Re: [Cdn-DMCA] Political contributions

From: mskala _-at-_ ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
To: No DMCA in Canada <canada-dmca-opponents (at) flora.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 19:41:52 -0400 (EDT)

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Kristofer Coward wrote:
> Any interest in scanning Hansard? Any interest in putting together a
> page where we can "keep score" for given politicians? Anyone interested
> in encouraging others to make contributions based on our assessments?

I've been scanning all over Hansard since January, and noting the points I
find interesting in my web log at http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lebwog.html .
Those aren't limited to copyright.  Something that has occurred to me is
to create some kind of score card of different MPs and my thoughts on them
- I sometimes make comments like "so-and-so is my favourite MP at the
moment" but it might be interesting to formalize that.

What if we had a database of all the MPs, and an interface allowing people
to add comments to individual MPs, including adding or subtracting points
representing status or approval?  Some MP gets up to give a speech on
copyright, and I might add a comment saying "Made interesting point
re: blank media levy, +2 points".  The site would be designed so readers
could look at all recent comments, or all comments on a given MP, and so
on, and it would keep track of the point totals, as "Matthew's opinion of
this MP", "Total of all members' opinions of this MP", "Total points for
this party", and so on.  There would also be some kind of interface to
generate form letters - so that if I chose to participate in Kris's
campaign contribution scheme, I might say "Okay, I'll value my points at
$1 each" and then it would spit out an itemized list for each MP - "Dear
whoever, please find enclosed my cheque for $17, computed as
follows:  such-and-such date, you did thus-and-so, $2, such-and-such date,
you did this-other-thing, $1, such-and-such date, you made this mistake,
subtract $1".

Such a site might encourage more people to pay attention to what's going
on in Parliament; it might also increase exposure for the opinions of
anyone who participated in the rating process; it might provide some
interesting feedback on public opinion; and so on.  It would be desirable
to attract a lot of participation.  A vague idea I have is that it might
be fun to build some kind of stock-market-simulation or betting-pool style
of game into it, to help encourage people to visit regularly, but I'm not
sure just how that would operate.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/



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