Getting Our "Open for Questions" Legs: Making Sense of the WhiteHouse.gov Experiment

Nancy Scola | March 26, 2009 - 10:12am | 4 comments | Email This!

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the White House new media team is emerging triumphant from...Lemme try again. Like General George Washington's revolutionary soldiers, counted out after their rations dwindled and they couldn't get their email working...Nevermind. The point is, after a predictably slow start, the White House's new media operation is being seen in a new light as a result of today's Open for Questions online forum. "The Obama technological and organizational dynamo," writes the Washington Times' Jon Ward, "is beginning to hit its stride." And the inaugural effort does seem to be attracting eyeballs and interest. As the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas notes, participation has nearly doubled in the last 24 hours. In the day and a half the question round remained open, OFQ pulled in about 93,000 people, 104,000 questions, and 3.6 million votes. (Perhaps proof of Organizing for America's sustained organizing might?) And as is the natural order of things, questions about legalizing marijuana have risen to the top of the heap, as Wired's Nicholas Thompson notes. But the White House was clever enough to leave itself a bit of wiggle room in what questions it will address. ("[T]he President will...answer some of the most popular questions...") Obama et al have shown a willingness to adjust the rules of online free-for-alls to align them with workably common-sense thinking. The White House isn't Digg, and it's likely our own thinking about what's an acceptable way to run a virtual presidential town hall will come to conform to theirs. Of course, Open for Questions belongs to the American people -- not just progressives or liberals or Democrats. And isn't just the playground for Organizing for America or MoveOn. The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini, cleverly sees an opening: "With a little organizing, this is an opportunity for Republicans to vote up questions that hold Obama accountable for ballooning the national debt to $20 trillion by 2019."

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Comments

You see this as progress?

by utopus on March 26, 2009 - 2:59pm

They already recycled Google Moderator on change.gov, and here they go just repeating their old mistakes over again.

With 100,000 people participating and each of them submitting slightly more than 1 question on average, there's only two ways to rise to the top:

1. Be among the first 100 people or so to post a question, and post a good one

2. Post a question with an easily searchable, distinctive, and highly relevant term in it - like "marijuana" - and tell people to search on that and vote up all questions that mention it

Option 1 make is easy for insider shills who are given a heads up of the exact moment the site will go live to subvert the results.

Option 2 makes is easy for special interest groups with highly specialized agendas - like marijuana legalization, gun control, merit pay for teachers, etc - to subvert the results.

You think foisting a rigged, fundamentally flawed "citizen participation" system like this on the American People demonstrates technological dynamism?

More like technological cluelessness - or worse, contempt for the opinions of your actual average citizen - who probably isn't going to participate in such a utility at all yet.

Most people will recognize this for what it is: a Ponzi opinion investment scheme that isn't worth their time to bother with.

Some thoughts on upgrading

by Gene Koo on March 26, 2009 - 3:42pm

I've posted some thoughts on how to engineer a better virtual town hall -- hope you don't mind that I probably borrowed ideas from our live chatting during the event.

I've been thinking about this too Gene

by utopus on March 26, 2009 - 3:55pm

...since change.gov tried something similar - or actually, back when mybarackobama.com first got started, and I realized its social networking capabilities were highly problematic.

I've even started to collect the features of a better citizen participation utility and begun prototyping them at The People's Agenda.

While the site is just in its infancy, it is already capable of capturing your proposals, if you'd like to try it out and transfer them there.

Indeed, I've moved developing my own design ideas into the web application as the first test data.

This is Amazing, With 100,000

by linda.coult on June 1, 2009 - 8:43am

This is Amazing, With 100,000 people participating and each of them submitting slightly more than 1 question on average, there's only two ways to rise to the top:

1. Be among the first 100 people or so to post a question, and post a good one

2. Post a question with an easily searchable, distinctive, and highly relevant term in it - like "marijuana" - and tell people to search on that and vote up all questions that mention it

Option 1 make is easy for insider shills who are given a heads up of the exact moment the site will go live to subvert the results.

But the White House was clever enough to leave itself a bit of wiggle room in what questions it will address. ("[T]he President will...answer some of the most popular questions...") Obama et al have shown a willingness to adjust the rules of online free-for-alls to align them with workably common-sense thinking. Some more can be seen here cheap web hosting "The Obama technological and organizational dynamo," writes the Washington Times' Jon Ward, "is beginning to hit its stride." And the inaugural effort does seem to be attracting eyeballs and interest. As the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas notes,