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Debating policy

To help in debating policy, the list of policy terms needs to have its holes filled. A list of process terms also needs to be created from the terms indicated as being on both.

It's mid-April, folks. You won't be influencing any policies this summer if you haven't got solid issue briefings written, and you can't write those if you're flailing for terms. The list of policy terms tells you exactly what to google search or Wikipedia search on, or if necessary nab the definition from a more political wiki like sourcewatch. The terms you use must be solid.

Also keep an eye out for bad frames like the term:911 being used to ignore 911 emergency phone system inadequacies, like the one that pretty much kept New Orleans a ghost town for months.

Listing issues and teaching process

Not enough issues are in issue/position/argument form, even the more complex ones. A list of issues that are actually in this form should be created, to make it easy to find what's actually been debated. C'mon, you really want to be way way behind a bunch of Canadians who already nailed about 2/3 of their issues in a year? This stuff doesn't happen quickly. You have to start early, and edit often, and get more trolls involved. Stop trashing Republicans for a while and start improving basic definitions and positions.

And please put more of this process stuff on the front page so people learn how to do it.

Recent Changes

AlanF DKP 19:44, 25 March 2006 (PST) Centerfielder has opened this page up for editing once again.


Ohwilleke 18:29, 19 Jul 2005 (PDT) I changed the featured article. I couldn't figure out how to get the prior feature (Freedom of Information Act) to display properly, and I'm not sure if this is too long and needs to be editted. Other admins, be bold.


wegerje 08:49, 15 Jan 2005 (PST) Nothing new in Ohio Irreg. since Dec 22 - Removed it from Hot topics - put it in Ohio and Elections. Added new Hot Topic Software Technology. Will move it in a week or two to Projects. wegerje 16:35, 23 Jan 2005 (PST) Now moved.

Centerfielder 10:04, 30 Nov 2004 (PST) Jeff, you're right, the pointer to how to edit should be more prominent. I put it as part of the main table.

Pyrrho 13:39, 28 Nov 2004 (PST) As we were thinking what to do, I felt too slow about getting Latino Politics linked in as close to the front page as possible. I didn't really understand your suggestion, Centerfielder, about it going under "Projects"... please add that page if you want, I like the idea but (1) I wasn't exactly sure where to put it and (2) I am still not sure if it's a "project" except that anything in the wiki can be thought of as a project to complete the article. It's seems like a regular descriptive type of article. Perhaps... however, the idea is that we need to help define and even create these "groups"... anyway I left that for now or for you. I went with something not quite like the suggestions but hopefully inspired with it. I'm not sure of it, but I think in the end it's better, with a wiki, to do something and deal with the result rather than procrastinate too long as I was doing with the Latino Politics page. This is an interesting test case because Latino Politics is not at all just about civil rights for Latinos, of course, and brings out this interesting issue about demogrpahic politics not being self absorbed but really about the worldviews of a given demographic, either by historical accident or by design, etc. etc.. And TWO: The Latino Vote is key in modern national American politics.

anyway: I added "Demographic Politics" to the Butter section, added a "see also" from the civil rights page to it.

--Centerfielder that looks good to me

Request for Changes

Would anyone object if I added a link to the dkos FAQ (as requested below)? Several people over on dkos asked for a main-page link to the FAQ. I would stick it next to the link to the Kossary in the Projects section.

-dms

Dmsilev 08:49, 19 May 2006 (PDT)

good idea. that "Projects" section needs some culling as well, while you're there. -- Centerfielder 09:49, 19 May 2006 (PDT)

It's kind of unclear (to me, anyway) what sort of things really belong in the Projects section. I assume that these are collaborative-content projects, that are somewhat larger in scale than the typical wiki page. As a first-order cull, maybe eliminate links to pages that haven't been edited in the last several months?-- Dmsilev 12:33, 19 May 2006 (PDT)


A link to DailyKos FAQ should be prominent on the main page. (still waiting for Categories - <grin>) --SarahLee 17:41, 3 Sep 2005 (PDT)


Lestatdelc 16:36, 27 Jul 2005 (PDT) There is a major glitch in the manu linnk back to the Daily Kos blog. The current main menu link goes to http://dailykos.com/ not http://www.dailykos.com/ This is an issue since the server db of the former is not the current one and when I click on it goes back to the The Senate stem cell bill vote must happen this month article by Plutonium Page on Mon Jul 25th, 2005 at 09:32:02 PDT. They have obviously shuffled servers around and the URL resolution is not pulling up the current cotnent form the active servier(s) DB for the most recent ocntent there. Can the Daily Kos URL be corrected to the correct http://www.dailykos.com/ URL?

--Centerfielder 19:57, 27 Jul 2005 (PDT) Hmmm. Well, sure, though, as you say, the problem's really on their end...

Lestatdelc 01:49, 21 Jun 2005 (PDT) — Is there any work on fixing the bug about using quotes or apostrophes in page titles? For example a page on former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill needs to use an apostrophe and that doesn't work in this implementation of wiki being used here. It gives a bad title error. And using a space instead of the apostrophe is not really a good solution, since every article that will mention him will use the O'Neill spelling... not O Neill. I would have reported this in the Bug reports page, but that is a locked page for some reason.

--Centerfielder 05:41, 21 Jun 2005 (PDT) That's a bug I'm not really in a position to fix. See if it still exists on the blue version. There's a spambot hitting MediaWiki based wikis; it adds spam to a set of well-known MediaWiki pages, such as Bugs and Help. I've locked those pages down until the MediaWiki guys find a fix.
Lestatdelc 17:17, 22 Jun 2005 (PDT) I added a Paul O'Neill article in the blue version, but it doesn't show up in the DB for the orange version. I know Wikipedia allows the apostrophe in it's page titles, as does the blue version obviously.
--Centerfielder 19:48, 22 Jun 2005 (PDT) ok. yes it's ok with bluepedia, so once dkosopedia's upgraded then it too should accept apostrophes... more incentive to upgrade, i guess.
Speaking of apostrophes (and here you were, just a mere year ago), I noticed today that Sandra Day O'Connor is a redlink, because the actual article on the former Supreme Court justice uses a smart-quote-style apostrophe (O’Connor) in her name, rather than a simple ' mark. The simple fix, of course, would be to create a REDIRECT page, but, frankly, that's kind of half-assed: The page really should be at Sandra Day O'Connor. However, I forsee a massive amount of ass-pain from trying to fix it, given all of the pages that link to Sandra Day O’Connor already. I guess that, if there isn't some clever Robo-Fix available, I'll slog through the overhaul manually some day. Ugh. --Ray Radlein 21:33, 13 June 2006 (PDT)

Theresa O'Connor 21:13, 17 June 2005 (PDT) -- I'd like to request a link to the California_-_Special_Election_of_2005 page, under Elections. We've only got five months to get a state the size of a country informed about the special election, and I'd guess there are a disproportionate share of Californians on dKos.


Lestatdelc 02:55, 29 Nov 2004 (PST) -- Q: Can we change the link for the Legislative Branch so it points to Legislative Branch instead of directly to the Congress page? This would make it consistent with the structure of the other branches of government links/pages.

Pyrrho 17:52, 29 Nov 2004 (PST) ok, I'll do this. It looks like maybe some of the information in Congress should be moved over... don't know why we want two articles... but I'll let that work itself out and do the change based on the idea that it matches the naming style of the other branches of federal government.

We want to put in CSTARs skeletal Latino Politics. I think while maybe this should be linked through Civil Rights under Issue::Butter heading, we probably should have a Community Politics page for dealing with demographic politics articles. Any comments?

Also... I'm not sure "community" is the right word, it could be cultural or... or... ? I am thinking not "ethnic" to cover other kinds of identified demographics and Latino Politics is a good example where you are going to find cultural trends on issues that are not really ethnic so much as due to cultural history, e.g. Catholicism leading to anti-death penalty positions etc.

If someone (CSTAR?) would like to propose it going straight on the main page some how, please feel free.


Pyrrho a little more: I looked closely at Civil Rights again and I really think it's inappropriate and even, gasp!, politically incorrect to pigeon hole Latino Politics in there. If there is no comment here I'll add a Cultural Politics or a Community Politics or a Demographic Politics page and link it there... in the next day or two unless someone beats me to it.

--Centerfielder 13:52, 12 Nov 2004 (PST) How about a "Group Politics" section under "Projects" as a jumping off point for Latino Politics et al? We're really talking about Interest Groups, which is ok to talk about, just as long as they're not Special... Perhaps a cause for pause, perhaps not. Maybe Group Identity Politics.
Also, as you no doubt know by now, I put Anatomy of Terrorism in the Featured Article spot, and protected the article. The dKosopedia really needs more articles like that, thanks for bringing it over from dKos.

Other Discussion

Ohwilleke 16:45, 10 Jan 2005 (PST) Not a big fan of the Bluepedia thing. I like the name, but the blue on gray scheme feels corporate or like I'm at a Civil War reenactor's convention and I miss the buttons on top and bottom like we have in this format.

--Drh 14:40, 24 Oct 2004 (PDT) - do we have online database functionality? that is, can multiple people manage a spreadsheet on dKosopedia that can be dumped onto a wiki page? i originally put my question on ToDo

--Pyrrho 15:35, 24 Oct 2004 (PDT) MediaWiki doesn't have a feature like that. you're right, it's a great idea and we should think about making that. right now you'd have to approximate it with regular collaborative editing.
--CSTAR 17:23, 24 Oct 2004 (PDT) We might think of devoting an Kosopedia article to Data structures for internet political organization. A data structure would have various generic properties -- who can read, who can write. These properties would distinguish a blog story, a diary entry, a wiki page etc. It's not cleatr whether what Drh is suggesting has the functionality of a spreadsheat (i.e. with arithmetic capabilties) or could just be implemented by a big table (such as the one in Sinclair Broadcast Group).
--Drh 18:50, 24 Oct 2004 (PDT) simple database tables would be a good start. i think the data are more important than the spreadsheet capabilities of formulas.

Meme Instructions

How do you post a meme? I've read the instructions, but they seem to deal only with the format, not with the actual posting.

Is there an input page? Am I missing something here? Could I be dumber than GWB? Nahh..

A little help would really be appreciated.

Thanks,

DrKen

-Pyrrho DrKen... creating pages in the wiki in general is a little wierd... to create a memepage go to the memetank and find a place you'll link from. Put the link on the page like this "[[DrKensMemeArticleName]]", say in the meme projects page if it's new, or in some other category if it's "from the field" i.e. something you've noticed, and save the page. At this point, assuming the article doesn't already exist, then clicking on it will take you to the editing page. Create the meme article. Save. make sense?
Hehe. A case of all of us getting so used to computers and internet stuff being so complicated that when something is simple, it takes a while to get it. Happened recently to me, too.
Basically, create/find a link to it from somewhere else, click on it, and start editing. Or, with your browser showing any dKosopedia page, replace everything after "title=" in the address bar with the title you want for the page.--IFaqeer 20:58, 10 Dec 2004 (PST)

External links

What's the policy with external links? I was thinking that when I contribute here, I would like to refer to the Wikipedia extensively.--IFaqeer 20:58, 10 Dec 2004 (PST)

Hosting

Where's the dKosopedia hosted? I would like to find a free or affordable host for a Wiki using MediaWiki software.--IFaqeer 20:58, 10 Dec 2004 (PST)

--Centerfielder 18:57, 15 Dec 2004 (PST) It's on a shared server hosted by lunarpages.com, for 7.95 a month. I'm not exactly plugging them, but service is exceptional, the management tools and capabilities are fine, and I've never really had any problems, except when they upgraded our server right in the middle of the Boycott Sinclair effort. We were down for a bit, and I thought the Bad Guys had executed DoS attack or something, but we came back, and with a faster server to boot. (pun intended)

Question about the purpose of this website

I was looking through here and I was wondering if there was any information on how to run for office and if it would be appropriate here.

When I voted (my first time I am able to vote). I noticed that there was only one state democrat actually running for any sort of office. The rest of the republicans were running unopposed or against libertarians. With that in mind I wondered how hard it would be to put my name on the ballot, but I really have no idea how to go about doing that sort of stuff.

I think that it would be useful to add in here guides on how to run for office and other similar stuff.

Pyrrho sounds very good Sterra, please feel free, and I think it sounds like something that needs a direct link off the main page too.
--Centerfielder 18:57, 15 Dec 2004 (PST) I agree. This will end up being a large heirarchy of pages, since each state, county, and municipality will have different sets of rules and different forms and different offices, etc. Still, this seems like a very worthwhile thing to start. I'll put a pointer on the main page to a state based jumping off place, and see where it goes from there. pyrrho, you want to diary this to get people started?

Free to use content from this site

I maintain an informational site about Iraq and the neocon takeover at http://www.iraqtimeline.com that DKosopedians are free to crib from at will. I don't have the time to make major contributions to the 'pedia myself -- what free time I have goes into the timeline site -- but if anyone wants to use material from my site for this one, you're more than welcome.

(edited to remove typo)

Relationship to Wikipedia / other political wikis? / obsolete page

I'm trying to build up the info on MA state and local gov't, and it's already pretty impressive here. I pasted some of it to Wikipedia, but in general what's the policy for keeping a general wiki and a specific one in synch?

Also, for NPOV reasons I'd like to have other US political wikis of different persuasions to link over there; any suggestions?

Finally, Current events appears not to be current and should be fixed or removed from the menu on the left.


User:Peabo is a vandal

I have no idea what DKosopedia's means for dealing with vandalism is. Wikipedia has an article on dealing with vandalism and a page for vandalism in progress. AFAIK DKos has neither. So I'll just document User:Peabo's vandalism here.

instance of vandalism of another user's page

EqualOpportunityCynic 07:42, 19 May 2005 (PDT)

dKosopedia User's Guild

Bink 08:42, 27 Jul 2005 (PDT) It looks like there are just a handful of folks right now who are actively making changes to the dKosopedia. There have been a number of occasions where I needed to ask a question of the other regular contributors regarding style, appropriateness, navigation and the like, but I don't know where to turn. Is there a place where we can all get together and chat/ask questions and give/get moral support?

--Centerfielder 10:04, 27 Jul 2005 (PDT) Well, there's a Meta page set up with some previous discussions of this type. In general, it seems like dKosopedia activity happens in waves, and that a new wave has recently started. This is often because of a front page posting on dailykos.com. If you want to use the meta page for coordination and discussion -- and that seems like a good place to me -- go right ahead. You can archive off previous discussion if you like.
Hmmm. The A..Z pages are not part of the wiki software, and are not automatically updated. But the suggestion has some merit. Perhaps listing a subset of the Special Pages on the front page makes sense. --Centerfielder 15:24, 8 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Feedback

Very intresting wiki site!... Thanx! --HarryRens 12:37, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Citing?

What license is the content here published under? Thanks. Falphin 16:02, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

It *SHOULD* be all under CC-by-nc-sa or CC-by-sa. By no means should anything other than a share-alike license be used (GFDL would be ok as it's share alike pretty much, though incompatible with the others). For a state of the art solution to the problem of sharing partisan political material, you might look at Green Party of Canada Living Platform terms of use which recognize contributor ownership (under CC-by) of individual contributions, but reserve commercial rights in the multi-authored collaborations to the party, and release the final output as CC-by-nc-sa. That way anyone, even opponents of the party, can use the material without permission, helping ensure they adopt its conventions and spread its materials.

crap deleted

(Deleted crap that vandal Curps left behind. Dmsilev 18:08, 11 May 2006 (PDT))

Serious name discipline problems

There are some serious dkosopedia:page name discipline problems and most of them seem to start from the Main Page. We are following the GFDL corpus namespace conventions, i.e. Wikipedia and everyone who copies it slavishly for very very very very good reasons, those being:

we cannot hope to ever produce even a tiny portion of that material, so we will be cross-linking to it for history, geography, philosophy and all sorts of other things - if you vary the names in dkosopedia:itself even slightly from Wikipedia's you destroy the 1-to-1 ease of just linking to the article with the same name
you also lose the HUGE advantage of being able to instantly look up translation for any term worth of an article that has links to "the same article in another language" - the title of that article will be the translated term, in almost all cases
those conventions are completely compatible with the English language, unlike some of the stupid non-conventions that are starting to proliferate here, e.g. inventing a New Capitalized Phrase every time you have a brain fart. This has to not only be discouraged, but actively stomped on: it's vandalism by bad convention
names like U.S. Senate election, 2006 and U.S. House election, 2006 are following the conventions
names like Legislative Branch, Executive Branch and Judicial Branch are not since these are generic terms applicable to any government with a balance of powers including say the British where the executive is the Cabinet (and is formed by people from the legislative) - if you mean U.S. federal legislative branch of government, say so. U.S. Legislative Branch is questionable but better - just do what Wikipedia does with these names, please

The Main Page is creating some of these problems by using bad conventions like WikiWords, which are banned on all sane wikis except to describe names that are legally defined that way, e.g. eBay. The problem with these is that no one ever gets them right, and they always over time tend to just become lowercase or capitalized in the traditional way, i.e. Wikipedia, not WikiPedia.

See dkosopedia:page name issues for every page name that has a problem or is setting a bad precedent. This list is only those visible from the Main Page, which have the following problems that really must be addressed soon, before a lot of users show up and start echoing the bad naming.

--SarahLee 16:50, 14 June 2006 (PDT) Tag for Convention Diaries is now YearlyKos 2006, YearlyKos 2007, etc.

reviews, analysis, positions, strategy

ThinkTanks is just a clumsy pre-category, pre-naming standards way of trying to link this stuff together. If that's the title, though, then use that title on the Main Page too and put all this other stuff under it. The Vision for America is obviously the output of a lot of analytic thought (since the purpose of the analysis is getting to a better vision, and only that really). The dkosopedia Category Project (terrible name but at least well defined) needs to explore this.

Since all book reviews have political content, they need to be listed on the main page as part of analysis.

The FrameShop is just a bad name and doesn't state the action. Rather than having a bunch of pages in a "FrameShop" space, the namespace should be a verb like "reframe:free trade". That better describes what the page does, and fits nicely with the term:namespace where we would explain the term:free trade and the position:namespace where we would take normative positions like position:Bush must resign. We now seem also to need a separate claim:namespace for statements that people claim to be able to prove like claim:Bush is stupid. But be careful because Jeb Bush is out there too, and he also is stupid!

Names like Happening Now, Rapid Response, MemeTank and Software Technology Project are all too generic. These all need to be ditched and put in a predictable namespace with action focus. Something like do:namespace ? So it's do:now for tasks we must "do now" and do:respond if we would say "do, respond!" to the crap the Republicans are putting out. So names like How To Run For Office become do:run for office with many subpages.

Having such conventions makes it quite easy to differentiate go:now (places you can actually go today or sign up for now). This needs more thought. Again The dKosopedia Category Project may need to really address how we label events, available actions etc.


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