Political Base

Everything you need to know about the site

Table of Contents

General Information

How does moderation work here?

For brand new users Political Base moderates all new content submitted into the system. The content is either added or deleted within 24 hours after the submission is made. As users submit quality content, they earn points which rank them in the community and open up more editing options in a less strict enviroment, often earning live edit access to the majority of the site. Submissions made are moderated by an internal staff and by high scoring users from within our userbase. At any time you can view your point score at the top-right of your "my base" section.

How do I add new pages?

Pages on Political Base are split into different page types that allow for different formatting and forms. You can create a new page, by using one of the forms below. All new pages must be approved by our moderators before others can edit them.

How do I earn points?

Points are earned by adding content to Political Base in the form of wiki edits, photos, videos, tagging, and forum or blog posts and comments. The only form of points though that actually open up new features on the site through are wiki points. These you earn anytime you make a submission onto a Political Base page and it is approved by our moderation staff. Once you hit 1000 wiki points on the site we allow you to make live edits and open up certain "mod only" tools that allow for more powerful editing of Political Base pages.

How do I view or cancel my previous edits?

At any time you can access submissions you've made into Political Base by going into the submissions section of your "my base" profile. From there you can choose to "reject" any edits you made that have yet to be moderated. You can also access any edits our moderation staff may have rejected and attempt to "try again" and provide a new, hopefully better submission.

What kind of formatting can I use on PB pages?

Political Base uses a custom version of markdown, which allows for syntax formatting (bolds, italics...etc) that you're likely already familiar with. We use some custom syntax to allow members to provide auto-styled image and link insertion as well. You can see examples of this syntax formatting on the right side of any edit form.

People Pages

Who should be added to Political Base?

Any noteworthy individuals who are involved in or influence American politics. This includes the politicians, lobbyists, media personalities, contributors and celebrities who define the current landscape at the federal, local, county and city level of government. Though please don't need to add that crazy uncle from your last dinner party who got drunk and yelled about the President. While we're sure there's a place for Uncle Frank, it's probably not Political Base.

How are rivals and supporters assigned?

You can assign a rival or supporter to any person page by going to the appropriate tab and editing it. When you assign a relationship between those two people though it is only added to the person you are currently editing. For example, if you add "George Bush" as a rival of "Bill Mahr" Bill Mahr will not show up as a rival on the George Bush page, you'd have to edit that independently. This is done because almost everyone considers certain high level people a rival or supporter even though that may not be relavent to that higher level person's page. This format allows you to write contextual info about the specific relationship.

How are the comparison grids built?

Comparison grids are built automatically anytime a person has at least one issue and one rival attached to that person. Simply add more rivals or issues to the person to build a more complete grid.

How do group affiliations work?

Affiliations simply represent a link between a person and a group. You can associate people to a group (Senate, The NRA) from a person's affiliation page. Only people with an end year of "present" will display on that group's page though to keep membership rosters down to managable levels. At anytime you can remove an affiliation by clicking the "propose removal" option in the edit form. If the person you are adding has a different position/title in the group then is listed, you'll need to edit the group itself first to add that title to those available in the dropdowns. See the group section of this guide for more info.

Can I edit the contribution (money) info or graphs attached to a politician?

No. That information comes directly from the FEC and as far as we know is accurate. If you notice something incorrect about that data, please let us know.

Group & Gov. Pages

What are groups? How do they work on Political Base?

A group on Political Base is a catch-all term used to describe any page that requires a membership roster. While groups may be flagged specifically as "Gov Bodies" (like the Senate), Coporate (Enron), Media (Fox News), or Advocacy (ACLU), the functionality of group pages on the site remains the same across the site.


Parenting on the group form
How are groups related to one another?

Groups on Political Base may be linked together through "parenting", which is just an association that signifies that a smaller group is part of a larger one. For example, the United States Government is made up of myriad of different groups and agencies, all of which follow a chain of command up to the three major branches (Executive, Legislative and Judicial). Let's look at the parenting structure of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House.

  • United States Government
  • Legislative Branch
  • House of Representatives
  • Committee on Foreign Affairs

In the above example, you can see that the Committee of Foreign Affairs in related to the House, which is related to the Legislative branch, which finally ends at the United States Government. This parenting is made by going to any group page, clicking edit, and then associating the larger group above the lesser one using the "attach a parent" section of the group edit form.

How are State and County level governments handled on Political Base?

We treat state level governments on Political Base as separate, unique entities from the Federal Government. Under the same philosophy, counties underneath the states are separate from the state governments and exist as their own entities. We do however create "informal groups" above the county level that serve to group all the counties under one bucket (example: Virginia County Governments). We do this simply to create less confusion and provide a unique identifier in search since so many duplicate county names exist across the country.

How should media organizations, corporations and special interest groups be handled?

The same group features that work for governments also work for advocacy groups and the media. For example, you can associate Bill O'Reily to a group called "The O'Reily Factor", which has a parent of "Fox News", which has a parent of "NewsCorp". When creating a new group, just make sure to set the "Group Type" as the appropriate group type so that it will be labeled correctly within the site.

How are positions and titles within groups handled? How do I set them?

By default when associating people to groups they are set as a "member", but you can edit the group itself and name specific positions like "CEO", "Talk Show Host" or "Chairman" if you need. Use the group edit form and in the "positions" part of the form simply list out any specific titles or positions a person can hold within that group. When the changes are approved, those positions will now be available in the dropdowns for title when associating a person to that group.