(Presentation summary – first public speech on topic observed by David Dalka at Barcamp Chicago)
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder launches campaigns.wikia.com
Put the demos back in democracy
“The ideal encyclopedia should be radical. It should stop being safe.”
Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.
How big is Wikipedia Globally?
>>1MM English
>>400,000 German
>>200,000 French, Polish, Japanese, Dutch
>>42 languages >> 10,000
>>98 languages> 1,000
How popular?
Top 20 web site (Alexa)
Broader reach than
NYT
LAT
WSJ
MSNBC.COM
Chicago Tribune
~5.0 Billion page views monthly
200 servers
Compared about.com (flat line) versus Wikipedia.
“Accuracy” Incident caused massive traffic increase
Basic Ideas:
Broadcast Media leads to broadcast politics
Soundbites (samples)
Stirring images
Participatory media
Leads to participatory politics
Graph of participation in elections (dropping)
Wikis for campaigns
-The Dean campaign showed the effectiveness of Internet organizing
-But all that people did was organize, not formulate policy or shape the arguments
-Dean fell apart because of other reasons
Wikis for campaigns
– Wikipedia works because it is organized around a few central principles: NPOV and WP:NT central among them
– Other wikis work when they have a central organizing concept
– A campaign wiki fits the requirements for a successful wiki
Open and Closed
– Wikis are general perceived as being wide open and in a sense of course they are
– But real world successful wikis always limit participation to people who can agree with the broad organizing principle
What will not Work
– Tight, top down hierarchical control will lead to a wiki that might as well be a static html campaign site, unable to respond quickly with the time
– Anarchy will lead to trolling and vandalism from the other side
Who controls?
– On the official campaign website? Then candidate can be blamed for any thing some might say so campaign would need top down control -> failure
– Completely outside the campaign
What will work?
Broad, welcoming, inviting participation
Question: How do you get past the Echo chamber?
“I think those things are changing. I really don’t know. Senate campaign in Utah is using Wiki.”
Practical Uses
– Organizing meetups – just like meetup.com except more fluid and flexible
– Authoring whitepapers on issues from the point of view of the community supporting the candidate (wikis drive people to the middle, away from extremism)
– Responding quickly with intelligent answers to developing events
Local meetups
– Local meetups planned for around the world
– First one is Chicago July 29
Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Delhi, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Amsterdam
Locations to be determined – critical requirements are convenience and beer
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Local_Meetup_Schedule
Spread to world via blogs and WOM
Very interesting guy. He was a financial services guy just like me. I keep meeting more and more in this space. It rocks! Glad I got to hear him speak. Seems extremely motivated to change the world.