On 04/02/11 8:58 AM, Fred Bauder wrote: >> I found this link *http://destour.org *on the Wikipedia-ar mailing list, >> and thought it might interest people who don't speak Arabic as well. >> This is a Wiki inviting Tunisian citizens to write the country's new >> constitution the Wiki way. The site is entirely in Arabic and it >> includes a constitution draft, which the Tunisian public is supposed to >> change and amend collaboratively. According to their "about", this is an >> initiative of the Tunisian Internet Association (/Jam'iyat Tunis >> lil-Internet/), which is a non-official non-profit Tunisian >> organization. According to them, the project is run by volunteers. >> >> To be honest, I don't give much chance to this initiative, but it is an >> interesting development nonetheless. As far as I remember, Florence told >> me about similar initiative in France by the French government, but it >> seems to be the first of its kind in the Arab world. Perhaps the close >> cultural ties between Tunisia and France played a role here, but this is >> nothing more than a speculation. > If everyone in Tunisia had good internet access, knew how to edit a wiki, > and had experience doing so that would be a no-brainer. As it is, a > mechanism like that disenfranchises 99.999% of the population. Good goal > to work for though.
I don't expect that this sort of initiative will be a complete success even with full internet access for everyone. We know from experience that getting everybody to agree to anything, even to no-brainers, on line is not an easy task. If the Internet is to be a force in democratising political institutions for the future it needs to start somewhere. It's an improvement over the Internet as a massive bitching forum. At this time recognizing where strong agreement exists, and isolating the issues that need work will be enough to label this effort a success. There are too many preconceptions about the meaning of democracy for us to expect more. Ray _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
