(Cached)

issue

In Open Politics an issue is something worth talking about.

Definition: According to the guidelines something becomes an full fledged issue in Canadian politics when it becomes front-page news in a major newspaper. Otherwise is it a minor issue?.

Many issues have pages already, to find them see the list of all issues. Open politics, by design, encourages people to define issues factually before giving an opinion. Keep the facts and history separate them from the positions and arguments. In political debates, people frequently waste time because they do not define what they are talking about, what the words mean, etc. The IPA or issue/position/argument and structure is recommended for developing pages on the issues. The following guide will explain in more detail how to create and develop an issue page.

how to develop an issue page

don't duplicate an existing issue.

Check the list of all issues and the page search? to see if your issue already exists.
look up your issue in wikipedia to see if it exists there. If it doesn't the term you are thinking of may not be a good page name. (Open Politics tends to mirror wikipedia in naming conventions).

create a new page if necessary.

choose an appropriate related issue to link from
to create a page you must first know how to edit?.
create a new page by linking to it like this ((page name)) in double parentheses.

use the issue template.

the issue template is a pre-formatted block of text that pastes into the page while editing. Use this template to make designing the page easier.

link to related issues

you will get more traffic to this page if it links from all related issues.
add links from the new page to other related issues. (these will show up on those pages as backlinks?.
go to the list of all issues and add the link there, and on any pages you think relate to this issue.

stake out some positions.

propose position?s on the issues that combine or add original ideas, solve many problems at once, to get the maximum number of people to support your position
compare policy from different political parties, across jurisdictions, find related issues and positions with detailed and specific arguments, and connect them to each other via the
contact a political party or candidate and ask them which positions they are taking on your issues.

develop a factual issue statement.

do some research and prepare an 50-200 word issue statement
- visit other reference sources like wikipedia or other online resources.
- gather statistics and facts to help people understand the context.
- break down a huge topic areas like housing and energy into smaller potentially solvable problems like water heater? efficiency