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Welcome to We the People Wiki: a peer-led website that you can edit based on Washington, D.C. public data...and a submission for the Apps for Democracy competition. We the People empowers all of us to make D.C. a more responsive community where all voices are heard and each of us can make a difference.

Wikis are, by nature, works in progress. Like Wikipedia, you can link any expression to its definition or another page. If a link is red that means that a page still needs to be created. Go for it! The culture of working jointly on wiki pages also depends on patience and diplomacy. For We the People to evolve, we will need "rules of the road" community guidelines that build on Wikipedia's practices as a role model. To start, We the People will follow Wikipedia's Meta Handbook wherever possible which is full of advice on how to get going successfully.

On a technology level, We the People is an integrated, extensible, open source platform, based on the same MediaWiki software that supports Wikipedia. All you need is a web browser to register and begin editing as explained in the Page-Cast video.

We the People began with the live data feeds provided by the D.C. Government and its Office of the Chief Technology Officer. But We the People will grow based on contributions and collaboration by everyone who cares about Washington, D.C. Together, we can make We the People a living reference and a new form of citizen participation in D.C. democracy.

Here's to the District of Collaboration!

How-to Video on Getting Started

Wikified DC data lets you:

• Access, link, add to, modify, and discuss government information and new information discovered by peers in the field
• See each change that has been made to the data on each page of the wiki over time
• See the author of those changes
• Personalize the analysis however you want
• Visualize reports and activities geographically with a Semantic Google Maps or in a timeline with an MIT SIMILE Timeline Mashup
• Embed RSS feeds into wiki pages
• Join with everyone else who cares about Washington to collaborate or develop new tools for analysis on a common platform

We the People Wiki applies Semantic Google Maps to most incident or activity pages that include an address. We also have mashed up Wikipedia content that appears on each map. As an example application in the Apps for Democracy Competition, we have created an example web-based Wiki Reporter and Map that allows you to see a crime map that's centered around an address you choose based on crimes published by the D.C. Government, see Help:MyDistrict_Crime. If this were linked to real-time D.C. Government data going forward, your personal Wiki Reporter would continually update your user page with the most recent published data by the D.C. Government with links to any associated additions or corrections from other contributors. You can also delete the Wiki Reporter whenever you want.

Once you try the Wiki Reporter, we hope your experience will motivate you to become a "power user" who creates all kinds of other analytic apps. The potential of We the People analytics is only limited by your creativity since the platform lets any of us add to, correct, or combine data however we want. Learn more at Help:Semantic Google Maps Mashup.

• For example, the map below displays crime for particular period in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

See Help:Semantic Google Maps Mashup for more information.

• As another example, you could build the same kind of query for the map below which displays Hanson Service Requests for a particular period.

As a second mashup in the Apps for Democracy Competition, We the People Wiki applies Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Java-based SIMILE Timeline Mashup to most incident or activity pages that include a date.

Again, we hope you'll see the MIT SIMILE Timeline and go put in whatever you would like to see show up on a timeline. Learn more at Help:MIT Simile Timeline Mashup.

• As an example, we've mashed up a timeline of Dead-Animal pick-ups in D.C. for a particular period showing the date that the service request was added and the date that the request was resolved (indicated by the end of the blue strip).

See Help:MIT Simile Timeline Mashup for more information.