The Election Protection Wiki: A Dynamic Website Helps Safeguard America’s Right to Vote

The non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy has launched a unique website to help safeguard the fairness and integrity of US elections, using the power of citizen journalism. The Election Protection Wiki is now online at http://www.EPwiki.org/. It enables citizens, journalists and government officials to actively monitor the electoral process in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CMD and its community of volunteer editors will continue to improve, expand and update the EP Wiki beyond the upcoming November 4th election. See the full post at ElectionIntegrity.Org.

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.

·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. The EPWiki will help voters, bloggers and the press find critical information that would otherwise be lost in the noise of the Internet.

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."