In a recent thread about the CT-Sen race,
virginia liberal pointed out the following:
When asked why Lamont should be elected to the Senate, despite his inexperience with national security, Kerry responded, "He's against the War in Iraq, for one.....". There was a prolonged pause afterward. I halfway expected Steph to fire back "Do you even know where he stands on anything else?" It made me think that everyone has a serious case of tunnel vision.
I agree. What's an even greater shame is that dozens of diaries every day are written on the subject, many of them good. However, we are kidding ourselves if we think folks like Kerry should read every diary every day. What we really need is to collaborate on a summary of all of the great thinking that has happened on this topic. If we only had a wiki...oh, wait....
I've started an FAQ over on dKosopedia called
CT-Sen FAQ. Linking to it from comment (or to any article on dKosopedia) is really simple. Two square brackets before the title and after the title, like this: [[CT-Sen FAQ]]
Here's what I have so far:
1. Why shouldn't Lieberman be in the Senate, partisanship aside?
- Generally enabling the disasterous Republican agenda
- Support for the disasterous war in Iraq
- Failure to support censure for Bush in spite of Bush's lawless behavior
- Craven opportunist who flip-flops as politically convenient
- Criticizes Lamont for befriending Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, while himself calling Sharpton a "dear friend" and "brother" and generally speaking quite fondly of Jackson
- Won't support any criticism of Bush, while previously supporting Clinton impeachment
- Was against Rumsfeld before he was for him, which now he's against him
2. Aren't Democrats shooting themselves in the foot by supporting Lamont?
Put another way "why should prominent Democrats distance themselves from Lieberman?"
Diaries that address this question:
3. Is Lieberman an "Independent candidate"?
No, Connecticut has very strict rules for what candidates call themselves. There's already a candidate (John Mertens)
I started this in hopes of having other people edit it and really take off with it. I've seen that dynamic happen with Wikipedia, but dKosopedia has been disappointing in that regard. There seems to be a small number of contributors doing most of the work these days, and it doesn't seem to be living up to its potential.
Part of what the problem may be is that many here may not know what to do. So here's a tutorial to add your first comment to the "Talk" page:
1. Get an account by following the instructions at the Special:Userlogin page
2. Visit the "Talk:CT-Sen FAQ" page (a discussion page corresponding to the main CT-Sen FAQ article)
3. Click "edit" (in the top set of tabs)
4. Add the following text to the page (which is blank as of this writing):
I'm new here, but would like to edit this. How do I help out? -- ~~~~
5. Type in the "Summary:" field - "leaving my first comment"
6. Hit "Show Preview" to see what your edit will look like. Notice the ~~~~ got changed into your name and date -- pretty cool, huh? That's really important etiquette on discussion pages.
7. Hit "Save Page"
Posting to the talk pages is good practice for actually editing.
A really good exercise for the CT-Sen FAQ page is to cull through recent recommended diaries tagged CT-Sen. This produces a really good summary without being truly overwhelming. Think about what MSM question these diaries may be answering (whee, Jeopardy!), and then add new FAQ entries. Not all of them are suited to this treatment, but many are.
The unfortunate part about the way the mojo system works here is that it tends to encourage quantity over consolidation. dkosopedia editing isn't rewarded by that system. However, our message will be, which I hope is more important to everyone here.