Why a People-Powered Online Presidential Forum?
When it comes to how we interview potential candidates for the job of President of the United States, it's time to try something new: a truly people-powered forum that makes the most of what the internet has to offer.
Old-fashioned televised debates have their value, but TV has several inherent limits. Only a few people get to ask questions. The candidates have very little time to answer, forcing them to speak in canned sound-bites. And the audience has no way of providing meaningful feedback. If the candidate doesn't answer the question, we have no way of pushing them to do so.
That's why we've created 10Questions.com. This is an experiment in people-powered online democracy.
Unlike television debates, the 10Questions Presidential Forum makes full use of the web's potential to expand participation in politics. Everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, and to rally support for their question being in the top ten. The candidates have plenty of time to formulate their answers, and can post in-depth replies. Finally, the community will be able to grade the candidates' answers. With large numbers of people participating, the candidates will have an incentive to pay attention. Who knows, maybe we'll even change the course of the election!
The 10Questions Presidential Forum is being produced by techPresident in cooperation with The New York Times editorial board, with support from MSNBC.com and sponsorship from a large, cross-partisan group of bloggers, online media and organizations. (For a full list, go to our Sponsors page.) Participation as a co-sponsor of 10Questions in no way implies that either techPresident, The New York Times or MSNBC.com endorses any of their activities or writings; nor does it imply their endorsement of our activities or writings, or those of other co-sponsors either. We all agree about one thing: It's time for a people-powered approach to presidential forums, that puts you in the driver's seat.
How This Works
The 10Questions Presidential Forum is divided into two rounds. During the first round, which will run from October 17 to November 14, anyone with access to YouTube, MySpace Yahoo Video, AOL Video, Blip.tv, or TeacherTube. can submit a video question. To enter, upload your video question to one of these sites and tag it "10questions." Be sure to give it a descriptive title so others can find it. And if you want, add additional tags that describe it further.
During round one, videos bearing the tag "10questions" will be collected on the main page where anyone can vote for or against them. At the close of round one, there will be an audit of the top vote-getters, after which the top ten videos will be presented to the candidates.
During round two, which will begin November 17 and end December 31, the candidates will be asked to post their replies to the top ten questions, and you get to vote on their replies. The candidates will have until December 15 to post their answers; you'll have until December 31 to vote on them. At the end of this round, we will audit the ratings and announce the final results.
You can submit as many videos as you want, at whatever length you prefer, though we recommend keeping your questions brief since that will probably improve their chances of being viewed, and voted upon, by more people. Also, you can vote on as many videos as you like, but you can vote only once for each video.
Video entries should be questions for all the 2008 American Presidential candidates as a group, and suitable for a general audience. We reserve the right to reject videos if they are obscene or inappropriate. If you want to learn more about 10Questions, check out our FAQ.
The Backstory
This election cycle we've seen many attempts to integrate technology and politics. Over the summer, YouTube and CNN hosted a Democratic presidential debate where ordinary people submitted video questions to the candidates, the final selection of which fell to CNN. Many were critical of CNN/YouTube's decision to exclude user feedback in selecting questions. In response, a group of YouTube users rallied around a mashup called www.CommunityCounts.us, which allowed users to vote for questions to be asked.
The site worked. Thousands of people watched and rated the nearly 3,000 videos that were submitted for the first YouTube debate. As a result, Community Counts caught the eye of national news media, including the New York Times and techPresident. Several of the candidates answered the site's top questions after the CNN/YouTube debate was over.
Following the debate, techPresident decided to join forces with Community Counts' creator, David Colarusso, to launch a new kind of forum for the internet age, something that would take greater advantage of what the internet has to offer. Building on Community Counts' backbone and its success, we are happy to offer 10Questions to you and the world.
Andrew Rasiej, Micah L. Sifry, and David Colarusso, Co-Creators, 10Questions.com