Deanspace critiques

Dave Winer dresses down the Dean Campaign for “getting into the software business.”

The Dean campaign made a big mistake, imho, by getting into the software business. Now it looks like the Edwards campaign is following them. Software and the candidates should be separate. A blogging tool can just as easily be used to advocate for a Republican or a Democrat.

A quick fact-check — DeanSpace isn’t part of the Dean Campaign, it’s a bunch of volunteers who decided to make a website toolkit for Dean activist groups.
Also, Winer doesn’t think that Deanspace should include a new blogging tool.

Users of software tools don’t generally want to switch, so don’t try to make them do it just to support your campaign. Again, think about bringing more bloggers into your tent, not creating a tent that excludes existing bloggers. Let weblogs grow independently of your campaign, no matter how big you are, they will anyway.

The Deanspace crew isn’t trying to change the blogging habits of existing bloggers. The Deanspace kit is a customized content management system, with editing workflow, weblog, and forum features. The group is trying to provide a set of tools to groups, like Seniors for Dean, who want to promote Dean in their community. It would surely be less helpful to give “seniors for Dean” a forum, plus a CMS, plus a weblog.
Tangra on #joiito has some more on-point criticism of the Deanspace project.

The stuff on Deanspace doesn’t say why or how this will help old folks who want to rap about Dean”. The first three questions in the FAQ are:
1) When is it going to be ready? We hope to have version 1.0 ready as soon as possible..
2) Who can use it? anyone…
3) How hard is it to use for general users it should be easy as pie…
Nothing that says what this is, how does it help Dean, how does it help me shape/influence/help Dean’s campaign.

Then again, says I, it’s a volunteer project. If someone wanted to improve the Deanspace website and add tutorials and demos that explained how you’d use it to help the Dean campaign, they could simply volunteer and do it.
No, it’s not perfect. There’s plenty of room for improvement. But the Dean campaign is open to volunteers who do this sort of grassroots project. This sort of decentralized activity is a good thing to see in politics.