April 22, 2007

WashingtonWatch Now A Wiki. This Should Be Good.

Michael Arrington

16 comments »

WashingtonWatch, a site we wrote about last year, breaks down the costs behind proposed U.S. federal legislation and regulation, and then asks your direct feedback in the form of comments and a simple yes/no poll. I find it fascinating to see the average cost per family of some of the proposed legislation.

The site previously solicited user feedback from straw polls and comments. They’ve now turned it into a wiki as well, so Bill summaries can be user edited. I expect lobbyists, lawyers and congressional staff will get heavily involved in spinning legislation according to their own agendas, and we’ll soon see the beginning of a Washinton D.C. version of Wikipedia wars. This should be fun.

Sphere It

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Waiting For Sunday / Sunday Seven: Interesting links from the past week

May 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am

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Hornswaggled

April 22nd, 2007 at 9:47 pm

Good luck moderating this…
Don't be retarded

April 22nd, 2007 at 9:58 pm

why exactly are you reviewing a site with an alexa of 1,000,000 ….. ?? who cares about a site with 1 visitor per week??
Dan

April 22nd, 2007 at 10:00 pm

I hope that Bush finds a way to run for a third term. Who’s with me?!
Tom H.

April 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 pm

Why do you find the per family cost fascinating? Its a completely fictitious number.

Do you really think “H. Con. Res. 99″ will cost the average american family $24,245.07? No.

I find nothing fascinating about play numbers.
hombrelobo

April 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 pm

#2 Who cares about the Alexa ranking ?

The idea is to review good sites, even if they are not popular yet, if you believe they can be important in the future.

So many sites Alexa with an Alexa of 500 that are worthless (MySpace anyone ?)
Duncan

April 23rd, 2007 at 1:07 am

Do I detect sarcasm in the post headline?
Scott Yates

April 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 am

Hombrelobo is right and the others are wrong. TC is doing us a service telling us about sites before they become huge. We can say we new about the site way back when.

If you want to just let Big Media cover the government, fine, but that’s not the way the world is moving.
Kewtr

April 23rd, 2007 at 6:11 am

This will truly be good I think, although it can only be as important in proportion to how much people care about getting the shaft on government spending. And this set of comments will be even better is we can get some more fresh Bush election jokes. Rich stuff.
Valentin1979

April 23rd, 2007 at 6:13 am

Hi,

In France, we have an internet media created by Carlo Revelli, in which internet users can post their own articles.
These articles are filtered by 2 different staffs. A third staff is the judge : it’s the internet community.

Anyone can vote, by expressing if this article is “interesting” or “not interesting”.

The site is AgoraVox : http://www.agoravox.com

Regards,
Valentin
pallet jack

April 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 am

these are fake numbers - especially since “the rich” say they pay 80% of taxes.

- In that case - these numbers shouldn’t be spread equally.

At my current calculations: This site is getting: 627-734 Unique hits a week.

-Richard Bowles
Phil

April 23rd, 2007 at 7:30 am

I think sites like this are especially dangerous. With a site like Wikipedia, you still have a huge number of distortions and flaws, even though the site is relatively self-policing (I’ll admit, reluctantly). But if a site like this doesn’t gain traction in its community, you could have one side completely skewing the truth without the other bothering to contribute and correct it.
Rich in Calif

April 23rd, 2007 at 7:31 am

Now that TC has mentioned and published this site, watch it hits and Alexa increase.
TSW

April 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 am

The rich don’t “say” they pay most of the taxes — they do. It’s an undisputed fact.
beng

April 23rd, 2007 at 9:29 am

A great example of how taxes work…in response to number 13

http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/howtaxes.asp
Jim Harper

April 23rd, 2007 at 10:43 am

Thanks for the shout, Mike, and thanks for the astute (and funny and cynical) comments, folks.

As to the numbers and their relation to reality, it’s true that tax and spending *incidence* isn’t well reflected in average figures. I’ll be working to make incidence information available, but have found no scalable method of doing that. The numbers do give the public a sense of the relative importance of pending bills. (Important disclaimers along these lines are on the “about” page at - you could guess it - http://www.washingtonwatch.com/about/ )

The budget bill cited by Tom H. does reflect the amount Congress would spend in Fiscal Year 2008 under the House Budget Resolution. It’s not made up. Actual spending will occur based on appropriations bills that will follow. The Budget resolutions present an opportunity for people to communicate their preferences and observe their represenatives’ behavior, Thus, the decision to include cost information on these bills.

In case anyone thinks that cost information “skews” to the political right, I’d point out that the two most expensive (non-budget) bills are both military spending bills. WashingtonWatch.com is about bringing transparency to the process, and let the chips fall where they may.

Thanks again, Mike and commenters.