Wednesday, October 10, 2007

PoliticalBase - a new take on wiki workings

Techcrunch reports that CNET founder Shelby Bonnie has a new startup: PoliticalBase. From the article:
"PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can’t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can’t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site’s community the ability to create and edit content."

Obviously timed for the 2008 presidential race, this would be a great resource to promote to our politically active and interested patrons. It's also a very interesting example of a seriously moderated wiki, where the content is available for editing but the underlying structure isn't. This allows the site maintainers to use stable pages for remixing information and efficiently comparing like things.

Fascinating tech development, useful resource and all-around neat idea. Let me know if you play with it and what you think, eh?

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