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Wow, this is.. Something else. I will definitely suggest this as a possible master thesis research topic at my work place.

Alex3917 12y ago
Thanks! Yeah I spent a couple thousand hours on it, but for whatever reason have gotten pretty lukewarm feedback from various media organizations I've pitched it to. I think the power to make conent creation 10x cheaper while vastly improving quality and total derived value is pretty self evident, but go figure. So for now it's been fairly dormant. I think the sections on antibiotic resistance and arrest statistics have both changed slightly since I last updated this, but everything else should be pretty current.
- davemel37 12y ago
  It's never easy to get someone to change their behavior. When you pitch them, all they hear is the pain of changing platforms. Your assumption that media companies actually care about better quality, is also flawed. They care about sensationalism. the people want to be entertained, and unless you can show how this entertains them, you'll have a hard time getting past their resistance to change.
  - Retra 12y ago
    Sounds to me like it would be an awesome resource for mathematicians. It's just a different brand of information, but many people would love to have a useable proof reference and knowledge dependency system. Especially if it can be audited and contributed to easily.
- exelius 12y ago
  Pretty sure the major news services handle this already through their CMSes. Editors can cut and paste "story blocks" that are updated over time. Unfortunately, many news agencies don't do actual research or fact-checking anymore, so your implementation probably failed because it targeted the way news did business 20 years ago, not the entertainment-driven news media we have today. You probably also didn't understand enough about their workflows and CMS systems. I can't be bothered to look for it right now, but the NYTimes did a behind-the-scenes look at their CMS probably a year ago. EDIT: Ok, never mind, I looked for it: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/scoop-a-glimpse-into-the-nytimes-cms/?_r=0 http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/scoop-a-glimpse-int...
  - Alex3917 12y ago
    I'm familiar with the scoop functionality you mention, and my last job involved making APIs to deliver content to media CMS, so I have some general familiarity with the space. Obviously infotainment will always be a large portion of what the media produces, and this isn't really relevant to that. But once you get beyond that type of content, media organizations aren't actively trying to produce low quality articles, it's just that that's what they're incentivized to produce. If you can make it less expensive and more profitable to produce high quality content, then that's what will get produced. Also there was never really any implementation that failed per se, I actually still think this would work. I'm just currently spending my time on other stuff that I think has more potential. For the last several years this has been kind of a hobby project that I work on here and there whenever I get burnt out on whatever I'm supposed to be doing. The main problem with it is that it just takes an enormous amount of time to add new content. Any given fact can easily take an entire day to add... By the time you go through all the competing claims, find the the primary sources, read through the methodology for each one, etc., that's easily 8 - 10 hours per fact. Which is why there still isn't any code or UI even after multiple years of work.

Alex3917 12y ago

Thanks! Yeah I spent a couple thousand hours on it, but for whatever reason have gotten pretty lukewarm feedback from various media organizations I've pitched it to. I think the power to make conent creation 10x cheaper while vastly improving quality and total derived value is pretty self evident, but go figure. So for now it's been fairly dormant. I think the sections on antibiotic resistance and arrest statistics have both changed slightly since I last updated this, but everything else should be pretty current.

davemel37 12y ago
It's never easy to get someone to change their behavior. When you pitch them, all they hear is the pain of changing platforms. Your assumption that media companies actually care about better quality, is also flawed. They care about sensationalism. the people want to be entertained, and unless you can show how this entertains them, you'll have a hard time getting past their resistance to change.
- Retra 12y ago
  Sounds to me like it would be an awesome resource for mathematicians. It's just a different brand of information, but many people would love to have a useable proof reference and knowledge dependency system. Especially if it can be audited and contributed to easily.
exelius 12y ago
Pretty sure the major news services handle this already through their CMSes. Editors can cut and paste "story blocks" that are updated over time. Unfortunately, many news agencies don't do actual research or fact-checking anymore, so your implementation probably failed because it targeted the way news did business 20 years ago, not the entertainment-driven news media we have today. You probably also didn't understand enough about their workflows and CMS systems. I can't be bothered to look for it right now, but the NYTimes did a behind-the-scenes look at their CMS probably a year ago. EDIT: Ok, never mind, I looked for it: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/scoop-a-glimpse-into-the-nytimes-cms/?_r=0 http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/scoop-a-glimpse-int...
- Alex3917 12y ago
  I'm familiar with the scoop functionality you mention, and my last job involved making APIs to deliver content to media CMS, so I have some general familiarity with the space. Obviously infotainment will always be a large portion of what the media produces, and this isn't really relevant to that. But once you get beyond that type of content, media organizations aren't actively trying to produce low quality articles, it's just that that's what they're incentivized to produce. If you can make it less expensive and more profitable to produce high quality content, then that's what will get produced. Also there was never really any implementation that failed per se, I actually still think this would work. I'm just currently spending my time on other stuff that I think has more potential. For the last several years this has been kind of a hobby project that I work on here and there whenever I get burnt out on whatever I'm supposed to be doing. The main problem with it is that it just takes an enormous amount of time to add new content. Any given fact can easily take an entire day to add... By the time you go through all the competing claims, find the the primary sources, read through the methodology for each one, etc., that's easily 8 - 10 hours per fact. Which is why there still isn't any code or UI even after multiple years of work.