About Politicianwar

Politicianwar is a noble experiment in Web 2.0 democracy. It is not at all a "me-too-wish-I-had-thought-of-that", puerile, and totally derivative response to kittenwar. And puppywar. Oh, no; this is serious stuff, because it's about Politics. We've put a little thought into stopping people from hacking the system; it's probably difficult but not quite impossible, so be careful of assigning too much significance to the results.

Politicianwar contains all of the UK Members of Parliament (646 as of 1 January 2008). The site will present two random politicians, and prompts you to click on the politician which you would take more seriously. In order to reduce any genuine punditry value the site might have, political affiliations, constituencies etc are not shown until you've cast your vote. The information on the MPs, including their names and photographs, were taken from the really worthwhile UK Parliament web site.

Opinions on best and worst politicians do not reflect the opinions of the site creators, who prefer not to think about such things. Instead, the "Best" and "Worst" sections of the site are based on approval ratings calculated from the votes cast on the site.

Technology

Politicianwar is a simple set of PHP scripts on top of a MySQL database. The site runs on the Apache 2 web server on Debian Linux. This combination of free software has much to recommend it, including speed, stability, power, flexibility, freedom and cost. We certainly recommend you give it a go. Politicianwar hasn't been published as free software yet, although it will be in due course - feel free to contact us if you want a copy.

Design

Heh, right.

Contact

There are many reasons why you might wish to make contact. Perhaps you are excited by the possibilities of Politicianwar, and want to interview us, or shower us with money. Or perhaps you believe we're wasting everyone's time, and want to vent your spleen. Or, perhaps, you're a politician and you're offended by your rating - and want to know where to despatch your henchpeople to have it adjusted. In all cases, a good starting point is to contact Adam Oellermann by email to adam@oellermann.com.