Mitch Kapor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave a talk on the possibility of using Wiki tools for collaborative advocacy and politics at Wikimania over the weekend. He calls for developing new tools to foster debate on the web:

“This talk will be a speculative exploration about using collaborative and community-building techniques inspired by the Wikipedia to social problems such as global warming, America’s role in the world, and growing gap between have’s and have-not’s, not only to discern what is the case, but to help the process of democratic deliberation of choosing a future. In other words, it’s not only about facts, but values as well.”

Good stuff. The audio is already online and more is soon to be posted. There’s also a good summary of the presentation online here.