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. I think a big part of the problem is that modern political figures use social media platforms that are hostile to context and citing sources.
So my idea for a solution is to create a wiki where original research is not just allowed but encouraged. For example, you could have an article that’s a breakdown of the relative costs to society of private vs public transportation, with calculations and sources and tables and whatnot. It wouldn’t exactly be an argument, but all the data you’d need to make one. And like wikipedia, anyone can edit it, allowing otherwise massive research tasks to be broken up.
The problem is - who creates a wiki nowadays? It feels like getting such a site and community up and running would be hopeless in a landscape dominated by social media. Will this be a pointless waste of time? Is there a more modern way to do this? All thoughts welcome.
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.