New UGC reporting projects as WaPo political site comes out of beta

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The Washington Post has publicly launched its political website WhoRunsGov.com as a 'moderated wiki'.

As a wiki, the site, which includes more than 700 profiles of Barack Obama's administration, members of Congress and US government officials, will let users write new profiles and edit existing content, a press release from the Washington Post said.

These contributions will be reviewed and, where necessary, edited by an in-house editorial team for 'accuracy, relevancy to the profile subject, and appropriateness'.

"This new phase in WhoRunsGov.com's growth invites the Washington community, and the public at large, to share their knowledge of how Washington works," said Rachel Van Dongen, editor of WhoRunsGov.com, in the release.

"We've created an easy and dynamic way for them to do just that."

The technology behind the wiki has been jointly created by a new product development team at the Washington Post and open source developer firm MindTouch.

As part of the changes, WhoRunsGov.com, which was launched in beta form in January this year , will run two new features involving users. The Reform Tracker project will ask readers to add information on their lawmakers' stance on healthcare issues to create a database of all Congress members' positions on healthcare reform.

"The result will be a unique reporting tool that uses community knowledge to better inform the public," the release explained. A sister project, Who Runs Gov2.0 , will profile key figures behind the US government's technology policy and ask readers with knowledge of government and technology to contribute.

The wiki site has launched with a range of partners backing the project, including Medill News Service, the Medill School of Journalism and GovLoop.com, a social networking site for US government employees.

The Post is interested in further collaboration with organisations to increase the content on site, it said.