The open source model of operation can be extended to open source culture in decision making, which allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of decision making such as those typically used in commercial companies. Open source culture is one where collective decisions or fixations are shared during development and made generally available in the public domain, as done in Wikipedia. This collective approach moderates ethical concerns over a "conflict of roles" or conflict of interest. Participants in such a culture are able to modify the collective outcomes and share them with the community. Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. (*disclaimer: open source does not imply anarchy - the means for any person to file an issue/initiative/contribution is enabled but they are working within a community frame work that does have some organization and decision making mechanisms in place. It's not an utter free for all. The exact options how to do this would be one of the first and most important things we would need to decide on - Caleb)
The above model has been implemented with tremendous success in the world of software/web development. I know because for the past couple of years I've been part of an open source development community, Drupal. Drupal, for those who aren't already aware, has been gaining a vast amount of use and exposure in recent years. The list of sites that use Drupal is very distinguished. Besides a long list of popular corporate sites, several presidential candidates, NowPublic, and TPMCafe are among the sites using Drupal.
Clearly, this open source thinger is something which can produce results. With a proven track record, the time is ripe for this model to be implemented in an area that badly needs it - the social/political activist community.
Getting started
Please just fire away with your questions and/or comments and let's see what momentum comes of it. Heavy lifting is certainly need at some point, but even simple words of encouragement or support for the overall idea would be helpful feedback (if you have not so encouraging comments, please try to make them constructive at least).
Depending on the level of participation offered and the interest expressed, the next steps for this initiative should present themselves plainly enough (e.g., more specific planning, development, and collaboration) 
UPDATE
Example of how one open source community works:
To help everyone visualize things a bit, here is an example of the workflow / communication lines / tools which exist at one open source community, Drupal.org (since this is the place I'm most familiar with).
Core
(For a social political site this item might be akin to the front page of the site and/or universal site features/content that will be presented to the public)
The "core" Drupal package itself. It's the backbone that everything else interacts with. It is produced through individual contributions of code/patches from hundreds of different users. Users contribute to core by filing an "issue" against some component of the project - they can mark their issue as a 'normal bug', 'crititcal bug', 'feature request', etc. Once a user has filed an issue the rest of the community can provide feedback and/or testing on the issue. Just depending on the issue, things may be debated and/or refinements made to the original idea before the issue is formally closed with some kind of resolution.
The issue queue is not a simple 'complaint or complement' inbox. What is generally valued by the development community are issues in which the person has either a) clearly detailed an issue and given conditions which can be used to recreate the problem, or b) the person has actually created their own solution/patch for the problem.
One thing that took me a while to understand at Drupal.org is that since no one is getting paid for their contributions - there is no "customer service" - just volunteers like oneself. The working motto is 'scratch your own itch' don't look for someone else to.
There are a handful of "core committers" whose job is to evaluate the issues which have been marked "ready to be committed" (through peer review) and to actually commit any newly accepted code to the downloadable Drupal package. Commiters may engage in any manner of dialog with the issue thread, to get more information, prod for some finishing touches, play a little devil's advocate about potential side effects, etc. All the conversations are out in the open and while not the rule, sometimes much venting takes places, among other things. :)
In addition to the issue queues there is also a developer mailing list - a list which anybody can join, and is a place where some of the more active developers can communicate with one another and/or put forth ideas, feedback etc. It's a nice complement to the issue queues and also keeps them from getting muddied.
Projects
(there really is no current thing I can compare this to at any social political sites, atm)
Anyone that registers on Drupal.org can create their own project page and upload code for other users to download and install. What's really cool is that each person's project gets its own issues queue, just like Drupal core has (think of the issues queue an entire forum instead of an individual comment thread - you can have 1, 10, or 100 different threads going at anyone one time for just a single project). This means that other users can submit patches (improvements to your code) or add feature requests, documentation, etc. Effectively each project is it's own little micro climate.
Projects are self moderated, though you can create a project co-maintainer(s) if you'd like.
It is interesting to note that some of the most successful projects eventually find their way into the Drupal core package.
Overall site forums
(this can be in-addition-to the normal essays section that appear on a social political site)
These forums are not tied to any project or issues - just a place where individuals can post stand alone questions, articles, links, etc. Forums are moderated by site maintainers.
Handbook pages
The handbook pages are where things get documented at. It's a very wiki-like collection of articles and information about a variety of different subjects. Any member can add a page to the handbook.
Handbook pages are maintained by site maintainers.
Planet
Planet Drupal is an aggregator of other sites/blogs that are Drupal-centric in nature. This means that news/articles are pulled in from other sites and published on the Drupal Planet homepage (a subsection of the site).
Sites are included in the aggregator by site maintainers.
Groups
Groups are an awesome feature - groups.drupal.org lets a group of people function as their own site. Each group gets it's own front page, it's own users, a way to schedule events, subscribe to updates, etc.
Currently there are over 300 groups on Drupal.org.
Groups are self moderated.
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