CorporisPublica idea

This is about a sprawling, at some times nebulous idea/project I have been tinkering with and pondering for at least 3 years now, though the seed of the idea was planted well over a decade ago.

The idea in a nutshell, is to develop a political/news/information publishing vehicle/portal (which I call ‘CorporisPublica’, poor man's latin for the BodyPolitic) which will hopefully leverage the core strength of hypertext as it was originally intended (contextual content) and power and scope of collaborative workspaces.

It is envisioned as a blend of wiki-style content development and original source info blog/news reportage.

Image if you will, a wiki-based content platform, where the content generation is both collaborative (ala wiki) overlaid with a news/blogging entry/front end from a dedicated team of political information collectors.

This may sound like buzzword salad, or meaningless jargon at this point, so perhaps it might be informative to walk you through a little of what started this years long noodling of this idea.

Hypertext
Basically it all stems from my early days of being exposed to the internet early in 1991, when Mosaic and the first web-browsers showed up and I started using the internet (this was when I worked in an ad agency in Los Angeles) one of the first web pages I read with a border was about what hypertext is. The example it gave in trying to explain what hypertext was, gave an example of using brief paragraph text which mentioned Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address. Both Lincoln's name, and "Gettysburg address" were hyperlinks to different pages. The one of his name was a page consisting of a thousand or so word 'readers digest' level biography of Lincoln, the other one, the Gettysburg address, was page containing a transcript of said address.

In many ways there is a chicken-and-egg aspect of the content creation as it pertains to getting the people to capable and dedicated to making the content worthwhile, and having the content and the structure in place to get those boot-strap people to get it off the ground. I found that simplistic primer on hypertext to be an extraordinary, earth-shattering concept. One which I posit even to this day is so often not really taken advantage of, and is the electronic embodiment of the power of providing context inherent with the online medium, but I'll get to that later.

Context Matters
Now while this may be falling down the rabbit hole of nerddom, around the same time I first started surfing the web, I saw the original airing of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok".

In that episode, the Enterprise makes contact with an alien species Tamarians. Though the universal translator can translate their words, the Tamarians language made no sense and baffled the Enterprise crew. While the captains of both ships are on a hostile planet together, the Enterprise crew deduce that the Tamarian language is entirely based on metaphors from Tamarian folklore. They learn that 'Darmok' was a hunter and 'Tanagra' is an island, but nothing else. Without knowing the stories behind the metaphors, the Tamarian language remained indecipherable. The character of Deanna Troi points out why when saying that "Romeo and Juliet on the balcony," only works if you know who Romeo and Juliet are and what they're doing on the balcony.

Context, was literally everything.

Context Matters
It wasn't until the mid-to-late 90s that I started getting into politics online. For several years beginning in the late 90s and into the run-up to, and recount battles surrounding the 2000 election, I was a posting junkie on the New York Times forums. One day there was a heated discussion in one of the forums around GLBT issues, and one of the regulars in that forum whose intellect and posting style I was very impressed, made the forceful point that "context is everything".

Harkening back to my first exposure to the web, that statement clicked with me in a profound way. The proposition that the lack of context was the true failing of not just news and political reportage, but also an overarching issue about the ever increasing flood of information/data in an ever-increasingly wired world.

For example, knowing what the current BLS unemployment U3 number is can inform to some-limited extent, and it can be accessed with the right Google search terms if one has the inclination (and basic web surfing chops) to dig for it, it needs to presented and consumed in a manner with context for it to have actual meaning.

There is so much information and data (to say nothing of ongoing events and actions by public figures, pols, etc.) that it is often easier to tune out that to become informed. Simple aggregation often still falls short of giving actual context, and hence true meaningful understanding of the information one is exposed to.

Just on the Federal level…

What bill(s) were introduced?

What was talked about on the floor of the Senate today?

What are the particulars of a piece of proposed legislation?

Who put it forward?

What did your representative in Congress (or your Senator) say about it?

What are the arguments for and against it made by my rep, or others in Congress?

All of those not to even mention the mind-blowing number of similar and related questions can, in theory, be answered with a lot digging online, but it is all diffused, dispersed, not consolidated much less put into easily accessible or contextual ways to digest or become informed by. We have mass amounts of information available, but also mass-balkanization of that information.

The power of the medium has both opened up a firehose of data and information one can tap into, but also holds the potential within the medium itself to give it meaningful context that can turn that torrent of information into knowledge, understanding, and having an informed citizenry.

Wiki-way
Shortly after the 2000 election I discovered the fledgling Wikipedia, and saw the power of online collaborative workspace and the wiki platform itself. It also marked a respectable big step forward in the power behind what hypertext can bring to providing context. This seemed to be a viable starting point and the slow start of CoprisPublica (CP).

Wiki's allow both a virtually unlimited workspace, where collaboratively developed content can be easily created, stitched into a body of work, and stitched into a contextually relevant tapestry of information. While a sister project of Wikipedia, WIkinews, does exist, as well well as other open source and/or public websites (such as THOMAS, GovTrack, GovNet, SourceWatch and others) there are challenges with the fully open source aspect of some it (WikiNews in particular) and of how some of those sites function that doesn't really get at the concept or potential of what CP can be.

What that concept is (or can become) I am still trying to formulate into a more succinct and understandable way, but it is a true blend of traditional reportage, with a more encyclopedic depth content foundation to it. Where a more"traditional" new/blogging front-end are one of several entry ways into a living, holistic body of work. When every 'page' of this ecosystem of content is rife with contextually relevant, interconnected 'page' content.

Where source material is 'scrapped' (i.e. culled) from the myriad informational sources and woven into this ever-evolving body of work.

So for example, 'scrapping' from THOMAS the Congressional Record for today, is literally copy and pasted into a new CP page. Part of this culling form the THOMAS page entails 'Wikifying' the content. For example, mentions of a Senator's name, the name of the bill, the commentary mentioned by a Senator into the congressional record, are all made contextually linked to another underlying CP 'page', and made part of and woven into the body of CP content, directly.

So it is 'aggregating' content and information, but also in a manner that has contextual, and narrative connective content and 'tissue' around it. So let's say Harry Reid in his first time at the rostrum during the Morning Business period on the floor of the Senate yesterday mentions a Time magazine article talking about the GOP obstruction of nominations. That can, in the space of a minute, be copy and pasted into a CP page.

For example, on April 24, 2013, Jane Kelly's nomination to the 8th Circuit Court was debate, and voted on in the Senate. On the relevant CP page of the raw Congressional Record that was 'scrapped' form THOMAS, it is formatted into a wiki page:

http://corporispublica.shoutwiki.com/wiki/April_24,_2013/U.S._Senate_Congressional_Record_(raw)

When Harry Reid first starts talking about what the Senate schedule of the day will be, he mentions her and another court nominee. That is "wikified" and by simply adding the double brackets, is made a link to a CP page on her. Her bio, and whatever other content we decide is added to her page. Her page of course would evolve, grow, etc. just like any other "wikified" links in that days congressional record page is made. Each day, a new congressional record page is 'woven' into the CP content body in a likewise manner. Summary pages for that day are crafted by a CP editor for that day the the Senate's page. Another page is likewise made for the House, then a summation for Congress. Another level up, a summary of that week is crafted from the daily summary, etc.

This all evolve and the content grows organically. These sorts of pages, as well as what the POTUS did today, what occurred in the SOCTUS for the day, etc. are the foundational blocks for the CP content which undergird the "blog/news article" front end stories that are built on top of these. The same sort of thing can be 'scrapped' from either original data source outlets (i.e. going to the BLG website directly for the new job numbers, other news outlets for a current event (a plane crash for example) and so on.

Now this could become an endless sink-hole, and a nearly infinite amount of man hours to carry out each day. It certainly is a vlid question, and herring lies the crux of the solution and task I am currently exploring. The Wikipedia model has a kernel of a solution within it that is why I am sharing this with you and begin to pick your brains about.

But a little more back-story on my tinkering with a pre-alpha prototyping wiki site (which is what the link of the raw Congressional record for April 24, 2013 is) to test all this.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat
In the run-up to the 2004 election-cycle, I was a Deaniac, and did a lot of online organizing for the Dean campaign, including some graphic design work for the Dean campaign itself, ('Perfect Storm' Iowa posters, guerilla tactic downloadable flyers, etc.). This in turn lead to me becoming a precinct committee person (PCP) in the Multnomah County Democratic Party after the Dean campaign imploded, and I have been involved off-and-on as an active PCP for the party. I would donate some graphic design work for them as well (made their logo, etc.) and continued to make some downloadable print-on-demand PDF flyers for some guerilla-tactic leafletting, etc.

As I continued to noodle around with, and wanting this envisioned unified knowledge-base/news website, I found myself learning a lot by actually looking up stuff on THOMAS, the BLS, etc. to 'scrape' and it made me stronger in debating in the comments on websites like Daily Kos, TPM, etc.

This lead me to a somewhat failed false-start on CP, in thinking this my be a very powerful way to give other PCPs something to do to both keep them engaged with the people on the walking lists in their respective precincts between elections, but also to help them be better informed and a thought leader in their precinct on politics as well as a goto person and conduit to the Democratic Party, the party's eyes and ears on the ground in that precinct, and to the elected pols for the precinct. My thinking was that in the process of collaboratively capturing and working on a Multnomah County Democratic Party wiki, (i.e. going through the Congressional records for Oregon's reps in Congress to put into 'the wiki' (this was pre-CorporisPublica) they would be learning about the issues, keeping themselves informed about what is going on with our elected pols, issues important to the voters in our area, etc.

I talked to and got conceptual by-in from the Party chair and co-Chair, who started to see the vast power and potential for this idea. However, the lack of web-savviness in almost all the PCPs, not 'seeing' the rationale for basically becoming precinct level 'reporters' of the news and how investing their personal time in learning how to be wiki-editors would enable all this. It was a pretty much a failed experiment when the chairs suggested I try it out within my House District and out PCPs. Not that there was active resistance to it, but while the district house leader in the party was willing to give it an honest go, it became painfully obvious I was talking a whole other language to virtually all the PCPs, and it never really got off the ground.

But in envisioning how PCPs could (if there was enough people without he skills to engage in the collaborative work, to reach a critical mass or tipping point) I could see how with a core team of a dozen or so 'editors', could boot-strap it in a way that the work would be distributed enough that content could be created that would start to take form in a way that it could actually become an ongoing enterprise/concern.

With the caveat that this is purely aspirational until it (hopefully) got to a viable tipping point with say a handful of pioneer participants and grow/recruit more organically, the broad-stroke goal of the structure might be that of an 'editor' per Congressional district. This would allow enough active 'editors' that the individual load of content creation, editing, etc. manageable for any one 'editor'.

Say for instance, if we had five people working here in Oregon on this, one for each of our five Congressional seats, that would mean I (as one of the 'editors' only need to be 'responsible' for 'editing' content pertaining to Earl Blumenauer (my rep.) and 1/5th the content for my Senators Wyden and Merkley (since the other four 'Oregon'-based editors would be responsible for their reps. and 1/5th of our states two Senators). Likewise, in conjunction with, 'editors' from Maine, and any other states to start off with, would be dividing the workload of the POTUS and SOCTUS content common to 'editors' of all states.

Of course the content development would not be rigidly demarcated, in that any of the editors could collaboratively work on other parts of the larger body of content (even more localized aspects of content), particularly as it scaled up in scope and content and more 'editors' can shoulder more of the 'common' content load. This could seamlessly evolve and expand to cover state-level politics, local, municipal and metro-area politics, etc. as well as the other direction and cover international content as well.

The chicken and the egg, and will it scale?
There are a myriad of open questions about if this is even feasible, worthwhile, marketable, etc.

In the end it may just be a naive pipe-dream, but I keep coming back to this envisioned entity which, I would find invaluable just as a political junkie and just as someone who wants to understand what's going on. But if it worked even a 1/10th of how I see it in my head, a powerful and new type of news/information/journalism would be present. If it 'caught on' and is scalable as I imagine, and scaled to envelope not just federal level body of politics/news but also local, state, it could be a game-ganger.

This is very much a simplified example (and also requires a tipping point of content generation and the 'editors' creating it to make it rich enough in content, but say there was a one-to-one Congressional rep-to-'editor'... now imagine if you will, an integrated body of content where the current local, state and federal laws were interwoven into a fully integrated body of content, with easy to grasp, 'plain language' narrative content and current news/events narratives as entry points into it. Or conversely, encyclopedic content which works its way back out into current news/events 'journalistic' narratives tailored to that locale.

Depending on how a persons' end-user settings are set-up (like what their ZIP+4 is when registering) the content could be tailored to your local, your state, your Federal rep news and that content would be contextually crafted in a way that meant when unemployment numbers are given nationally, that content includes your states data in the story, how that intersects with what your elected pols are doing or not doing about it, etc. Of course the myriad interconnected hypertextual linkage would mean you could get at and dive deep (or wide) into other content outside "your" local starting point.

Likewise a revenue/support model might also be established to sustain and grow the 'editor staff' (if you will) as well. Totally a shoot-from-the-hip brainstorming notion is a 'subscription' model which would get you access banner-ad free. If within a state/Cong. district you could get 1,000 subscribers at 20¢ a day, that would be a sustainable revenue stream to more than sustain a congressional rep's 'editor' with a livable wage. As more subscribers per 'district' came in, expansion to bring in another 'editor' for an uncovered district within a state could occur, and so on.

Between distributed content creation along its local-to-federal correlating structural model which might be the basis as an ongoing funding base to sustain each 'editor' I keep speculating that it might have potential even if in a very pie-in-the-sky concept that it is at the moment.

A lot to digest
All of the above may make no sense what-so-ever, and more than likely it is way too nebulous or that I am not framing it as well as it often is in my head, but if this makes any sense at all, and/or if you have questions or thoughts about any of it... I sincerely welcome any feedback you may have on any of it.

I reached out to you because you also strike me (given how we know each other) as a fellow political blog junkie, and that your background indicated some publishing experience as well. If nothing else you being a sounding board to tell me Im nuts is fine, or (conversely) it makes some sense and you have ideas, and/or would be interested in exploring the ideas further, that would be fantastic.

Thoughts?