and hearing entertainment was passive, consumers now and in the future will be active and unrestrained by the ubiquitous nature of circular entertainment,” says Savigar.
MixedInk will help this expanding movement to grow. We are motivated because we believe that an active and passionate group can create stronger, more powerful content than its individual members could produce alone. And perhaps most importantly, we are inspired by the potential for such a platform to democratize the political arena, the media, and the workplace.
“We believe the next episode promises to deliver the democracy politics can only dream of,” says Savigar. We already see the beginnings of this evolution, and we look forward to playing our part in making it a reality.
Get ready. The Next Episode will be written by you.
Until recently at Hewlett-Packard, a group of managers would sit through unending meetings to predict future prices of key computer supplies – information the company would then use to plan its purchasing strategy.Today, a prediction market at HP accomplishes the same task, but with better accuracy in far less time.
A prediction market is a stock market for ideas, where people can buy and sell “stock” in different outcomes, which impacts their relative prices.Between 1868 and 1940, prediction markets forecasted elections before advanced polling.They made a comeback in 1988, when the University of Iowa started the first electronic prediction market focused on economic and political events, such as elections.
The idea behind prediction markets is that the aggregated knowledge of diverse individuals produces a prediction with greater accuracy than a small number of experts.Diversity is critical here – if everyone starts out with the same knowledge, predictions will be the same and betting will therefore be negligible.
Though they are not infallible, prediction markets are strikingly accurate.In the 2006 Senate elections, for example, no public opinion poll predicted all 33 races correctly, but bettors at Tradesports did.Today, people use prediction markets to forecast everything from the popularity of movies to influenza outbreaks.In the corporate world, ArcelorMittal, Best Buy, General Electric, HP, Nokia, and Samsung have been using prediction markets to divine public reaction to new products, next quarter’s sales revenues, whether products will be ready on time, and future commodity prices.A comprehensive study at Intel concluded that prediction markets are at least as accurate as forecasts by Intel’s management, and often as much as 20% better.
Small companies have been slower to embrace prediction markets, but Entrepreneur.com points out that there is no reason they should miss out on the benefits.Markets can work well with relatively small groups of traders, and a small employee base can be supplemented with suppliers, vendors, and other outsiders.Small companies often seek the same answers as big corporations and can save precious time and money by replacing complicated market research with prediction markets when appropriate.
Despite all their benefits, prediction markets are only appropriate in cases where predictions are separable into neat categories: Will Microsoft release its software before November, in November, in December, in January, in February, or later than February?Will Amazon.com sell more books, iPods, or 500-thread-count sheets next month?This condition limits the prediction market’s usefulness when companies want to aggregate opinions without influencing people with a preconceived framework of possible responses or when nuanced answers would be more appropriate.
MixedInk sees prediction market software as a kindred tool.MixedInk steps in where prediction markets leave off by allowing people to respond to open-ended questions and provide more complicated answers.In addition to asking which of five products will be most popular using a prediction market, a company could use MixedInk to ask its employees to help conceive of its next innovative product or design a marketing strategy.
Using democratic, meritocratic aggregation tools like prediction markets and MixedInk, companies can truly benefit from the vast knowledge base of their employees quickly and easily.Of course, deciding to use these tools requires leaders to recognize employees’ wisdom, which can mean a big shift for some companies…but that’s a subject for another post.
Just a quick post to draw your attention to a recent piece in The New Republic. It highlights the fact that for some topics, Wikipedia’s combination of a strict neutral point of view policy and its dependence on the wiki platform results in articles that leave something to be desired. (No, this is not about its occasional – way overblown – inaccuracies!) We were pleased to see the author, Douglas Wolk, practically arguing for the type of complementary writing tool we are developing.
Wolk explains why Wikipedia isn’t the perfect venue for reporting on politics and other potentially controversial topics. Here’s an excerpt:
Graceful writing takes a distant second place to neutrality. The language of the “Plame affair” article, like a lot of Wikipedia, is flatly declarative, not particularly quotable and occasionally afflicted with wobbly construction… And so the entry is an obstacle course of little infelicities and colorless clots of subclauses, from the first paragraph’s factual but pace-dragging citation of Joe Wilson’s memoir The Politics of Truth to the concluding section, headlined “Other perspectives on the CIA leak scandal,” which reads (following a link to “Alternate theories regarding the CIA leak scandal”) in its entirety: “Since the CIA leak scandal became public knowledge, commentators began presenting multiple and often highly-contested perspectives on it in various media.” You don’t say.
To make a case for how the parts of the Plame tzimmes fit together is, unavoidably, to make a political argument. That’s antithetical to the Wikipedia ethos, whose dedication to unvarnished facts is worthy of Dickens’s Mr. Gradgrind. Without some kind of thesis behind it, “Plame affair” is a dehydrated feast, a 20,000-word catalogue of notes and quotations and factoids that all have some bearing on the case in question but aren’t weighted for significance, have no particular narrative thread, and don’t begin to explain the meaning of the whole thing. It’s hard to imagine a Wikipedia that could function any other way, but the Internet hive-mind, negotiating in good faith and carefully hammering out compromise language, has done exactly what it was supposed to do–and failed anyway. The article, for all its catholic precision, isn’t actually useful, because it’s almost impossible to read… Wikipedia, friends, is boring.
Wolk hits the nail on the head. Generally speaking, and especially when it comes to controversial subjects, writers must make value judgments – whether writing individually or collectively. They must convey the order, context, and relative importance of an article’s components in order to sculpt narrative, digestible prose. As a tool, the wiki simply lacks the capacity to aggregate value judgments from a large number of contributors.
As regular readers of this blog know, this capacity is one of the central distinctive features of the MixedInk platform. We will allow contributors to focus not only on content, but also on style – which can be just as important in getting a point across.
(For more on how we intend to improve on the wiki, see this earlier post.)
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the second annual YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, where over 1500 members of the “progressive netroots” – a term that encompasses Democratic bloggers and internet activists – gathered to celebrate their successes and discuss what comes next.The conference provided the opportunity to meet some of the leading voices in the left half of the blogosphere as well as a chance to see some fantastic panels and presentations on what we can look forward to, technologically speaking, in the campaigns of the future.
As we hoped, it also turned out to be a great way to introduce MixedInk within the political sphere. We believe our platform could have a major impact on politics; the people I spoke with seemed equally excited.Looking back a year from now, I think we’ll find that the seeds for several pivotal partnerships were planted in Chicago.
Not surprisingly, one of the coolest moments of the conference was the candidate forum, where 7 of the 8 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination took questions from moderators and the audience on domestic policy, foreign affairs and general personal and political philosophy.The fact that this forum attracted such a high profile group of leaders speaks to the power that the progressive netroots have accumulated.
Regardless of one’s political outlook, a presidential primary debate like this is guaranteed to be compelling theater; there’s a 50% chance (or greater, if you believe current polls) that you’re watching the next US president.But this was no ordinary presidential debate.
The moderator, Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine, opened by saying, “We do normally ask that applause and reactions be kept till the end. We’re making no such request today [laughter].I fear it’s too late, but I’m gonna ask you to remember that we are on a tight timeline and trying to get along with the program, and to the extent that you could limit the interruptions we would appreciate it…”This narrow opening was all the crowd needed.
Bai would soon regret having given the crowd free reign, and said as much joke that he was losing control [updated based on Matt's comment - see below].This group refused to play the role of the passive audience.People acted pretty much the same as they might while watching an event like this on TV in the comfort of their homes – only now, the candidates could actually see and hear them.
Applause, laughter, jeering, hissing and booing all flowed freely.Senator Edwards, a crowd favorite, was constantly interrupted by applause, though he didn’t seem to mind.At one point, when facing a tough question, Senator Clinton made a stalling remark as she tried to come up with the right to say, and the crowd laughed at her outright!It was the sort of the remark a candidate might slide by with in a typical debate without someone to call it out, but this crowd wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of evasion.And Senator Dodd was booed loudly when he tried to explain his vote for Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The crowd even broke into song at one point – it was announced that Senator Obama was celebrating his birthday, so the audience serenaded him with a poorly coordinated (though very affectionate) rendition of Happy Birthday.
At first, all of this struck me as highly undignified.It was like a vaudeville show instead of a presidential debate – I half expected people to start throwing rotten tomatoes!Did the audience want our candidates to be treated like entertainers?We Americans are used to debates where candidates speak in paragraphs comprised of neat little sound bites memorized in advance, moderators tightly control the conversation, and audiences are powerless to interfere.Traditionally, they are opportunities for the candidates to tell us their positions on the issues and to compare and contrast their views with each other, without any interference from voters.
Gradually, I began to see the merits of this more participatory format, as I realized it was an offline translation of the blogosphere’s core principles.This crowd of online activists rejects the model of candidate as untouchable, deity-like avatar and instead treats its candidates as real people. If there’s no TV screen between us, why must we continue to act like we are separated from them by sound-proof, one-way glass?
The existence of the political blogosphere itself is premised on the notion that citizens should have a right to express opinions that matter – beyond merely voting once every four years.Flowing from this, the crowd seemed to stake the claim that we have the right to interact with our politicians through direct conversation, whereby they observe our reactions and respond in real-time – conventional notions of debate etiquette be damned.The netroots believes we can learn more about who a candidate is in this type of interactive format than from the canned speechifying that is a conventional debate.
This re-imagining of the debate structure is part of a seismic shift in our politics (and our media, and our consumption patterns, and…) toward a technology-enabled, two-way exchange of perspectives.We envision MixedInk as another tool in citizens’ arsenal – along with participatory debates like this one, blogs, YouTube videos, and a range of other platforms – to make their voices heard and to ensure their voices matter.
You can find video from the event, along with plenty of other YearlyKos footage, here.
An edited version of this post was published as a diary on Daily Kos
UPDATED: Matt Bai was kind enough to respond with an email. He gave me permission to republish what he wrote:
Hey David, thanks for the kind words and for sending me the link. I love what you wrote. I take strong exception to only one thing, which is your assertion that I regretted my announcement to the crowd and said as much. Couldn’t be less true. I was a big proponent of letting the crowd express itself, and I thought (and still think), as you do, that it was one of the best things about the forum. I completely agree with you–this is exactly the kind of wall the Internet helps us break down, and while some of my colleagues in the media found it “creepy” (I think that’s what Ana Marie Cox quoted someone as saying), I thought it was really fun and a lot more interactive. It also made me feel more at ease on stage. I did joke that I was losing control at one point, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Thanks for writing.
In addition to being a terrific writer, Matt Bai is part of a small minority of journalists that understands the transformation that’s taking place. It’s no wonder he was selected to moderate the YearlyKos forum as a representative of the mainstream media.
