Thanks to Mathew for passing along an interesting post by Steve Petersen on growing pains at Politicopia, a new political wiki in Utah, which has had some problems with unruly community members:Politicopia has broken some barriers between state legislators and who they represent, but it has also had a few hiccups. Like in virtually all things politics, some wiki contributors aren’t that cool — despite Steve Urquhart’s, who launched the wiki, explicit plea on the homepage that participants “Be cool.”Former U.S. candidate Pete Ashdown — who pioneered the use of wikis in political campaigns during the 2006 election — unfortunately encountered some unhip interlocutors who deleted comments…. In a blog comment response to these complaints, Ashdown argues that since some Politicopia participants weren’t cool that the wiki “still requires some steering from above to prevent the kind of actions that I have seen so far” — just like Wikipedia.My first reaction when I read Steve’s post was that some moderation is essential if the community around a controversial topic isn’t large enough…. But then again, it may be that topics like politics and religion are ultimately not amenable to wikis because too many in the community *are* cranks and operatives – or people who have vested interest in subverting the purpose of the wiki.

In each case, the news has been long expected and the headlines are entirely anticlimactic.First, Google has formally announced its desktop application suite…. Well, perhaps Google wouldn’t be so bad after all …Next up, Apple has settled with Cisco over the the use of the word “iPhone”. In a shocking development, both now have the right to use it, on terms that are (also predictably, and perhaps by now also famously) entirely obscure (news flash: they will “explore opportunities” together).Finally, Telus has scrapped its plan to rebrand itself as a mobile purveyor of porn…. Perhaps the only thing about this story stranger than its appearance was the fact that just about everyone else in the country knew before Telus itself that Telus would eventually have to dump this plan.