Campaigns & Elections' Politics - February 2008 - (Page 54) TechBytes Joel Berg Mittanica? Obamapedia? Customized Wiki Pages are the Next Big Thing A wiki can replace the need for training because there are experts sharing knowledge informally. iki ikis are emerging as more than the i h h geeky mass of information collected and fought over on Wikipedia. Sites like PBwiki.com, Wetpaint.com and wikia.com offer anyone a chance to create wikia.co a wiki devoted to topics of their choosing. d The free sites can be open to the public or limited to a select few. t One site on Wetpaint, www.2008 racetracker.com, aims to keep tabs on evracetrack ery House, Senate and gubernatorial race Hou this year. At the presidential level, there’s an year Encyclopedia Mittanica in support of Mitt Encyclop Romney and an Obamapedia to rally supporters o behalf of Barack Obama. on But wikis also are becoming a tool for w internal communication. Businesses have been experimenting with them for the last exp few years, seeing wikis as a way to stem the year daily flood of e-mail exchanges between o co-workers, often derided as “occupational co-work spam.” And there’s a lot of promise there for A campaigns at all levels. campaign W During the last presidential cycle, Howard Dean’s staff created a wiki for volunteers collecting news articles relevant to the campaign. A single staffer was able to oversee the work of roughly 400 volunteers, each assigned to a different publication. The wiki format allowed the staffer to spend more time focusing on the quality of the clippings and less time organizing them as they came in. An internal wiki serves as an online catalog of knowledge that anyone can add to, according to Brian Keairns, vice president of product management at CustomerVision Inc., a wiki software company in Des Moines, Iowa. A political campaign could post items that it wants to share among staff and gather their input more efficiently. People can 54 Politics February 2008 http://Wetpaint.com http://www.PBwiki.com http://www.wikia.com http://www.2008racetracker.com http://www.2008racetracker.com
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