How the Qwidget Could Help the Obama Administration
CNN reports that Barack Obama “has said he’ll have a five-day online comment period before signing any non emergency legislation.
This is as lofty a sentiment as they come. Let the people have their say. It sums up our mission as a company. But let’s assume for a moment that Obama and his to-be-named national CTO will employ a comment system similar to the ones we see on blogs, YouTube, and web forums. Now let’s imagine that President Obama is about to sign a piece of “non emergency” legislation into place regarding a hot button issue like abortion, gun control, or affirmative action.
You can only imagine where an unstructured conversation on one of those topics would go at a national level. You would have so many soap box rants, insults, and other distractions that rational discourse would be absolutely drowned out. To elicit positive conversation, you need to foster just the right sense of community and etiquette. And what better tool to do that than the Qwidget? It could limit people’s ability to shout over others and its emphasis on private messaging will reduce the back and forth noise that discourages casual users from participating.
Most importantly, however, the Qwidget could allow the conversation about the legislation to span the entire web. Other publishers could take Obama’s question, presumably “Should I sign legislation X?”, and let their constituencies weigh in from their own sites. You could have people on big news websites, on the US government’s web site and on millions of blogs all talking about the same issue together through the qwidget. In this way, the administration could be certain that they were getting a truly representative sample of the public’s opinion on an issue.
Just a thought.
Stories, Updates and Thoughts From the Qwidget Makers
The Qwidget is a tool that publishers and bloggers install on their sites to make it easier for readers to engage in dialogue around their content.
With the Qwidget, we are building a cross-web dialogue platform. We aim to make the web a better place for meeting new people and starting conversations about the issues and content that interest people.
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