Now that the year is drawing to a close, it's time for Democratic Underground to start gearing up for the 2006 elections. As part of this effort, we are looking for volunteers to help collect and organize information for
Campaign Underground 2006.
We're going to do this project a little differently this time than we did two years ago. The DU Admins felt that the database we set up in 2004 was too limited and too difficult to maintain. This year, we have decided to set up Campaign Underground as a collection of Open Edit threads in our new
Research Forum. An Open Edit thread works kind of like a wiki; They permit all registered DU members to work collaboratively to collect and edit information. Once you all familiarize yourselves with how Open Edit threads work, it should be much easier to update and maintain Campaign Underground than it was last year. For a detailed explanation of how to edit an Open Edit thread, please read
this topic.
This is a big project, and we're going to need lots of people to help out. Fortunately, the job won't be quite as difficult as last year, because we can copy a lot of the information we collected in 2004 into the new format without having to start from scratch. When you update your state, make sure that you check
Campaign Underground 2004 so you don't have to do the same work that someone else has already done.
I will create the templates for all the 50 states, and I will link each of them directly from the
Top of the Research Forum and the
Campaign Underground 2006 page so you can easily find the page you are looking for.
Once the templates are set up, you all can start filling in the blanks. We're going to start by collecting political and campaign information. We need a whole bunch of volunteers to sign up to collect information for each state.
If you are interested in helping out with a particular state, please post in this thread with the name of the state in the title of your post (or you can edit your name directly into the
Campaign Underground 2006 page, below the state you wish to help out with).
Once you have signed up for your state, find the page for that state and start filling in the blanks. Links to all the state pages will be available at the
Top of the Research Forum and on the
Campaign Underground 2006 page.
Thank you in advance for all of your help on this project.
Skinner, EarlG, Elad
DU Administrators