Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia has started Campaigns Wikia, dedicated to making politics more intelligent and participatory:

For more than 50 years now, we have been living in the era of television politics. In the 1950s television first began to have a major impact on politics, and the results were overwhelming.

Broadcast media brought us broadcast politics. And let’s be simple and bluntly honest about it, left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb.

Campaigns have been more about getting the television messaging right, the image, the soundbite, than about engaging ordinary people in understanding and caring how political issues really affect their lives.

Blog and wiki authors are now inventing a new era of media, and it is my belief that this new media is going to invent a new era of politics. If broadcast media brought us broadcast politics, then participatory media will bring us participatory politics.

One hallmark of the blog and wiki world is that we do not wait for permission before making things happen. If something needs to be done, we do it. Well, campaigns need to sit up and take notice of the Internet, take notice of bloggers, take notice of wikis, and engage with us in a constructive way.

Technology has an interesting dual-faced influence on the complexity and quality of conversation. It can be used to broadcast the same message to millions, homogenizing conversation and creating groupthink and failures of crowd intelligence. Or it can amplify the ability of individuals to participate in meaningful conversations, as seen in wikis and blogging. It’s a welcome development to see someone building a technical and social platform for more meaningful political conversation.