The unofficial wiki for Change.gov
Launched on Wikia this week is a new wiki to provide a 3rd party versioning system for Obama’s transition site, change.gov. The site was created by Silona Bonewald and Brian Gannon of the League of Technical Voters in response to many suggestions that this needed to happen, especially since it was noticed that part of the policy section of the site had disappeared without explanation.
One of the many benefits of the decision to release change.gov under a free license is that it doesn’t matter that the site itself is not yet version controlled since anyone can reuse that content to provide an independent versioning system. Having a third party do the versioning is more trustworthy than versioning on the site itself as it’s so easy, with MediaWiki at least, to secretly remove revisions (a feature known as “oversight” on Wikipedia) and to secretly add revisions. Whilst it would be great if they would use a wiki for the site, that alone would not provide enough transparency to prevent unwanted sections disappearing again.
You can get involved by visiting the wiki at change.wikia.com or by subscribing to the mailing list.
- 3rd party versioning system for change.gov, Silona Bonewald
- Put change.gov Under Revision Control!, Tim O’Reilly
- Change.gov a Wiki Wannabe, Allison Fine
- A few more steps towards a “Wiki-Presidency”, Tak Kendrick
- It’s time for a Wiki White House, Dan Froomkin
- Obama: “Open for Questions” and Maybe a Wiki?, Stewart Mader
- Wiki Your Government, Katherine Mangu-Ward
Wikia
WikiChix
Mark said,
December 17, 2008 at 0:43
I think this is very exciting, I tweeted about this early on and am very happy to see it come to fruition, especially at Wikia.
Scott said,
December 25, 2008 at 4:19
It’s not good it you have ego minded admins such as the ones on wikipedia
The AboutUs Weblog » Blog Archive » Wikis in the News said,
December 28, 2008 at 4:52
[...] her weblog, Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley has a post on a third-party iniative to provide “The Unofficial Wiki for Change.gov“. There’s also a rehash of how the Obama campaign and transition team have transformed [...]
Pete Forsyth said,
December 28, 2008 at 5:34
Good news. Thanks, and this is definitely a compelling argument for the CC license, that goes a long way toward answering the question I raised on the Creative Commons blog.