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any websites that list &/or rank important issues?
Chaotic Descent
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I know there's sites that will have news for certain sections, but there's nothing really comprehensive that lists all the important issues, and possibly ranks their importance. (maybe ranking current situation in different countries, and changes to it; who's tackling what/where; pricetags on projects current/proposed/[all required to reach an optimal level].)
examples: net neutrality, human rights, environment, education, health care, poverty, peace, infectious dissease, economy, democracy...
I know different issues will be important for different people. Like for some, making abortion or homosexuality illegal. or deregulation.
examples: net neutrality, human rights, environment, education, health care, poverty, peace, infectious dissease, economy, democracy...
I know different issues will be important for different people. Like for some, making abortion or homosexuality illegal. or deregulation.
Chaotic Descent on
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I think each one of those could be simple enough that you could just use a single one of them and move to another when it got more severe or better.
(Wait, that's not what you were talking about, was it...)
and like I said, ideological differences... beyond pro/anti... well, rating importance of each cause wouldn't be as monumental a task as enumerating the progress of each one, so it wouldn't be such a big deal to have lots of different groups for rating.
Then people could sort of jump into a general group, and if they find they place more value on one issue than the group they're in, they could adjust it and see what group they end up in.
I'm not really sure what value that kind of thing would have. Perhaps in finding support? Measuring views? Perhaps using it to limit the quantity of news in each category based on rating. Also useful for donating money and (automatically) dividing them up by the categories.
This.
OP, I'm guessing you've never taken any sociology courses. I'll give you a simple pointer: asked the right way, it is easy to get one person to say that five different things are the most important concern they have at the moment.
Let's take three imaginary people, Coco, Hardrock, and Joe (well, technically they were elves; WGN joke).
Coco is a party line democrat, wants gun restrictions and abortion liberties.
Hardrock is a party line republican, wants gun liberties and abortion restrictions.
Joe isn't a moron and understands that a government that tells people what they can't do is more dangerous then a government that tolerates abortion, and so is for gun liberties and for abortion.
Coco thinks Hardrock and Joe are gun toting NRA terrorists.
Hardrock thinks Joe and Coco are babykilling monsters.
Joe thinks Coco and Hardrock are fascist dictators.
From their own perspectives each one is correct.
In reality, only Joe is correct but unfortunately Joe lives in a world were people focus on what divides us rather then what unites us, and so quietly bides his time while waiting for the Canadian immigration office to approve his citizenship request.
The bolded part is of course my opinion. But it should illustrate that what is important to people varies dramatically between people. In effect we really have several countries worth of ideologies coexisting within one national border. Joe agrees with Coco and Hardrock on some things. And when Hardrock and Coco have polls about what is most important to the country, Joe agrees with each of them on their questions that naturally focus on the things that they know Joe agrees with.
But in reality Joe thinks they're both nuts and is just deprived a party that stands for what Joe stands for, because every time Joe tries to create one, Coco and Hardrock get in the way (Tea Party, Reform Party, Progressive Party, etc) because they each know that they're nothing without Joe.
What about demographics? or... crap, what was it Malcom Gladwell called them in his TED lecture about spaghetti sauce? My point is, you can find distinct groups that like specific things. (man I love that lecture. I am a guy who likes milky, weak coffee. and chunky spaghetti sauce.)
That's a different problem, but one I'm interested in.
But still, what about enumerating the progress in a specific topic & location, eg: "the environment" "in [some city]". and then zooming out and showing it in a country, or globally.
gimmie something to work with here... what would I have to know to even want to try and get others to help in doing something like this?
You would want to be an developer at the Googleplex trying to figure out what to do with the "go try stuff" time they push on their programmers to find new ways to play with the huge mountain of data they collect every day.
I've been encouraged to study psychology lately, so this is just another reason to.
For that matter, I added programming/database into my list as well... although I wonder how expensive it would be to pay for someone to do that for me. I have previous programming experience, but I'm not really sure how much work I'd have to go through to learn to build fancy websites with databases and whatnot, and if it would be worth it.
although I do have other things I could use it for...
It's the kind of thing that could be a thesis project, I think.
(this functions as an example of how silly what you are asking for actually turns out to be when implemented)
edit: I guess they don't explicitly attempt to "rank" issues by importance, but they try to enumerate "progress" (sort of)
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Pricey.
See software engineers are a finicky bunch. I know this because I got the degree and wound up working with a bunch of them. They like concrete software requirements specifications. Which is why the finance and insurance industries are generally able to keep developers because actuarians produce very exacting and precise definitions of what they want the program to do, and can come up with mathematical test cases to prove the validity of the results the code produces.
What you are trying to create will be very hard to write into a software requirement specification; you'd be hard pressed to even write use cases from what you have right now...
"The user enters the program to learn what is important to the user..."
What? No. Fail.
http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/About.htm
Monitors the progress toward th milenium goals based on indicators. The ultimate goal: to rid the world of want.
Another http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm
United nations stats, you could rank countries based on these indicators.
Then what would be the point?
No no, seriously. Eudaimonia is a poor goal which is quite fortunately utterly unachievable. Many people think that reducing nuclear arms across the planet would rid the world of war. It would not. If you want to rid the world of war, you build a whole bunch of nuclear weapons and then use them. On everyone.