According to Wikipedia, “a Wiki is a page or collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.”
Many candidates have profiles on Wikipedia, as a means to provide an independent source of information to anyone interested in learning about them. While Wikipedia explicitly discourages the use of the site to advance political campaigns and is monitored to ensure it is not being used to fundraise for political candidates, it provides an important means of educating the public about facts. Wikipedia profiles of candidates and elected officials normally include a biography, a history of accomplishments, and positions on key issues, among other elements.
More generally, campaign Wikis can be built and maintained as a kind of community forum for discussion and information sharing that encourages people to share with and learn from other supporters. Campaigns can also disseminate information to their network using the campaign Wiki. In this presidential election, Wikis have been creatively used to allow on-the ground teams to organize themselves and their volunteers to manage outreach efforts.
Fundraise from Women with Wikis
As women are incredible consumers of information and look to the Internet in particular as a resource for politics, wikis provide women with critical knowledge. Fifty-one percent of female Internet users go online for news and information about politics and 96% of female online political donors read online news sources for political and campaign news. When women want objective information, public Wikis provide self-policing sources that let them learn more about candidates and elections, especially candidate’s impact on issues they care about, from others who are outside the campaign. Internal campaign Wikis allow candidates to disseminate critical information, but also create interaction among their supporters who can participate in this unique forum for discussion and information-sharing. Both the objective information public Wikis provide and the sense of inclusion that campaign Wikis can create can be important in helping to mobilize women donors.
