Open politics (Openpolitics.ca)

Open politics (Openpolitics.ca) Recent changes • [No WikiNode] • About • [No Mobile URL]
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Status:	Active
Language:	English
Edit mode:	OpenEdit
Wiki engine:	TikiWiki
Wiki license:	Multi-license
Main topic:	Politics

Wiki size:

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Canadian politics and e-government in issue/position/argument form, a widely-used 'multiple point of view' (MPOV) format which allows positions of many parties and major groups to co-exist on the same page without overwriting or censoring each other. Similar to More Perfect and DKosopedia in the US, and uk.openingpolitics.org in the UK, OpenPolitics.ca set some methodological and terminology precedents other political wikis use:

• the issue/position/argument form itself
• the an extensive list of issues with neutral names
• the terms of use integrating Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) contribution from individual users and releasing joint works under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) and Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• the extensive naming conventions which maintain compatibility with Wikipedia and journalist usage, a subset of the extremely extensive ECG naming conventions list
• careful separation of roles of anonymous users, registered users, more regular editors, trained senior editors and others with governance responsibilities; while anonymous sources are treated just as in other journalism, their edits to some pages are subject to more verification
• strict conventions for dates and names of specific documents -- for example, the 2005 World Mayors and Municipal Leaders declaration on climate change
• very rigorous tracking of facts likely to change
• tracking of the best or 'featured' pages
• a political personality test

Other properties of more interest to wiki developers and Web 2.0 gurus include:

• a streamlined, cruft-free recent changes page (with full details behind a "last 50 changes" prompt)
• an extraordinarily deep analysis of the use of wiki for political purposes and features required of specifically political wikis
• a vast set of resources on features and evolution of the web assuming that it will primarily be shaped by political choices, as Larry Lessig, Craig Hubley and other commentators on these matters have claimed
• a detailed explanation of wiki-compatible field-tested non-profit governance methods created by a large group including early users of op.ca
• a detailed description of how sociosemantic webs differ from semantic webs whose distinctions derive from top-down imposition or laws
• an excellent description of categorization mechanics

Weaknesses include a lack of user pages (TikiWiki support for these is extremely poor), no effective social features, and infrequent updates to the main page. The project has been seemingly neglected for long periods leaving some pages to fall out of date, and there has been active effort to revisit and update pages, even those marked clearly with "as of" tags. There is effectively no use of categories despite the extensive proposal for this.