Why Shouldn't New Legislative Data Flow Directly Into Wikipedia
from the automate-that dept
There's an interesting event going on today and tomorrow at the Cato Institute, with a very practical focus: looking at ways to automate the process of getting legislative data into Wikipedia. That is, when new bills are introduced, and as they make their way through Congress and to the President, is there any reason that data doesn't automatically populate to Wikipedia?Our project to produce enhanced XML markup of federal legislation is well under way, and we hope to use this data to make more information available to the public about how bills affect existing law, federal agencies, and spending, for example.There are a bunch of services out there that present such legislative data, but having a straight XML feed from Congress to Wikipedia seems like an all around good idea.
What better way to spread knowledge about federal public policy than by supporting the growth of Wikipedia content?
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Filed Under: congress, data, legislation, wikipedia, xml
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The distribution companies don't exactly have a monopoly right now, but it can be hard for small businesses and individuals to get their hands on the data in a useful form. Wiki-izing the legislative data would make it much more accessible and uniform.
There would still be a market for paid access to legislative data as long as the tools and filters were doing a good job. There might be some pressure to improve the quality of those tools to compete with the unfiltered data, but that is a good thing, at least for the public.
I would not be surprised to see the companies already in the business of selling the data try to block this effort. I would have a problem with that.
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If they're stand-up businessmen, they'll do like you suggest and build their business around providing value on top of what's available for free. If they're douchebags, they'll try to go the legislative protection route. If they're idiots, they'll keep doing the same thing and go bankrupt.
I honestly don't care which they pick aside from the legislative protection route. If they succeed, they get fat wads of cash for being useful to society. If they fail, someone else will be happy to take our money in their place. As long as there's no protectionism going on, everyone who's not either bloody stupid or a greedy fucktard wins.
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Just saying...
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I know that Reddit actually has one where legislation is constantly pirated by a bout to be assessed by the public.
My issue is that there is no good way to interpret that data and watch merely for what you might be interested in.
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In fact, I'd rather all legislative proposals were tracked via version control in public repos.
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openstates.org a lot easier to do.
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This has great potential to get legislation closer to the citizenry. Public scrutiny of the plans and data submitted to congress would be great in that special interest groups would not be able to 'lie in the darkness' like the last 200 years or so.
The key part is how do we make sense of all the drivel produced by our legislators? How do we recognize the parts written by monopolistic protectionist minded special interest groups? How do we discover the badly manipulated data that leaves out all the good points?
At any time the engagement of the public in making law should be a good thing. Even if fails the effort is noble.
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THOMAS
Granted, we have THOMAS but it is a pathetic piece of garbage that you just know is hiding divide by zero SQL errors behind the lame GUI.
End of File.
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Obama is a Liar
�I�ll make our Govt Open and Transparent so anyone can ensure that our business is the people�s business�
"Public Will Have 5 Days To Look At Every Bill That Lands On My Desk"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5t8GdxFYBU
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Why shouldn't all laws be proposed and voted by the people directly?
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Re: Why shouldn't all laws be proposed and voted by the people directly?
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Re: Re: Why shouldn't all laws be proposed and voted by the people directly?
Addressing concerns of voting, well that is what encryption is for, to create unique keys identifying people.
Direct vote means millions of opinions, it also means that only things that are truly universal will be accepted, so we should start thinking about what should be governed by direct vote or by representatives, I doubt people would want to vote or be participative to everyday stuff, but there could be a mechanisms there where if 80% or 90% of the people unanimously agree on something why should the representatives not be obliged to comply with the wishes of the majority?
It would be a safety mechanism for democracy.
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Re: Re: Re: Why shouldn't all laws be proposed and voted by the people directly?
Are you going to pay the multi-$100 fee to *certify* that your rugrats/$significant_other/parents/$somebody_else have their own accounts, can't login as you, and your vote is biometrically provable to only have been cast by you, and that nobody's paid/forced you to vote that way?
My B-in-law has a laptop that has fingerprint biometric enabled logins. I can defeat that just by booting with a live Linux/*BSD CD.
Multiply all of the above by MS-Windows/OSX^^$malware. Are you *sure* your machine's not part of a botnet? How sure?
I'd love to have direct democracy via the Internet, but we're nowhere near what we need to do that technologically nor socially.
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Re: Re: Why shouldn't all laws be proposed and voted by the people directly?
If it is universal, than it will have no problems achieving that, further it makes it harder for minorities with special interests to pass and subvert the system.
Exactly minorities are not allowed to take part on that scheme, because it is supposed to be used by everyone because it affects everyone, not just 2 small players inside some little field.
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Which is why it won't happen...
Indeed, but this is why it won't happen, most likely... :-(
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If y'all wanna stay current on our work, you can do so...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Federal_Government_Legi slative_Data
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