MAKING A MORE INTERACTIVE POLITICAL ARENA

Thanks to Laura Fiorilli at the Tampa Tribune's political blog The Political Safari for the heads up on this.

Jimmy Wales of St. Petersburg, founder of Wikipedia, opened up a new political Web site July 4 known as Campaigns Wikia because, as his mission statement reads:

It's time for politics to become more intelligent, and for democracy to really involve the people. Broadcast media tells you what to think and doesn't let you get involved. It's time to focus on what you need, what you care about, and the messages you want to get out.

In opening up the new site, Wales wrote an open letter to the political blogosphere, in which he says:

This website...has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

Together, we will start to work on educating and engaging the political campaigns about how to stop being broadcast politicians, and how to start being community and participatory politicians...

We can turn this into the first beginnings of what is to come. This can be the start of the era of net-driven participatory politics. And it does not matter if you are on the right, on the left, moderate or extreme, socialist or libertarian. Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, you can share with me my sincere desire that the process start to be about substance and thought, rather than style and image.