Change.gov recently posted a guide to commenting for those wanting to contribute to various policy discussions. The guide gives five general rules:

1: Know the comment policy
Our comment policy lays out the basic guidelines for material that should and should not be part of the Change.gov online conversation.

A diverse group of commenters with a variety of opinions post their thoughts on these pages. We won't censor any ideas based on their content as long as the comment is respectful and adds value to the discussion.

We asked, and they acted. Change.gov, the Obama Transition Website, is now published under a Creative Commons license. I'm pretty amazed at how quickly this change happened. The Obama Transition folks heard the call and answered quickly.

Link via Lessig Blog.

Tim O'Reilly recently suggested putting change.gov under revision control. After a recent dust up about content on Obama's Transition website being taken down and then re-posted, many have questioned the transparency of the site. O'Reilly's suggestion of revision control is interesting because it would better allow members of the community to see what's changing on the site. However, I'm not sure I'd go as far as O'Reilly's suggestion that the site be run on a Wikipedia model.

Check out jamiew's visual representation of edits on Obama's Wikipedia article, and note that "users who edit a lot drift toward the center." That is, the "community" of users here slowly congeals and communes around its center (Obama). But also note that those "other" community members on the outskirts never fully go away. They're always gnawing away at the edges of the center. This is what community looks like. It never communes fully...however hard it tries.

Obama Wikipedia page edits from jamiew on Vimeo.


Link via All the Modern Things

This morning, I made another donation to the Obama campaign. I have probably donated more than I should given my financial situation, but this is the first time I've ever been a "part" of a political campaign (I volunteered during the primaries). When Obama turned down public funding, I was skeptical. I was worried that this would cloud many voters' view of his stance against corruption in politics. However, I think it's fairly clear that a majority of Obama's donations are coming from individuals and not PACs, and I think this is a good thing.

One more shameless plug for the week. Here's a video that Austin musician Kat Edmonson put together. They stopped by our house during an Obama volunteer meeting and asked us to be in the video. I think the song is great, and the video is well done too:

Check out this video from the Austin-American Statesman about Obama's grassroots efforts in Austin. You might see a familiar face...