Is it dumb to create a wiki in this day and age?

The concern is that if anyone can edit, anyone's bias can become prevalent. I can easily write a 500 word post, cite multiple peer revied sources and no one will check if what I am saying actually reflects the research.

There is a community (improvethenews i think) that tackles this by providing the narrative of what has happened, then providing for and against arguements (and some nerd facts after). Not this is better or that is worse - this is the decision, this is what supporters think, this is what opponents think, there is x% chance of something related happening.

I'm not understanding why you need to reinvent the wheel here, you can just leverage Wikipedia to accomplish your goal (to a degree). Take the entry for public transport: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport

There are sections on the impacts and challenges of public transit. If you feel it's lacking in factual peer reviewed information regarding the financial benefits, just go ahead and add it. The only challenge will be if you don't want to conform to Wikipedia's moderation rules, in which case you're probably better off just making your own website/blog, but you'll lose the community aspect.

As for more true political topics, balletopedia already exists, and quite frankly, it's an excellent resource. If I were you I'd spend my time contributing to resources that are already popular than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Unless you get really lucky, good quality Wikipedia edits will have a much larger impact than a website run out of your basement.

I have a vague idea to create a wiki for politics-related data. Basically, I’m annoyed with how low-effort, entirely un-researched content dominates modern politics.

So my idea for a solution is to create a wiki where original research is not just allowed but encouraged.

these two statements are entirely contradictory. The purpose of the NOR ban on wikipedia itself is precisely because OR is almost always not researched at all, and is only presented as "research" to spackle a veneer of credibility over the top of what are really sock-puppet arguments.

What it seems to me that you're suggesting is essentially crowd sourcing a mix of investigative journalism and data analysis, which is not a skill I think that just anybody can pick up and do properly. To be fair I've never tried my hand at investigative journalism, but I have done a few units of data analysis and trust me there's a hundred different ways to do it wrong. Even among the experts, there's a lot of disagreements to what the best approaches are. I had a teacher even say that if you give a set of data to 10 data analysts, you'll get back 12 different ways of interpreting it.

That is all to say that I'm not sure how much you'd be solving by providing another forum for people to post their takes on public policy issues, but then again if you manage to attract the right crowd of critical thinkers, who also happen to be open minded enough not to insert their own agendas into matters, perhaps people might hold each other accountable?

BTW have you checked that something similar doesn't already exist? Insert obligatory xkcd comic:

I think Wikis themselves are more useful than ever but I don't know how well a political Wiki would go over. I could see it being very easy to get accused of being biased in one direction.

You may want to do some digging and see if something similar exists though I doubt a lot of websites would be open to outside submissions.

If you do decide to create one I would be interested to see a historical background section. For example if a page is dedicated to improving failing infrastructure in the United States including when and why it was developed, prior large pushes for maintenance, and the history of funding.

I feel like knowing how things go the way that they are should be a bigger part of people's political views. That is unrelated to your question though; just an idea.

Moderating is a bitch. Moderating anything is bad. Just the other day a non-nsfw pic of a gaping vagina and a half-excreted shit got onto the 2nd page of hot. And this is just lemmy.

Political wiki is asking for the worst dregs -- online policy wonks -- to notice you.

I'm not saying don't do it. Just be ready to wade into the worst sewage humanity has to offer.

Wikis are very common, idk what you're talking about

politics-related data

Yes.

I’m annoyed with how low-effort, entirely un-researched content

And you think a wiki will solve that? Lol.... yeah this is a bad idea.

No one should trust a wiki for anything other than information on a tv show or a boss, and even then trust but verify. And this is something that you would need to trust.

You're better off creating a blog, or find already established blogs who do this, because stuff like Five Three Eight exists. '

"Original research"

There's a reason peer reviewed research is practically required, and even then there's HUGE problems with that model, but having people go out for original research is basically saying "Let people make up bullshit."... not a good idea.

The problem isn't creating the wiki itself but how you're going to manage a sensitive topic like politics. You're frustrated with all the low quality political content but if your wiki is community driven, what's the guarantee that it stays high quality and doesn't devolve into a flamewar full of misinformation and dubious sources like everything else? It's hard to imagine people will contribute to something like this without an agenda, so unless you're prepared to face that storm I'd vote to not do it.

I use Wikipedia on the regular, just saying.

My go to with all projects like this is if it worth it if ends up it's just you doing it for yourself. 99% of these projects attract no one but their creators.

So if you want to make a wiki for your own reference or to be able to link to in relevant conversation or for whatever reason you want to for yourself, and accept that no one else may not contribute or even care, go for it. If you just want this to exist but not put in the effort, you are probably better off seeing if someone else is doing something similar.

Similar to what others said my main thought is how to have unbiased moderation of the content. Since anyone can edit anyone can try to spin their own story instead of reflecting the true idea of the website. If there is moderation to prevent any bias on either side and only allow for the data that viewers can draw their own viewpoint on, would be great but sounds like it would rely on a lot of people to help moderate the bias.

I do not know a lot about how wikiapedia operates as far as their moderation. It seems it’s gotten so big that any topic with more than 1 person interested in it will have people editing out bad content.

With the more niche wikis out there most the people who have interest in them are interested in keeping it honest.

With politics your bringing in a wide demographic with a lot more room for people trying to spin their own narrative.

Wikis are great and still very useful but I am wondering if you are using the right tool for the right job.

As people have pointed out any wiki is going to be subject to the biases of those who are editing it and, especially in politics, that's always going to be an issue.

What I'd suggest is a database of reliable information, probably keeping a copy of the original web page like The Internet Archive or WebCite. People could then request information in specific subjects. It seems an idea to have an AI in the mix as it would be able to understand context and give better quality returns (I was talking about this kind of thing in the pub at the weekend, a lot of the legal legwork by junior lawyers is looking up old legal cases for precedents and AI can do this quicker and better - it wouldn't tell the senior solicitor what to say in court but it would be able to provide him with the information he needs to decide how to proceed). You could even have a feature where people ask for a summary. It wouldn't necessarily be 100% correct but it'd be less biased than a human and help people decide which information to look at from the pile of returns.

There is https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Main_Page for deep politics

Go for it idk

You mean like this? https://ballotpedia.org/

I think choice of software (wiki or otherwise) is the least of your worries. The problem is not so much with fake data, it's with the interpretation of the data. That's where the bias (and sometimes manipulation) comes in. Even if you managed to moderate it well enough so that all the data was "objective", you couldn't stop subjectivity being a part of the interpretation.

As an example, in most countries, certain minority groups are over-represented in prison populations. e.g. in the US, black people disproportionally end up in prison. That is an objective fact (so far as it goes).

But based on that fact, you could interpret it as either:

• Black people are just inherently more likely to commit crimes
• There are systemic biases that mean black people are imprisoned more often

How do you decide which is right when both are based on the data? (One is clearly racist, but still based partially on facts)