All content described here is currently a work in progress but is protected by the terms of use statement.

The political wiki is an opportunity for people to share definitions of political jargon, gather and share political facts, and document political organization of local, state, and federal politicians and their agencies. Simply understanding the structure of government can be a difficult task, particularly without easily accessible info about where responsibilities lay. Currently, if a user wants to learn about their local government online, their best hope is to use a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) to find information, which leads to varying results. Some states, agencies, communities are actively sharing information about their state and local governing processes and helping people get info and get involved, but it’s hit or miss because every state or locality has a separate and unique process, making the task of participation a bit more complicated and daunting than it has to be. If concerned “digital citizens” are empowered to catalogue information such as who the county supervisor is, and what they are responsible for, the public in any state can research it easily in the wiki. In many cases the public servants who dramatically affect our lives are unknown to us. It may not be easy to determine who represents a user by conducting searches of the World Wide Web, but simple searches based on zip code, city and county name in the wiki can bring up a wealth of information entered by other users. The baseline data in the wiki will likely be entered by researchers working for Digital Citizen and include fundamental info about state officials. Users of the site or visitors without a profile can view this section and gather information that is not consistently provided by government.

Active users of the wiki can earn honor badges for creating entries that receive a threshold of views, as well as those which are approved by numerous users for accuracy. Wiki entries may also be voted up for accuracy and relevance to current events. A badge can be earned for those who create numerous entries that are voted up reaching specified thresholds. Voted up wiki entries can be set to appear in user home page wiki widgets.

Like Wikipedia there are certainly going to be valid concerns over accuracy of data entered since it is crowd sourced and difficult to verify for accuracy. However, numerous studies show Wikipedia to be just as accurate as traditional encyclopedias created by private organizations, and it has even more content, so we should be able to expect that over time the Digital Citizen Wiki would also develop into a treasure trove of reliable political info. Like Wikipedia, we would place editing barriers on pages that are prone to vandalism of incorrect information.

The wiki will be integrated with other general features of the site. It will be a useful resource for debaters, and bill writers, etc. who wish to cite wiki entries or reference it for evidence in their arguments. Users can earn honor badges through this section of the site by performing activities such as adding wiki entries, editing existing entries for accuracy, or having their entries voted up for quality and accuracy.