Dave Atkins of Westwood, MA wrote last week to tell me about a post he's written on Using a Wiki to Improve Town Governance. Many people aren't involved in their local governments - not because they're lazy, but because there are too many barriers to participation. Dave's description of the barrier to citizen participation in local government meetings gets right to the heart of it:
Not only can participation be intimidating, but giving up 2 hours of a weeknight to go watch a government meeting with no substantive opportunity for participation quickly sours the average person from following the civic process, especially in the early, formative stages of policy, when their input could be the most valuable.
Dave suggests that the chief value of a wiki in this situation is that it gives people a more flexible, less intimidating, and ultimately more participatory "place" to share their input, help ideas and policies evolve, and do it in a transparent, accountable way. Here are his six reasons why:
- Individuals can contribute when and where they have time and expertise
- The entire process is public
- The process itself can be engaging
- The process is ongoing and adaptable
- The process is more transparent
- The process is organic
He also talks about the arguments people might make against the wiki, and debunks each quite well.
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