Portal:Election Protection Wiki/Things you can do/Invites

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Two different types of invites

For more blogosphere types

Invite to Join Election Protecting Wiki Efforts

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is announcing an Election Protection Wiki (EP Wiki) project on its SourceWatch site to document voter suppression campaigns, electronic voting and other threats to election integrity. The EP Wiki is online at http://EPWiki.org and we need your help to make sure that, come Election Day, we have all the information to protect our Democracy.

Citizen groups and individuals across the country have collected a great deal of information that is spread across thousands of blog and press reports, studies and databases. Voters and activists need a centralized index of what is happening in their state and what they need to do to take local action. The Election Protection Wiki will serve as a clearinghouse for all types of election protection information on the issues and threats in each state. The EP Wiki will help election protection activists take preventative actions and efficiently place poll monitors and other resources by identifying problematic polling places ahead of Election Day. It will also help election protection activists and rapid-response teams to quickly determine the key problematic factors at each polling station where initial reports of problems surface, including the name and contact information of the relevant local election officials. And by integrating information on 2008 problems after Election Day, it will serve as an open data base for researchers and longer-term reformers and will assist policymakers by providing up-to-date data on recent election problems in their jurisdictions.

We are working alongside and hand-in-hand with the Voter Suppression Wiki.

We invite and encourage you to join us in this project by helping gather and enter information into our Election Protection Wiki. Go to http://EPWiki.org and look for the "things you can do."

For more election protection community types

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is announcing an Election Protection Wiki (EP Wiki) project on its SourceWatch site to document voter suppression campaigns, electronic voting and other threats to election integrity. The EP Wiki is online at http://EPWiki.org and we need your help to make sure that, come Election Day, we have all the information to protect our Democracy.

The wiki is the perfect vehicle for collecting and linking to the existing research on election threats that, while excellent and bountiful, is spread throughout thousands of blog posts, press reports, studies and databases. The EPWiki will help voters, bloggers and the press find critical information that would otherwise be lost in the noise of the Internet. Wikis are critical and increasingly powerful tools for facilitating collective action. They facilitate collaboration and communication to enhance knowledge building, sharing and searching. Among the features and benefits:

  • Knowledge from outside sources is easily included through document upload, email integration and RSS content feeds from other web sites or Blogs.
  • Simple “alert” systems (RSS, favorites, dashboard and email integration) are available to monitor all changes to Wiki content.
  • Advanced document and content development is facilitated through open and simple editing access that encourages participation by many parties.
    • Editing availability to particular articles is customizable for groups of users (permissioning).
  • Versioning control and comparison is built-in.
  • Easy self-publishing by contributors obviates administrative bottlenecks.
  • Extremely low cost by fully harnessing its volunteer base.

Wikipedia has become one of the most-read websites on the planet, but it is vulnerable to manipulation though the use of anonymous edits and a need for a "neutral point of view," even when some points of view are disingenuous. SourceWatch, which EPWiki is hosted on, instead has a standard of "fair, accurate and fully sourced," which both better lets the truth come through, but also insists that every piece of information have an external, verifiable source. There's no need to "take our word for it."

Wikipedia is also a general encyclopedia, where each article is supposed to be a good encapsulation of the topic to a general reader. In contrast, SourceWatch is a guide for people as citizens, consumers and human beings. Its articles are meant to inform and assist action, not to simply bone up on a subject.

We invite and encourage you to join us in this project by helping gather and enter information into our Election Protection Wiki. Go to http://EPWiki.org and look for the "things you can do."

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