A Washington State state delegate named Suzi LeVine, looking for an easy way to organize her state’s Obama delegates, turned to free wiki service Wetpaint, which helped her quickly build the Barack Obama Delegates site. This is one of those sites that serve such an obvious function that we wonder how the delegates could live without it. So why haven’t supporters of the other candidates done anything similar?

The goal of the Washington wiki is simply to make sure every elected state delegate shows up at the state and national party conventions, and to know what to do once they get there. “We want to make sure they know what to do about the entire process, and how to stay involved,” Wetpaint “Community Evangelist” Troy Morris told me.

The wiki lists all of the Washington State Obama delegates and invites them to create profiles on the site (check out delegate Barbara Clure’s profile for an idea of what they look like). Not only can delegates connect to each other, but the public can join in discussion forums.

It also offers resources explaining how the state and national conventions will work, listing important dates and volunteer opportunities, etc. And it’s a wiki, so all of the delegates are free to add to or edit the listed information.

A typical message from one delegate to the rest was sent out this afternoon. It begins:

Hi All,

I wanted to share some process information for next Saturday that just came to light from the Obama sub-caucus Chair:

The State Party has informed us that there are 300 people running in the 7th CD for the 7 Obama National Delegate spots.

• In order to speak, you have to sign-in at a candidate table that morning (and have filed your paperwork with the State Dems)
• Speaking order will be sign-in order at the table, and sign-in starts at 9:00 am.
• If all 300 sign-in, then the speeches will be 20 seconds.
• If only 100 sign-in, they will be likely to be 1 minute.

There are now 250 members of the site, and it’s starting to expand its mission beyond Washington State. The goal is to get every Obama delegate from all 50 states and the territories on the site.

What’s interesting is that while the Obama campaign is aware of the wiki’s existence, it has no official connection to it; the onus is up to the delegates to organize themselves. Naturally, the same organizational need must exist for Clinton and McCain delegates, yet this seems to be the only such site in existence.

Why are Obama supporters virtually the only ones producing these kinds of sites? Are Obama delegates are somehow different from other delegates? Maybe they’re being inspired by the organizing prowess of the campaign, or are more enthusiastic about their candidate. They’ve already cornered the voter-generated content market, but this wiki goes beyond mashups or blogs; it’s a para-campaign site that aids the campaign directly, and rallies its supporters. For the sake of getting everyone’s ducks in a row, let’s hope the other delegates follow suit.