About More Perfect
From More Perfect
Related: Mission and Purpose, Being An Open Company, Standards and Practices
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Imagine an entirely new approach to democracy where everyone is able to participate. Imagine a way to enable more direct public involvement and participation, creating a marketplace of ideas where the public can collaborate with each other on the matters that affect their daily lives. Fundamentally change the way policy makers and citizens approach the creation of laws today. That's our vision. |
more people. more ideas. more perfect.
more perfect is an innovative site for involving the public in creating and collaborating on laws and policy. Have an idea? Share it. Change it. Edit it. Pick a topic that is of interest to you, whether it is education, health care, transportation, civil liberties or government reform. Now, go participate in shaping the public agenda on that issue! That's more perfect.
What makes more perfect unique is that you can edit any issue page, or even add a new issue page of your own. If you don't agree with an idea on a given topic, or believe that there is a better approach, you can edit it. Instantly. No committee. No approval process.
more perfect relies on technology known as a wiki where each page has an edit button, allowing anyone to change anything. The premise behind this site is that with more people will come more ideas which will help to build a more perfect union. Ideas will live or die based solely upon their value, and public policy can be made better through open collaboration.
more perfect is a next-step evolution of the popular blogs and online discussion groups. Whereas those technologies are great for the expression of narrow and entrenched opinions, wiki technology is collaborative, motivating people with differing ideas to find ways to work together.
real-time outreach and feedback
more perfect allows individuals, public interest groups, local governments and elected officials to present their issues, policy proposals and positions to a diverse and engaged audience, gathering real-time feedback while potentially avoiding a time consuming, costly and often uncertain public outreach process.
Many groups spend thousands of dollars to run focus groups of a dozen individuals in order to gather direct feedback on their efforts. more perfect, on the other hand, provides the opportunity to bring in thousands of diverse individuals and opinions to examine an issue. And the depth of engagement is vastly superior to a traditional focus group. The result? A stronger likelihood of success.
more perfect allows individuals and organizations to:
- Solicit feedback on an issue, law or public-policy initiative from a diverse audience.
- Float trial balloons in a new, innovative and open environment.
- Have an issue examined, vetted and shaped prior to formally filing an initiative or proposing specific legislation.
re-invigorating the marketplace of ideas
It is increasingly difficult for the average person today to participate in shaping the public agenda. Most policy initiatives are drafted in back-rooms with only a few individuals providing nearly all the input; the public is rarely involved in this process. Add to that, television, radio and print media have become accessible largely in only one direction, with little interactivity or opportunity for everyday citizens to contribute ideas.
In contrast, more perfect offers an open public forum where everyone is a potential contributor and participants create their own content. By focusing on the written word instead of the 20-second sound bite and enabling anyone to contribute to the public discourse, more perfect offers a unique opportunity to re-invigorate the marketplace of ideas originally envisioned by our founding fathers. more perfect puts collaboration front and center -- the technology takes a back seat to the content and the public discourse that develop around it.
real-world experience
more perfect was born out of the firsthand experience of its founders, who have been directly involved in the formulation of local and state-wide legislation and public policy for more than a decade. Frustrated with the limitations of the traditional approach to policy development, more perfect's founders set out to develop a model for collaboration that avoids a time consuming, costly and often ineffective public outreach process, and that would involve more people and re-invigorate the market of ideas.
what more perfect is and is not
People sometimes get ahead of themselves when they first hear about More Perfect.
- More Perfect is only a tool. A powerful medium to be sure, but a tool nonetheless. It is not intended to replace, or even displace, existing institutions or legislative processes.
- More Perfect is non-binding. Nothing posted on More Perfect is intended to be binding upon our existing legislative processes. It is instead an open forum where the public can share and collaborate alongside others in shaping the public agenda.
- More Perfect is not just another digital grassroots effort. To achieve its full potential, More Perfect operates in a open, non-partisan manner, both vertically and horizontally across the political spectrum, and where alongside the grassroots, the grass tops must also be involved.
more on more perfect
- getting started
- mission and purpose
- being an open company
- standards and practices
- terms of use
- founders: timothy killian, chad maglaque
more perfect history
- Today: more perfect has 219 articles
- October 2005: more perfect first conceived
- July 2006: more perfect launched
