5 ms·

IMO a platform like this has a lot of potential, especially for education. Wikipedia is often far too dense to really learn from if you're not already a subject

IMO a platform like this has a lot of potential, especially for education. Wikipedia is often far too dense to really learn from if you're not already a subject matter expert. One thing that concerns me slightly is the presentation of opinion as fact, which to some extent is inevitable in a public wiki that has no citation requirement. There also seem to be articles with a wide variety of intents - there are informative articles like the keto diet instructions and the hierarchy of evidence, but also laundry lists like "no brainers" and "scientific study requests". I don't know if there is an intended purpose for the contents of the site, but having this mix creates some ambiguity in my eyes. Overall, I'm keen to see where this goes - especially if it can help me to learn new useful ideas and practices (as opposed to edutainment-style wikipedia browsing).

tashmahalic 8y ago
Thanks for your feedback. Citations are currently encouraged, but not required. They might be required in the future. If you were to pick a domain of knowledge to focus the site content on (rather than "everything"), what would you pick? What new ideas and practices are you interested in?
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  Encouraging but not enforcing citations sounds good - requiring citations may end up drying up the content wikipedia-style. The content I'm interested in is twofold - practical/actionable info, and high-level summaries. The former is somewhat covered by WikiHow but their content is notoriously vapid. There's nowhere currently that I'm aware of that I can quickly learn the general mental model for a new topic. If I was new to keto, for example, the article on your wiki would provide me with all the high-level knowledge I need to get started, and to roughly understand what's going on. There are numerous concepts that I want to learn about but often that requires buying 2-3 books or reading a lot of articles before I can start to understand the mental model. Self-help and business books for example are well known for stretching an easy-to-understand concept out into hundreds of pages.

tashmahalic 8y ago

Thanks for your feedback. Citations are currently encouraged, but not required. They might be required in the future. If you were to pick a domain of knowledge to focus the site content on (rather than "everything"), what would you pick? What new ideas and practices are you interested in?

beaconstudios 8y ago
Encouraging but not enforcing citations sounds good - requiring citations may end up drying up the content wikipedia-style. The content I'm interested in is twofold - practical/actionable info, and high-level summaries. The former is somewhat covered by WikiHow but their content is notoriously vapid. There's nowhere currently that I'm aware of that I can quickly learn the general mental model for a new topic. If I was new to keto, for example, the article on your wiki would provide me with all the high-level knowledge I need to get started, and to roughly understand what's going on. There are numerous concepts that I want to learn about but often that requires buying 2-3 books or reading a lot of articles before I can start to understand the mental model. Self-help and business books for example are well known for stretching an easy-to-understand concept out into hundreds of pages.