Internet

Change.gov, President-in-all-but-name Obama’s transition site, added a neat feature today. It allows you (after a simple sign-up) to submit questions and vote on questions that other people send.

I voted on questions for about 15 minutes. Its fun to see what other people are asking. The site saves your voting history, you can even click on their names to see a history of the questions they submitted.

I’m surprised at the quality of the questions so far. Even the form questions have been much better than your average Internet discussion (a low standard, to be sure).

I don’t know how long term their thinking is, but if they wanted to create a database of issues each person cares about for the purpose of mobilizing them in the future, this is the perfect way to do it.

I’ve only used the web site for 15 minutes or so, and already they know my zip code + a vague idea of the issues that matter to me. Let’s say I lived in a swing district, and Congressman X is undecided on the Eggplant Equal Shinyness Act, an issue important to both Obama and I. 

It would be exceeding easy and effective for them to send me a targeted email with my representative’s phone number and a suggested script: YES TO EGGPLANT, NO TO BIG CHICKEN.

They are going to run into the same problems every web site with thousands of commenters run into, and perhaps a few on their own:

1. Too many comments for users to read. I stay away from the comment sections of most blog posts when there is 30+ comments in them. It just takes too much time to go through.

2. Too many comments for people to bother responding. Obviously, this isn’t a roadblock for many people, but it is for me. I rarely post comments in a thread where 30+ people have already commented because I assume the original writer isn’t going to have time to read it, and most people aren’t going to bother reading it either, if they even see it in the flood of messages. 

3. Too many comments for the Obama team to read. One of the recent questions change.gov posed got 3,500+ comments and counting. Even with a few rating and filtering tools, it would still take days for a staff member to read them all and make a “Best Of” digest or summary. Let’s say someone posts an amazing idea that Obama’s policy advisors should hear about. How does that not get lost with all of the so-so ideas and volumes of low quality information?

I have zero complaints so far. The fact that they are at least trying to listen is noteworthy. I hope they have a long-term strategy though–it will help maintain their focus and the value of what they are doing.