User:Dagelf

Official Wikipedia Discussion Forums
I think it's high time that this issue got discussed and refined more openly.

My only gripe with Wikipedia is: "WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A FORUM" - if that is not a glaring problem looking for a solution, I don't know what is.

Several companies have made the jump to creating a comment-chat-type-thing: Disqus, Reddit, Stackoverflow, Slashdot, Facebook... then there are the legacy discussion forums such as PhpBB and vBulletin.

What they all have in common is up/down votes.

I think it's time for the establishment of a forum and standard that can draft an API that can bind these togheter.

That might have been the purpose of the "Semantic Web" - BUT - they aim too high IMHO.

All we need is a simple forum software to experiment on - and once it's mature, link it to Wikipedia. (And anything and everything else!)

First we need to analyze types of comments people make: Ie. Agreement / Disagreement Humor New knowledge shared - based on something else ie. linking it to something New knowledge shared - based on this ie. linking it to relevant fields of study

Allowing people to build and expand knowledge casually, outside the academic publish-peer-review-paradigm. Perhaps more "common-sense" type knowledge not necessarily particularly worthy of academic study per sé... (but whosoever said you need a degree to offer common-sense advice to someone doing an academic study of something...?)

Crowd-source common-sense knowledge that the public has accumulated through own experience. Or at least helping them find the appropriate place to satisfy their curiousity, ask their questions, learn or share their insights.

How about we make a list of initiatives that attempt to do this, right here?

How about we list the relevant roleplayers and their interests right here?

How about we invite them here, to collaborate and share and how about we start right now?

Somewhere in the world is the perfect person to lead this - in the right direction, to bind all the divergent initiatives together.

Here's my current "best idea" - four "voting" buttons. - or perhaps four columns for comments/discussions. Lets consider the four columns first: Leftmost comments are for agreement/disagreement type comments. Ie "Wow!" "I like this" or "Stupid idea" then a column for opinions and pointless discussions: "They tried this before, it didn't work" - "It will never be possible" - "Maybe we should look at that rather" Then a column for comments relating to things this builds on: "Wow, if not for that, then this would have never been possible" Then a column for comments relating to things that this forms the foundation of: "Wow, this would make it possible to do that"

The four button idea would have just four buttons with counters - a little like slashdot: a funny counter, an insightful counter, ... I don't have time to discuss all my ideas now.

Bottom line is, these can trivially be implemented and experimented with, until an elegant solution is found.

Simply relying on text mining to find "knowledge" is a little pointless and mindless. Strangely enough, it works - and seems to be the universal "plan B". It makes a mockery of all the collective processing power of everyone sitting in front of their screens, however.

--Dagelf (talk) 13:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)