The Gay Wiki

I was talking with Pam after the SotM event briefly and I brought up an idea that popped in my head during the event.

The idea?
We need a Gay Wiki.

Wikis, like blogs (see the clogs post below), have been adopted in all sorts of interesting ways. At work, those busy computer geeks, made an in-house Wiki. It is FABULOUS. The Wiki is posted by the person who developed the code or pipeline, has some instructions (like a really nice README file), and usually some thoughts about why this new tool was developed. One guy at work is prone to leaving snappy comments in his Wiki posts which are kind of fun. Our Wikis tend to be static, more of a record and instructional in nature. By their very nature, they are not prone to revision or additions.

Anyways, I was talking to Pam briefly about this idea that there needs to be a Gay Wiki for the 2008 election cycle.

My proposal is to do it as an experiment and see if it works.
1) Major organization (HRC, maybe) hires some tech saavy person part time to set up and manage the Wiki server. I'm sure there are some queer computer geeks who wouldn't mind earning a few bucks.
2) The Gay Wiki has a debut and the blogosphere is asked to contribute. So each person could put in entries about things personal to them.
3) The Wiki is used as a resource by gay folk (and their allies) to get information. Example: What is ENDA? The Gay Wiki might have an entry for it.

Now there is always a problem with distributed efforts. And the one problem with the Gay Wiki is the same problem that happens with the original Wiki - people, with ulterior motives, go in and fuck with the entries. And this requires active curation and occasional purging and freezing.

My suggestion would be that the submissions to the Wiki are open and closed in one week (by the curator). After that one week, the Wiki is frozen and can only be revisited if there is a need for changes. In this way, the Gay Wiki would be semi-static (or slowly evolving) to prevent infiltration by the forces of Evil.

It is a total pie-in-the-sky idea. But I use the original Wiki all the time. Its so easy to find information and I can cross check its content with other sources if I feel it is incomplete or inaccurate. The Wiki serves as an initial point of discovery - not as a sole source of information.