Sunday, September 30, 2007

New Zealand puts its law on a wiki for public editing - Boing Boing

It looks like the police in New Zealand are finding new ways to get the public involved in making crime legislation.  I think the idea is very clever; however, I wonder about the accountability transparency, and accuracy of it all.   It would seem to me very easy to be able to create fake logins and send multiple messages and suggestions all toting the same line of suggestions.  Perhaps if they made it mandatory that the person who is making the suggestion is real, can be verified, etc. then this would be a very innovative way to change legislation not only in this area, but across the board. 

"The New Zeland police have launched a wiki open at anyone wanting to edit and make suggestions to the Police Act as part of a wider revamp. New Zealand's current Police Act is nearly 50 years old. In March 2006 a review undertaken. Following this a new website wiki.policeact.govt.nz has been launched to allow people to suggest wording for the new Policing Act. It uses similar wiki technology to the popular user-generated site Wikipedia. The wiki version of the Policing Act will be viewed by New Zealand parliamentarians, before an official bill is introduced into Parliament."

New Zealand puts its law on a wiki for public editing - Boing Boing

No comments: