Here's news guaranteed to tickle anyone who, like me, is both a geek and a presidential-campaign junkie: Yahoo, Slate, and the Huffington Post have announced that they're going to cohost the first-ever online presidential debates during the 2008 campaign. There will be one for Democratic candidates and one for the Republicans, and both will be hosted by Mr. Charlie Rose.

The press release doesn't have a lot of detail, other than that the debates will be held after Labor Day of this year, and that the Democratic one will have opening remarks by DNC Chairman Howard Dean. So I have a few questions. Such as....

Who will participate? The sponsors haven't announced any names, but you gotta think they're comfortable they'll wind up with an acceptable quorum from both parties. Which seems reasonable--at least some of the folks who have thrown their hats into the ring will presumably jump at the chance to do something sort of cool and forward-looking. And with (let's see) Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, and others trying for the Dem nomination, and McCain, Giuliani, Romney, Brownback, Huckabee, as many as two Thompsons, and others in the Republican race, the debates don't need 100% participation to feel well-attended.

What's the exact format? Surprisingly, the release doesn't appear to quite say, though it does mention that the debaters can participate from anywhere, and that real people will be able to upload questions in video form.

It's possible it'll all be done with video, but it would e entertaining if it was text-based chat...if only because it might give us the chance to experience Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton saying "LMAO" or Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney prefacing a thoughtful stance on some matter of national importance with a measured "IMHO..."

How many people will take them in? General-election debates may be a big deal, but primary-season ones oftentimes seem to be relegated to outlets like CSPAN, where political nuts can watch them and the rest of the world is able to ignore them. I'm betting that the sheer novelty of these ones will ensure that more people will pay attention than if comparable events had been staged for TV.

Will there be any memorable moments? From the Lincoln-Douglas debates (which were senatorial, not presidential, but who's counting?) onwards, debates have had more than their share of unexpected moments and sidelights. Will anything come out of these to compare to the hubbub over Richard Nixon's stubbly face in 1960, or Gerald Ford's stance that Poland wasn't dominated by the USSR in 1976, or Al Gore's eye-rolling in 2000?

Will the general election have online debates, too? Now that would be fun.

Why hasn't this happened before? America's been online in one form or another for almost thirty years, the Web has been pervasive for over a decade, Web-based video mattered back during the 2004 election--it's startling that it's only now that debates are going online.