10Questions.com is a horrible idea, here's *more* proof

10 Questions.com lets people vote on their favorite questions for the political candidates, which their MSM partners (NYT and MSNBC) will presumably try to get the candidates to answer (two have already come in: youtube.com/profile?user=10ques).

My issue with the site is that it allows those who can drive traffic to the site to propel weak questions to the top; this allows partisan hacks to avoid having difficult questions asked. I'm having a great deal of trouble seeing it as something other than a deliberate plan by some involved to avoid a real debate, i.e., a debate that would reveal the huge gaps in the policies of the various candidates as well as just how weak the questions the MSM asks are.

In October, MoveOn.org was able to get a weak question about net neutrality asked of Obama at a debate. He had already spoken out in favor of that, and when asked he spoke out in favor of it again. (Unfortunately, he didn't make the parallels to Soviet debates exact by trying to answer in Russian).

The latest example of a weak question being propelled to the top of 10Questions occured a few days ago. Patrick Ruffini asked an incredibly vague question about reducing the size of the government (youtube.com/watch?v=ko5BxgPKR5Q). By contacting various sites, and using Facebook, Digg, etc. he was able to send them at least 2600 unique visitors, who then got his question into the top 10 [1].

I'm sure there will be many more examples to come.

[1] personaldemocracy.com/blog/entry/1667/
10questions_update_did_ruffini_snipe_a_top_spot

Politics · Wed, 11/21/2007 - 13:33 · · Importance: 1