User:Judean/Jasons Thoughts

Jason's Sketch of the plan
What I envision is: 1) a tool for collaborative intellectual projects by means of 2) a Friendster-esque character, 3) dynamic relationship maps, and 4) an Everything2-esque point-system.

First, 2):

You make a profile like Tribe.net or Friendster, but with slightly added emphasis to intellectual endeavors (languages spoken, areas of study/specialization, publications, etc). You can add friends, and people are searchable through their profiles. Moreover, you can form "synapses," similar to the tribes of Tribe.net.

You also can post up papers/blurbs you've written, syndicate your blogs, etc for people to read. You can assign tagged keywords to papers/blurbs (allowing people to get them via search), and comments pages allow others to respond.

1):

Wikis are at the center of this. You can decide to put something up in wiki form: a translation project, a thesis idea, an entry to be added to Wikipedia, a blog entry yet-to-be-published, a compendium of esoteric data. You can determine levels of input on such wikis (using degrees of separation from your selected friends). Like papers/blurbs, you can assign tagged keywords allowing people to get to them via a search. You also will have an "invite" feature, which allows you to solicit input from someone you find on your own volition who may or may not be part of your friends. Also, a "broadcast" feature might exist, a widespread public solicitation for contributions to a project (i.e. translations).

Also, your profile will feature a list of wikis you've recently contributed to.

3):

One can also track the interactions between users and list relationship strengths based on the amount of wiki contributions/comments/messaging, allowing anyone to quickly identify which users form a strong network of collaboration. This can be represented graphically.

4):

Peer review and feedback becomes crucial. You can "score" people's contributions to translations and other wiki'd projects under your own listings. You can also "score" posted papers/blurbs/blogs of others, though perhaps with a different point system than for wiki contributions. Scores are displayed in a person's profile, and good scores raise their profile, i.e. through making their profiles list first in search results, in prioritizing their "broadcasts." Scores can be said to represent a mix of intellectual merit and usefulness of contributions.

Moreover, given a reading of relationship strengths, scoring can be broken down into insider and outsider scoring, deterring people from raising their profiles via multiple accounts and making clear when cliques are collectively raising their profiles. In sum: you'll be able to tell if someone's scores are from just a few close peers or from a variety of users.

If a specific paper/blurb gets scored very differentially (lots of very high and very low scores; scores from a variety of users instead of from one dense network), it receives a tag "controversial." This allows people to put a check on poor material that is highly-scored due to cliques collectively praising each other's work.

Also, a "flamer" tag can be attached to anyone's contributions, which brings their score down exponentially depending on the number of other users who also tag that person a "flamer." The multiplier effect is small if relationship strengths between people calling a user "flamer" are strong, but if the "flamer" tag comes from a variety of loosely related sources, then it has a strong multiplier effect. This effectively allows people to discourage bad behavior while prohibiting people from ganging-up in vendettas.

AN EXAMPLE USER:

Jason logs into his homepage. He has a listing of his friends (Dave, Tomer, etc), each with numbers next to them denoting relative strength of connections (i.e. amount of contributions between him and these friends). He also has a listing of his 5 most recent wikis to which he's contributed, which allows him to quickly click over to a project he may have been helping on recently, as well as a listing of his "synapses" for easy access. He also has a list of currently wiki'd projects, which includes his "broadcast" to gather info on Halliburton contracts in Iraq for an upcoming blog entry; next to this wiki listing is a number 3, noting 3 changes to the wiki (all needing to be scored) since last login.

Jason clicks over to the wiki. He goes to the previous versions and, using a feature to compare edits with the previous edition, reviews and scores the contributions, as well as deciding what to keep.

Meanwhile, user Mike has been looking at Jason's profile. In searching "translations (Spanish)" and "WTO," Jason came up first due to decent scores (mostly from a few select friends, tho). Jason's recent blog entry on the WTO ruling evidences some understanding of the WTO, and Jason has listed working-knowledge level of Spanish under his languages (with reasonable scores). Moreover, Mike finds that Jason has strong links to Dave and Tomer, who he finds write about international affairs issues as well. Mike issues an "invitation" to Jason asking him to help with translating and contributing to a Spanish-lanugage Wikipedia entry on the history of the WTO. (Mike doesn't have many scores, being rather new, and so his attempted "broadcast" did not come up high in priority.)

Jason comes back to his homepage and notices an "invitation." He clicks over and views Mike's project. He sends a message to Mike telling him he'd be happy to help on a specific section by translating his recent blog entry, as well as inviting Mike to the synapse "WTO."

Erstwhile, Dave is reviewing his wiki'd thesis proposal for impending scholarship in Brazil. A user whose name he does not recognize has made a contribution that is decidedly off topic. Dave scores it lowly. A few days later, the spurned contributor writes a screed on Dave's wiki. Dave tags him a "flamer." Since Dave has not contributed to any projects by this fellow, the fellow cannot tag Dave back.

And meanwhile, Tomer is reviewing a set of articles written on Jewish conspiracies. He goes around handing our low ratings left and right, as well as messaging his synapse "Fighting Anti-Semitism" to do likewise. After a day or two, such articles receive "controversial" tags. As the wikis of Tomer and his synapse get invaded by angry flamers, they tag the "flamers" and the intellectual vendetta is discouraged and brought to a close.

And on and on and on... Of course, this is just one vision. There are many many MANY issues to be worked out (e.g. Should scoring be on a rating scale, or should it be additive (like experience points in RPGs)? Should low/negative scores induced by flaming tags be punished in any way (e.g. limiting users from using "broadcast" option)?) But have some thoughts on this, let's start hammering something out.

--jason