Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched a new initiative directing the power of blogs towards reforming political discourse in America. Wales is concerned about the simplification of policy issues into distorted TV sound bites:

Broadcast media brought us broadcast politics. And let’s be simple and bluntly honest about it, left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb.

Wales hopes that in depth give and take through wikis, much as happens on many political topics in Wikipedia, will lead to more informed presentation and debate of important issues. The obvious challenge is that wikis work well in allowing groups to collect and co-edit related information. They are challenged when that information is controversial. Wikipedia has well-established (and exhausting) procedures for establishing a "neutral point of view", but in the case of Wikipedia, only about 250 articles are particularly contentious (list here) out of 1.2 million total articles. Presumably nearly every political topic on Wikia will be contentious. Wikipedia, however, shows that the impossible is possible with the wisdom of crowds — let’s hope Wikia also achieves the impossible.