Re: [Wikipedia-l] Using Wiki to Draft Laws

Michael Bimmler wrote: I don't think the notice was posted, but it's not a bad idea. I casually suggested something of the sort to a few people at Wikimania-Frankfurt. At that time the French and Dutch voters had rejected the proposed EU constitution, so it only seemed natural to me put a Wiki together to draft a new constitution for the EU. One of the big features of the US Constitution is its brevity. What the EU bureaucrats were proposing weighed a ton. This says as much about the circumstances that led to the drafting of these two documents. Even if one does not agree with everything that was said in the Federalist Papers, it's easy to see that the results will be very different from the result of the efforts of those who try to drive fast desks with no wheels. While on-wiki legislation is a big ideal, like any major paradigm shift it requires a radical rethinking of the way we do things, not to mention putting a lot of self-important politicians out of a job. We have yet to master the process for our own internal governance, which still allows too many of our own rules and regulations to be adopted by default. We have yet to reconcile the dichotomy between those with a determination to establish their vision of order, and those with a benign indifference to anything that does not immediately affect them. The former want to adapt reality to their rules, and the latter want to adpt rules to their reality. In other contexts this might be seen as the classical clash between Type A and Type B personalities. Perhaps something like this needs to be started on a small level rather than a constitutional one. Ec