It's spring again, and that means it's time once again for a grand New England tradition of direct Democracy, the town meeting.

Unfortunately, in the past, voter guides were often unlike the town meetings and subsequent town elections themselves, controlled by a small handful of people often with a set point of view designed to gear voters towards one outcome or another.

With the advent of technology, that time is over.

On Wikibooks, an offshoot of Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the world's largest websites, I've started a voter guide for the upcoming election season here in Merrimack.

If you've never seen a wiki before, let alone Wikibooks, let me give you a quick description. Imagine a website that anybody can edit in any way at any time from anywhere. That's a wiki, more or less.


I'm new to Wikibooks, but i'm an old hand on Wikipedia, so the rules seem to be fairly similiar, and that means really there are only three big ones.

#1. Be Objective: You can't say "Dick Hinch Sucks", but you can say "Dick Hinch is often criticized by the Anti-Tax grassroots group 'Merrimack Cares' ". And when there's any doubt, you need to verify your claims with outside sources. No opinions here, only the reporting of opinions.

#2. Don't Make Stuff Up: If people don't challenge them, you can put in anything want, but if they do, you have to verify it, so don't make up facts.

#3. Be Nice: The greatest strength of a wiki is also its greatest weakness: anybody can modify it in any way at any time. I have seen many, many jerks who love to graffiti nonsense or go back and forth with each other over something as small as a coma for days on Wikipedia, those people suck, don't be like them. We all have bad days, and things can get testy at times, but just remember, "relax, it's not a big deal."


Feel free to copy the idea for all of your towns, if you need help with the unique code used in Wikis, please feel free to e-mail me at karmafist@aol.com.

The local papers will no doubt make their own voter guides, but it's time that there was a voter guide that was made by US, the people.

Here's the address

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/2006_Merrimack_Town_Meeting_Season_Voters_Guide