As part of the Envision 2040 general plan update, the city of San Jose is introducing “Wikiplanning“. This new web project allows residents to participate in the general plan update project without having to attend a (possibly inconvenient) public meeting. There is a loosely guided set of “activities” that gather users’ inputs, and inform us about the general plan update. There’s also a message board and a photo gallery where we can comment on photos that show things we might want to bring in or keep out of the city over the next 30 years.

Looking at the website, I think it might best be considered an promising experiment. It’s certainly not a wiki, which is a highly hyperlinked web site that encourages users to add and edit content freely (the city of Davis has a good example of a civic wiki). There is no way for users to add new content, except for uploading photos. Even on the message board users can’t create new discussion topics.

Also, there’s still a few bugs to work out in the site (I think of these bugs as the price of admission to a relatively advanced-technology city). Trying to go back from an individual photo to the main photo page I got a database error message, and the photos are shown in a way that’s inefficient in bandwidth and distorted to look at. Prominent tabs at the top of each page (”About Us”, “Thinking Green”, “Help”) don’t lead to information about San Jose, but to the Wikiplanning software company’s sales site, with no way to get back to the San Jose-specific website.

On the other hand, the site shows promise. A true wiki, with the kind technical learning curve and geeky culture you see on Wikipedia, for example, would not be the best way to get more people (except wiki geeks) involved in civic discussions, and the bugs I found in the site could easily be fixed for the next project. Most importantly, even with a few warts, the web site should be able to bring more residents to the table in the planning process. That includes people with limitted free time to go to meetings and people with disabilities.

To use San Jose Wikiplanning, visit wikiplanning.org and log in with your email address and zip code or just use the password “2040″.