Campaign Wikia

This is very interesting--an effort to make wikis matter to politics.

Right now this seems to be focused on campaigns, but it would be far more interesting to employ wikis in political inquiry. They could be used to do what I've been trying to get folks to do for a long time--put canonical versions of political arguments in clear, systematic forms on the web, so that we can identify where we agree and where we disagree and move forward from there.

For example, every time I have a discussion with someone about the question 'did the adminitration deceive us about Iraqi WMDs?', it takes at least 20 minutes of discussion to clear away elementary confusions. Many people, for example, have argued in my presence that the relevant question is 'did Bush lie?', and that one only lies when one knows for certain that p is false but says that p is true. Now, it will take 5-10 minutes just to clear up those simple errors. If we had the whole argument laid out on a wiki, so that each side to make sure that its arguments were formulated optimally at every stage, then we could clearly identify who's right at certain points, where more information is needed, and which points remain controversial.

Anyone who thinks that political inquiry is rational should agree that this project would be beneficial.