Wikis get political

There’s Wikipedia for folks who want to track down the history of Albania or Walt Disney or something. There are scads of other sites – wikis – across the globe using the same general idea of shared discussion and shared editing to produce a useful source of information.

Two relatively new sites that transfer the wiki idea to the world of grassroots politics are Campaigns Wikia and Moreperfect.org. Campaigns Wikia is a subgroup of the new Wikia effort, which itself is a for-profit operation launched this year by Jimmy Wales, the man who founded nonprofit Wikipedia. The intent was to give passionate people a place that promotes free-flowing discussion and opinion. Wikipedia, by member agreement, tries to be a neutral reference site.

Campaigns Wikia is one of 2,000 Web-based subgroups, or wikis, hosted by and run by Wikia.com, based more or less in the Silicon Valley.

Its mission statement, according to Seattle-based Chad Lupkes, is to encourage online discussion and positive dialogue between groups engaged in political causes. Its mission is wide, but so is the reach; Campaigns Wikia has articles being written and edited by volunteers around the globe.

Lupkes, who works a day job at Nordstrom in Seattle, serves as Campaigns Wikia’s admin. He’s just one of dozens of serious Wikia volunteers who maintain the site, arbitrate disputes and ensure articles are posted in the right category.

The Campaigns Wikia site currently has about 600 articles, with most focused on U.S. issues. Washington statewide elections get fairly decent coverage, including full summaries of the Supreme Court race for position 2 and the Senate race between incumbent Maria Cantwell and Republican challenger Mike McGavick.

Seattle-based Moreperfect.org does a similar thing but is exclusively focused on American political discussion. Launched this year by Tim Killian and Chad Maglaque, More Perfect has about 300 members and is looking specifically to energize discussions at the grassroots level, according to Killian.

“About 70 percent of our members now are in Washington state,” said Killian.

Both sites, for now, pay their bills by running Google Ads. Both require a member to provide a user name, e-mail and a login password.

Both rely heavily on self-policing and community agreement. When someone tried to post porno links on a More Perfect version of the U.S. Constitution, group members fixed the problem themselves within an hour, said Maglaque.

The discussion of state issues varies and seems mostly focused now on West Side issues. One active group discussion is all about plans for the replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

A political consultant by training, Killian said he’s learned that collaborative discussion produces better policies and good results. He cites a late 1990s state initiative to pass a medical marijuana law in Washington. It lost, 60 percent to 40 percent. But then organizers went to the opponents and showed them a new draft of a second initiative.

The opponents gave detailed criticism and direct feedback, which was incorporated into the second effort. “It passed 60 percent to 40 percent the second time,” he said.