The founder of Wikipedia, the peer-edited online encyclopedia, has launched a new political wiki site, saying it’s “time for politics to become more intelligent.”Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales launched the Campaigns Wikia site on the Fourth of July. “It’s time for … democracy to really involve the people,” he says in the site’s mission statement. “Broadcast media tells you what to think and doesn’t let you get involved. It’s time to focus on what you need, what you care about, and the messages you want to get out.”The goal of Campaigns Wikia is to bring diverse people together to engage in intelligent debate, Wales writes on the site. He hopes to engage people who “share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television sound bites.”Wales said he doesn’t know how to make politics “healthier” and more responsive to voters, but he believes good ideas can come from potential users of the site. Wales acknowledged that his goal may be “crazy,” but Wikipedia, the flagship product of the Wikimedia Foundation, has seen major growth since it was launched in January 2001. Written largely by volunteer contributors, Wikipedia hit 1 million English articles in March. As of March, there were versions of Wikipedia in 125 languages, containing 3.3 million articles.Wales, in his mission statement for Campaigns Wikia, criticized current political campaigns’ focus on “broadcast politics.” “And let’s be simple and bluntly honest about it, left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb,” he wrote. “Campaigns have been more about getting the television messaging right, the image, the sound bite, than about engaging ordinary people in understanding and caring how political issues really affect their lives.”But blog and wiki authors are inventing a new kind of media, he added. “It is my belief that this new media is going to invent a new era of politics. If broadcast media brought us broadcast politics, then participatory media will bring us participatory politics. The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens.”Among the political issues listed on Campaigns Wiki’s front page are terrorism, digital rights, gay marriage and public health care.-Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content BrandPost How Infosys and Tennis Australia are harnessing technology for good By Veronica Lew Mar 26, 2023 6 mins Infosys BrandPost Retail innovation playbook: Fast, economical transformation on Microsoft Cloud For retailers, tight integration of data and systems is the antidote to a challenging economy. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 3 mins Retail Industry Digital Transformation BrandPost How retailers are empowering business transformation with TCS and Microsoft Cloud AI-powered omnichannel integration and a strong, secure digital core lets retailers innovate across four primary areas while staying compliant, maintaining security and preventing fraud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 4 mins Retail Industry Cloud Computing BrandPost How to Build ROI from Cloud Migration This whitepaper and webcast can help you calculate the ROI and create a business case for modernizing your legacy applications to the Microsoft Cloud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 1 min Retail Industry Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe