Democrats launch McCainpedia

The primary season hasn't ended, but Democrats have already begun the online battle against Republican presidential nominee John McCain with the launch of McCainpedia. The site is a wiki about McCain, but it's funded by the Democratic National Committee. The goal? To "centralize research material, allowing the general public to use it as they see fit," according to the site's "about" page. In other words, the McCainpedia is a one-stop shop for talking points that can be used to argue against the Republican candidate.

While its name is partly inspired by Wikipedia, the community-written encyclopedia, the McCainpedia is read-only for members of the public, prompting technologists to criticize the site for violating the community-driven ethos of Web 2.0. Given the polarizing nature of elections, the DNC says it is keeping editing in-house to "fully validate all of the information that appears, ensuring accuracy and reliability."

Based on just the headlines, I thought the McCainpedia was destined to become a case study for media literacy classes. But the top of every page clearly reads "A project of the Democratic Party," leaving no confusion about where the information on the wiki is coming from. It seems the biggest issue with the site is that it's not the forum for debate that its name implies, but rather a highly controlled source for opposition research on the Republican candidate.

What do you think: is it fair to call the McCainpedia a wiki if the public can't edit its content? And what are some of the sites you'll be relying on during election season?

[DarkHawke]

This "McCainpedia" (nice portmanteau construction, dudes; I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat!) is clearly a bait-and-switch site, however well branded. If you're gonna call it a wiki and have it look a lot like Wikipedia, even so much as to ape its name, to have it closed to public editing is a flat-out lie. Try snopes.com or factcheck.org. Neither are wikis and they don't pretend to be. Just straight out and unbiased facts. Can't do better than that in today's politics.

[madcasey]

In point of fact, the extension "-pedia" was not invented by Wikipedia. So the "site's name," doesn't automatically imply that it's a Wiki -- moreso, that it's an encyclopedia, which it is, albeit a biased one.

They do call it a "wiki" in the About literature, however, and obviously that's where they start running into problems with the Technocracy. Other than that misnomer, the presentation of the site itself doesn't seem all that dubious to me. And cutting out anonymous or public editing is just a fact of life when it comes to political content -- you couldn't get anything accomplished if every page of your website were pure flamewar.

[madcasey]

In point of fact, the extension "-pedia" was not invented by Wikipedia. So the "site's name," doesn't automatically imply that it's a Wiki -- moreso, that it's an encyclopedia, which it is, albeit a biased one.

They do call it a "wiki" in the About literature, however, and obviously that's where they start running into problems with the Technocracy. Other than that misnomer, the presentation of the site itself doesn't seem all that dubious to me. And cutting out anonymous or public editing is just a fact of life when it comes to political content -- you couldn't get anything accomplished if every page of your website were pure flamewar.