Wiki Site Wants Help Finding Dirt on Meg Whitman
Former E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman can draw on her large fortune in her California gubernatorial campaign, but a third party group in California is betting the collaborative nature of the Internet can offset the Republican's financial advantage.
"Level the Playing Field 2010," a coalition group focused on keeping Whitman from "buying" the governor's office, has launched the Web site called WikiMeg. Modeled after the successful online encyclopedia Wikipedia, it is an open source site that draws on entries and edits from online contributors.
The site is "based on the idea that by harnessing the collective brainpower of millions of Californians, we can help level the playing field against Meg Whitman's $200 million television campaign," according to Level the Playing Field, which is funded by the California Nurses Association PAC Committee and the California group Faculty for Our University's Future.
The group asks "everyone and anyone with factual information to share - from laid off eBay workers and those frustrated with Whitman's eBay policies towards sellers to shareholders to regular voters - to help us fully vet Meg Whitman's job application."
Whitman is the leading Republican in the gubernatorial race. The GOP candidate will likely face off against former Democratic Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown.
So far, WikiMeg has a handful of different categories, including eBay Stories, Meg History and Meg Sightings. The "Meg Sightings" page has a link to a Huffington Post story about Whitman attending a NASCAR race in a Burberry coat.
While "money-bombs" and other online fundraising tactics have become more popular over the years, the Wiki site may break new ground in collective online political action, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Level the Playing Field may manage to find "that one piece of information that could turn a campaign," Nancy Scola, associate editor at Techpresident.com, told the Chronicle.
Crowd-sourcing can be a remarkably effective and efficient way to gather information, but just as Wikipedia can't always be trusted as a reliable source, WikiMeg could easily run into problems of accuracy.
"Just like Wikipedia, I'm sure my professors won't even allow me to use it as a source for my term papers. So why does Jerry Brown's silly front group think it's good enough for voters?" Marcheta Marshall, a Stanford freshman interning for Whitman's campaign, told the Los Angeles Times.
The site's "How To" page says, "even though someone can vandalize a wiki, they can be identified, and their damage undone - and of course, what law-abiding person would stoop to such dirty tricks anyway?"