I have a vague idea to create a wiki for politics-related data. Basically, I’m annoyed with how low-effort, entirely un-researched content dominates modern politics. I think a big part of the problem is that modern political figures use social media platforms that are hostile to context and citing sources.
So my idea for a solution is to create a wiki where original research is not just allowed but encouraged. For example, you could have an article that’s a breakdown of the relative costs to society of private vs public transportation, with calculations and sources and tables and whatnot. It wouldn’t exactly be an argument, but all the data you’d need to make one. And like wikipedia, anyone can edit it, allowing otherwise massive research tasks to be broken up.
The problem is - who creates a wiki nowadays? It feels like getting such a site and community up and running would be hopeless in a landscape dominated by social media. Will this be a pointless waste of time? Is there a more modern way to do this? All thoughts welcome.
I’m not understanding why you need to reinvent the wheel here, you can just leverage Wikipedia to accomplish your goal (to a degree). Take the entry for public transport: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport
There are sections on the impacts and challenges of public transit. If you feel it’s lacking in factual peer reviewed information regarding the financial benefits, just go ahead and add it. The only challenge will be if you don’t want to conform to Wikipedia’s moderation rules, in which case you’re probably better off just making your own website/blog, but you’ll lose the community aspect.
As for more true political topics, balletopedia already exists, and quite frankly, it’s an excellent resource. If I were you I’d spend my time contributing to resources that are already popular than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Unless you get really lucky, good quality Wikipedia edits will have a much larger impact than a website run out of your basement.
Wikipedia doesn’t allow original research as a source. It has to be reported by a second party before it is accepted. This makes most political topics hard to properly cite.
You sure about that? It feels like a dubious claim, especially considering, for example, the Public Transport article I linked has at least 6 DOI references to journal articles.
Additionally, even if true, most journal articles of any value get picked up at least once, pretty easy to get a secondary source to back a claim.
I think you misunderstand, he means you can’t publish the results of your own research to Wikipedia. It has to be published somewhere else and then you need to reference to that on Wikipedia.
Oh, well I guess that’s true, but I find it hard to fathom that OP was going to do their own research (in the sense you described) on something like transportation infrastructure costs. Unless OP runs their own infrastructure network where they can pull real cost and usage data, I assumed the research they were referring to was more in the realm of a lit review.
Unless OP is a secret billionaire, odds are this rule will not impact their efforts.
I totally see your point. It still feels like wikipedia is missing something - like if I were trying to debate my uncle on whether its fair to tax people for public transportation, I’m not sure if this article would really get me the quick statistics I’d be looking for. But in order to find out why not and clarify the idea a bit I think I’ll try to make a wikipedia article like the one I’m thinking of and see how it goes.
I think Wikis themselves are more useful than ever but I don’t know how well a political Wiki would go over. I could see it being very easy to get accused of being biased in one direction.
You may want to do some digging and see if something similar exists though I doubt a lot of websites would be open to outside submissions.
If you do decide to create one I would be interested to see a historical background section. For example if a page is dedicated to improving failing infrastructure in the United States including when and why it was developed, prior large pushes for maintenance, and the history of funding.
I feel like knowing how things go the way that they are should be a bigger part of people’s political views. That is unrelated to your question though; just an idea.
The problem isn’t creating the wiki itself but how you’re going to manage a sensitive topic like politics. You’re frustrated with all the low quality political content but if your wiki is community driven, what’s the guarantee that it stays high quality and doesn’t devolve into a flamewar full of misinformation and dubious sources like everything else? It’s hard to imagine people will contribute to something like this without an agenda, so unless you’re prepared to face that storm I’d vote to not do it.
My go to with all projects like this is if it worth it if ends up it’s just you doing it for yourself. 99% of these projects attract no one but their creators.
So if you want to make a wiki for your own reference or to be able to link to in relevant conversation or for whatever reason you want to for yourself, and accept that no one else may not contribute or even care, go for it. If you just want this to exist but not put in the effort, you are probably better off seeing if someone else is doing something similar.
Wikis are very common, idk what you’re talking about
Wikis are great and still very useful but I am wondering if you are using the right tool for the right job.
As people have pointed out any wiki is going to be subject to the biases of those who are editing it and, especially in politics, that’s always going to be an issue.
What I’d suggest is a database of reliable information, probably keeping a copy of the original web page like The Internet Archive or WebCite. People could then request information in specific subjects. It seems an idea to have an AI in the mix as it would be able to understand context and give better quality returns (I was talking about this kind of thing in the pub at the weekend, a lot of the legal legwork by junior lawyers is looking up old legal cases for precedents and AI can do this quicker and better - it wouldn’t tell the senior solicitor what to say in court but it would be able to provide him with the information he needs to decide how to proceed). You could even have a feature where people ask for a summary. It wouldn’t necessarily be 100% correct but it’d be less biased than a human and help people decide which information to look at from the pile of returns.
Go for it idk
