Jimmy “Wikipedia” Wales posted an open letter to the political blogosphere yesterday, to launch his new site, Campaigns Wikia:

The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens.

…

This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

…

This can be the start of the era of net-driven participatory politics. And it does not matter if you are on the right, on the left, moderate or extreme, socialist or libertarian. Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, you can share with me my sincere desire that the process start to be about substance and thought, rather than style and image.

I hope Jimmy’s new vision will be as successful and informative as Wikipedia has been, but there is the very real possibility that the system of collaborative writing, editing, and flagging that makes Wikipedia so great will disintegrate into gridlocked contrarian mud slinging when applied to the touchy world of politics. Please feel free to aggressively disagree with me, though.