techPresident - Commission on Presidential Debates - Comments

Fascinating on many levels ...

JonPincus — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:23:55 -0400

First of all, it's another example of the influence of the "MSM blogs" -- places like The Caucus, The Swamp, First Read that are associated with mainstream media organizations and so pick up a lot of the reputational cred of their parents and so are treated as authoritative sources.

Secondly, it shows how off our intuitions can be. "Six million" seemed like a plausible enough answer for the question people thought had been, so the miscommunication never got revealed -- even though the actual answer was two orders of magnitude different.

And one other likely reason for the low submission rate was that people knew there would be thousands of questions submitted, and correctly realized the odds of getting theirs chosen were ridiculously low. Something like Yahoo! Answers would have been a much better platform for this.

jon

A first try at an election protection tagging taxonomy

JonPincus — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:16:22 -0400

in A proposed standard for tagging election protection information -- based on your, Allison, and Lisa's thinking for location (as well Lisa's point about how this generalizes to tags of all kinds, not just hashtags and a Facebook discussion with Myrna the Mynx).

Thoughts?

jon

Case study

Nancy Scola — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:34:00 -0400

Really like the way you're thinking here, about looking at this as a look at how bad information spreads.

Through some old fashioned reportin', I'm working uncovering the primary source right now. It's still a bit murky, but so far I can tell you it involves some idle chit chat over lunch and an offhand comment to a reporter.

This could be a great case study ...

JonPincus — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:27:09 -0400

It should be fairly easy to track back through the media and blogosphere to see where the incorrect information came from -- and how it flowed (who linked to who, etc.). Sure it's just one data point, but this could help people better understand how errors propagate.

Rock the Debates

Nancy Hanks — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:14:04 -0400

Another "debate intervention" is a website Rock The Debates http://rockthedebates.org/ which interviewed many candidates during the early primary debates asking if they would debate third party or independent candidates should they win the nomination. The answers were candid and definitely worth taking a look at. This is "citizen journalism" at its best!

Live Fact-Checking and Rating of Candidates

porterbayne — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:04:29 -0400

At Ameritocracy.com, we'll be entering the moderator questions and candidate responses on the fly, and users can fact-check the content live.

It's a quick way to rate Obama and McCain quotes and sound bites for how accurate and relevant they are.

Paris Hilton

Freedomfighter — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:59:07 -0400

Her reply ad is also far more complimentary of McCain than what could be expected. She mocked him and mocked herself but than supported drilling now.