This page proposes a web-site to:-
The proposed web-site would make use of existing web-sites (including mySociety's web-sites) and would gradually develop new features whilst in use.
CONTENTS
The text in this section has been submitted to mySociety's call for proposals. As of 14/9/09 it is in their moderation queue. A few days after that it should appear on their web-site, where anyone may comment on it.
Help Your MP Learn War Law
Kitty McVey in consultation with Institute for Law, Accountability and Peace.
How much does your MP know about the legality of the war(s) s/he voted for (and defence & security issues in general)?
Without being a legal expert, you can use this site to help:
* find out what they know
* teach them what they need to know
* build better legal FAQs for MPs.
You just send one letter picking up where the previous writer left off.
The letter:
* politely asks for explanation of one difference between your MP’s views and neutrally-edited ‘FAQs’
* offers to change the FAQs if wrong (and if supporting evidence is supplied).
The site later asks you how helpful your MP’s reply was, and awards brownie points to helpful MPs (notified to local media).
SOCIETY’S PROBLEM: wars, policies and methods of armed conflict which are of doubtful legality.
THE MPs’ PROBLEM: Before I vote, I want independent legal advice: everything I need to know, on one side of A4.
THE CITIZEN'S PROBLEMS (see www.YourMPandWar.pbworks.com)
I’m isolated. I want to meet others writing to MPs on the same topic.
Each MP has different assumptions, needs tailored FAQs.
My MP fobs me off with stock replies, does not answer my points and ends with ‘I hope this is helpful’.
The site could also be used for correspondence with officials and other decision-makers.
NOTE: anyone may comment on the proposal on mySociety's web-site.
Information organised in Q&A form is useful because:-
it is a good way of simplifying information, and finding your way around it
it offers an easy way of describing controversies neutrally
(one question, several conflicting answers, reader decides which is most convincing)
it offers a simple way (though too chippy?) of analysing MPs' letters & assessing their knowledge
(by regarding each of their statements as an answer to a question, right or wrong).
This resolves into two questions: who does the editing and how can neutrality be assured?
In wikipedia and citizendium, the editing may be done by anyone with internet access (though in Citizendium, qualified experts have certain privileges). Neutrality is 'assured' partly by this open-ness. Neither encylopedia is accused of being a creature of the left or of the right because clearly the right and the left have equal editing rights.
Additionally, both have a policy which strongly asserts that articles must be neutral (and which clearly defines what that means). There are also processes of conflict resolution and final arbitration for dealing with cases when an individual article or edit is viewed (by anyone) as being in breach of the neutrality policy or otherwise incorrect.
Ideally (?) the FAQs would developed by a wikiproject within wikipedia.
Or maybe in Citizendium (using / developing their approach to trusted editorial oversight).
Encylopedia articles, however, are not (ever?) written in Q&A form.
Is that a problem?
The relationship between Wikipedia and Citizendium is that essentially they are rivals (though there is some cross-fertilisation between the two). They are slightly different approaches to doing the same thing: producing an online 'encyclopedia'. Citizendium is much newer. It arose from dissatisfaction about the way wikipedia operates. Perhaps it might never take off as wikipedia has.
If it survives, Citizendium could be of interest to us because it does something wikipedia does not do: it recruits panels of 'credentialled experts' (mostly academics) to give some quality assurance to the 'approved' versions of its articles. For example, if they wanted to, Nick Grief or Robbie Manson could join that panel. They would sign up online, stating their qualifications and thereby become eligble to oversee the editing of articles in their specialism. As would any lawyer who interprest the law differently. Their disagreements over whether an article is correct would be conducted online and would be a matter of permanent public record.
Think of the 'dodgy doisser' and all the fuss about how that was edited. Everyone wanted to know who changed the crucial line. If that editing process had been conducted within citizendium (or wikipedia, or any public wiki) it would have had much more public accountability. Anyone could trace every tiny edit, seeing exactly who did it and when.
It might be possible to link this process of expert oversight to a process of cross-party oversight to produce the desired 'legal resource which can be trusted by MPs of all parties'. The political parties could each ensure that the panel of legal experts contains lawyers trusted by their party. They'd also need to make sure 'their' lawyers were as actively involved as the lawyers favoured by the other parties. Currently (13/9/09) Citizendium has 15 people registered as 'editors' (their word for experts) in the filed 'law'. None are active.
I think it will require some experimentation to decide whether the legal resource we envisage should live within wikipedia, or within citizendium. Or neither. Or some hybrid form.
Yes. Typically, neither uses Q&A form. But there might not be an outright ban on that format.
Yes. But from a programming point of view it may not make much difference whether a letter is to (or from) an MP, an official or a cat. A letter is just a document that goes through certain stages.
George: 13.09.09 We could back this guidance up with 'phone discussion - I've always done this in the past.
If funding is to be sought, and if mySociety wish to work with conference members, the funding application might perhaps be made by INLAP (in its proposed role as fund-holder / treasurer for projects emerging from the conference).