I gotta say what you wrote here rang a big bell for me.

“I don’t expect all people to keep track of all aspects of day to day government, but [...] people who are interested would also be able to take that as a starting point and confirm the facts for themselves.”

Very much core to my thinking. (“Gnodal” is a snap-shot of where I was in May of 2004. Forced upon me by a catastrophic HD failure that happened.) Are you familiar with Habermas? I digested everything he wrote grappling to understand the continuum of discourse | discussion | debate … something like convince | compel | coerce | conquer. “Discourse ethics” should be key.

“all people? Never. But many? Sure.”

I long ago came to the conclusion that the small number of folk who would very naturally devote energy to issues are being at best ill-served. At worst? Jerked around and mis-directed.
My “target audience” is a lot like the folk who dedicate themselves to WikiPedia. Folk who want more than the option to click “Like”, or comment like “Yes, this is a great idea!”

Do you know History Commons? What I imagine for my project (working along a very different axis) would be a lot like that, but applying what I’ve learned about cognitive schema (“user experience”) and the formation of opinions (including “conversion experiences”).

cheers!

p.s. peek http://soup.groundplane.org and http://protension.com for some tasty munchies.
p.s.2 not upgraded to WP3? the new core comment function is jim-dandy peachy-keen

Both a deterrent and a consequence. I suspect it will come in even more handy once my daughter begins to date.

I don’t expect all people to keep track of all aspects of day to day government, but if it were all out there, people would ultimately be able to figure out which “watchdog” groups (which would inevitably spring up) they choose to trust. Much like blogs (in fact, it may actually be in the form of blogs) people who are interested would also be able to take that as a starting point and confirm the facts for themselves. Again, all people? Never. But many? Sure.

Maybe Fukuyama is right; maybe we are all of us as individuals engaged in a life/death struggle for prestige. But I know this for sure: damn few seem interested in doing the right thing well.

Anyhow, I celebrate all the calls for OpenData and Gov2.0 … but that will only help if folk actually want to deal with brass tacks, nuts & bolts … which is why I’ve kept beavering away these 3 decades and more: to find a way for folk to vent (typical blog post comments) without losing sight of the underlying facts.

Then, with a system like that, obfuscation of any sort from any party will get de-constructed … mitigating against sophistry while promoting the subjective narrative, that’s the name of my game!

greets
@bentrem

p.s. nice preview function. tell me the name of the plugin?

But this heartless animal, found that disgusting.