Arborwiki is the local wiki source for the area, with more than 5,800 articles ranging from the biographies of local notables to places to get a good deal on your birthday and more. It is one of the top 20 largest city wikis in the world.

With election season underway, information about local candidates for office is of interest. This week I've put together a Wiki Wednesday column looks at the use of Arborwiki to keep tabs on local politics, both in the current political season and going back in history.

Wiki for tracking local politics

The Arborwiki list of 2010 political candidates is a "list of people running for office in 2010, or the notable people who are not running; plus some people who might be running who get listed before their candidacy is official. This list is known to be incomplete."

A similar collection of information on a national scale is Ballotpedia, an "interactive almanac of state politics"; it focuses on ballot initiatives across the 50 states.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle wrote a 2009 Wiki Wednesday column on running for city council, which is a useful reference.

Where does the candidate list come from?

There are three primary sources for the Arborwiki political candidates list.

At the state level, the 2010 Official Michigan Primary Candidate Listing is maintained by the Secretary of State's Bureau of Elections. It lists 1,028 candidates for higher offices, including all statewide races, state senate and house races and circuit and district court judges.

The elections division of the county clerk/register's office coordinates and administers all federal, state and local elections in Washtenaw County. Their Washtenaw County elections information page includes lists of all candidates for all races in the county, including candidates all the way down to the Democratic and Republican precinct delegate level.

The Ann Arbor City Clerk's election information page has corresponding details for Ann Arbor residents, including ward and precinct maps. There are similar and corresponding information pages for residents of the City of Ypsilanti and other cities and townships in the area. A quick look at the City of Chelsea election information shows that page has not yet been updated for the 2010 primaries.

How does Arborwiki get edited?

Sometimes the candidate edits their own page, pasting in campaign rhetoric. Sometimes an editor clips from news accounts and public records to assemble a set of links. Some candidates who have businesses or other professional interests are listed or linked because of their business affiliations. Many pages are edited once or twice and then forgotten; others, like the Birthday Deals page, which chronicles all of the places you can score discounts on your birthday, are edited every few days.

The average page in Arborwiki has been edited within the past 200 days, based on an estimate I've been tracking to make sure things don't get out of date. It's unlikely that minor candidates for minor offices will have a complete listing, but often it's a good start at locating some kind of information.

The edit results are relatively transparent; you can see the list of edits by looking at the "history" page for any given candidate, and you can change any page. Edits are tracked by user name or internet address, and spammers are regularly blocked.

Like Wikipedia, it is best used as an index into primary sources; helps you locate original records and news coverage and at best summarizes it. Unlike Wikipedia, there is no absolute "neutral point of view" rhetoric, and there are opinions scattered throughout, as well as original accounts of things for which there isn't much in the way of historical record to draw from.

Arborwiki as a historical repository

The Arborwiki Ann Arbor City Council: Membership page traces the history of council membership back as far as 1922, with the bulk of the coverage since 1948. For council members of the 1940s and 1950s, the pages often link to an obituary if one has been collected.

There are enormous gaps in Arborwiki when it is looked at as a historical record. You could spend thousands of pages of editorial effort compiling concise biographies of people who held minor political offices, and placing them in the context of their peers, the issues and developments of their day, and collecting photographic evidence of their lives.

Political Graveyard

Larry Kestenbaum edits The Political Graveyard: The Internet's Most Comprehensive Source of U.S. Political Biography, or, The Web Site That Tells Where the Dead Politicians are Buried. With over 200,000 entries, it is a comprehensive source of basic facts about the people in the political system and their personal histories. This site has been a tremendous help in compiling the Arborwiki local political coverage and it is updated regularly.

Edward Vielmetti is working on collecting more information about the short lived City of East Ann Arbor for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.