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I have an idea for a website/concept that I need some input on
Shanadeus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
[Feel free to steal it if you fancy it as I probably won't put it in action.]
It'll be a non-profit global website supported by advertisement and/or donations with four main objectives.
1. Make me people think about what they want/what their wish is/what their dream is
So this is a site that will heavily depend on user interaction as you might guess and the first step after creating a free account on the site (or logging in through facebook and similar which automatically creates one) is to state what you want by filling a web form.
It can be anything from how you think what the world is supposed to be like on a global scale to your thoughts on your municipality/council/city's behavior and actions. Maybe you think that your country should increase it's influence aboard military wise in some country or maybe all you care about is that your council fixes up the park down town.
There shouldn't be any limit to this first step so what the site need is a flexible system that preferably tag what the users write and then sort it. They're not supposed to write up an essay nor should that be the expectation as that will result in less people using the site so the system need to be strong enough to gather sensible tags and "ideas" from a short 50-100 word write up that it then places in various categories for the later steps.
I'm not completely sure on how exactly it's supposed to work but someone's idea about how the park down town need to be fixed up can for an example be automatically categorized based on the locality of idea, the type of idea, flexibility of the idea and the feasibility of actualizing the idea.
So the park idea would for an example:
would be scanned through by the system in order to automatically tag it:
and try to assign a purpose and/or value to these tags that the system will then use to request more information from the user:
[Locality] - Basically where the user is talking about
the council, the park downtown - "Could you specify where you live?" or the system would draw this information from their account in order to find out where the user lives before asking him which park he's talking about or guessing what park he's talking about based on his location and the phrase "downtown".
[Type] - This one might be tricky but it's basically what sort of problem/quandary the user is talking about and the way it can be solved whether it's political/ecological/social/bureaucratic/and so on.
the park downtown, really bad, hobos - "Social-type", "Political-type"
[Flexibility] - Basically how wide-ranging and numerous the possible solutions/implementations to the users problems/wishes are
the council, hobos - Here the system can see that the problem, whatever it is, can be caused by two factors here that a solution can either target together or seperately giving the user three possible options; A. the council, B. hobos and C. the council and hobos.
It will then rank these possible problem factors based on the number of factors to begin with but if a system could be devised to assign value to the factors then that could be utilized.
I am no expert at any of this stuff so perhaps a simple system that tags what you say and then requires wiki-style user interaction to rank and order these tags into the various categories might be an alternative solution.
2. Help people refining their idea/dream/wish
Based on the tags in the previous step the system can suggest an improvement/refinement of their idea if this possible or just give the user various advices and guides such as how to write in a letter to your local political authority and who decides over what matters so that the user can perhaps be taught that it's not the council that decides over the park but rather the county (just an example). The purpose with this step is to really work as an objective evaluator of your idea before the third step - user interaction.
3. Find other people with similar ideas/dreams/wishes and make them communicate with each other in the event that they have similar goals
Here you could just have a simple system where other users can search a database for other users ideas/dreams/wishes that they then request to join up with and/or a system could automatically pair you up with other people based on the tags you have in your respective ideas.
The point isn't that you have to find as many users as possible to support the idea but rather that you find like-minded people in order to increase the success of your idea being put into action. You might be the only user interested in your idea and that's fine, but if there are others with the same or very similar ideas then you probably will have a higher chance of pulling it off if you're cooperating with them.
4. Give the user(s) the tools they need to implement their idea
This is the part where you involve non-users of the system in addition to other users. From step 2 you've been given advice and here you can be given tools to implement your idea in the form of on-site petitions, guides, forums where you can gather support/criticism/constructive input on how to achieve your goals and much more. In order for this site to not devolve into a petition/popularity contest there need to be a number of alternative tools which the users can use to make what they want come true.
Below I've created a number of ideas and respective tools that I think are required to make them happen:
This idea would for an example need mass support in order to create a political change so the tools required would be petitions, forms that make it easier to send a voicing of this idea to your local politician or to politicians/entities that support abortion, forums to create rallies and demonstrations against pro-abortion activities institutions.
Various language guides and youtube videos would be enough here and you could have other users who find this idea link them to this person. Or some other user could contact this user and offer free/pay-for sessions so there'd need to be some form of PM system on the site or maybe a way for users to contact each other for further contact information such as mail, messenging user IDs and so on.
I suppose a forum would be enough of a tool here. There could also be various guides and tips on how to defame something so perhaps the site would need some form of user-contributed resource bank.
___________________________________
To conclude this I must say that I'm not even remotely clear on what this site really is about and I feel that it might be a bit too wide when it comes to purpose. Should for an example people's dreams of becoming a singer be grouped together with a communist desire to create change in his native country?
And what about less "tasteful" dreams and wishes such as someone wishing homosexuality to be banned?
How feasible is this entire site as well and will it be possible to run it for free?
Anyhow, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas on this all.
It'll be a non-profit global website supported by advertisement and/or donations with four main objectives.
1. Make me people think about what they want/what their wish is/what their dream is
So this is a site that will heavily depend on user interaction as you might guess and the first step after creating a free account on the site (or logging in through facebook and similar which automatically creates one) is to state what you want by filling a web form.
It can be anything from how you think what the world is supposed to be like on a global scale to your thoughts on your municipality/council/city's behavior and actions. Maybe you think that your country should increase it's influence aboard military wise in some country or maybe all you care about is that your council fixes up the park down town.
There shouldn't be any limit to this first step so what the site need is a flexible system that preferably tag what the users write and then sort it. They're not supposed to write up an essay nor should that be the expectation as that will result in less people using the site so the system need to be strong enough to gather sensible tags and "ideas" from a short 50-100 word write up that it then places in various categories for the later steps.
I'm not completely sure on how exactly it's supposed to work but someone's idea about how the park down town need to be fixed up can for an example be automatically categorized based on the locality of idea, the type of idea, flexibility of the idea and the feasibility of actualizing the idea.
So the park idea would for an example:
Summary:
I would like the council to fix the park downtown because it's really bad looking and there's just a bunch of hobos there.
would be scanned through by the system in order to automatically tag it:
Summary:
I would like the council to fix the park downtown because it's really bad looking and there's just a bunch of hobos there.
and try to assign a purpose and/or value to these tags that the system will then use to request more information from the user:
[Locality] - Basically where the user is talking about
the council, the park downtown - "Could you specify where you live?" or the system would draw this information from their account in order to find out where the user lives before asking him which park he's talking about or guessing what park he's talking about based on his location and the phrase "downtown".
[Type] - This one might be tricky but it's basically what sort of problem/quandary the user is talking about and the way it can be solved whether it's political/ecological/social/bureaucratic/and so on.
the park downtown, really bad, hobos - "Social-type", "Political-type"
[Flexibility] - Basically how wide-ranging and numerous the possible solutions/implementations to the users problems/wishes are
the council, hobos - Here the system can see that the problem, whatever it is, can be caused by two factors here that a solution can either target together or seperately giving the user three possible options; A. the council, B. hobos and C. the council and hobos.
It will then rank these possible problem factors based on the number of factors to begin with but if a system could be devised to assign value to the factors then that could be utilized.
I am no expert at any of this stuff so perhaps a simple system that tags what you say and then requires wiki-style user interaction to rank and order these tags into the various categories might be an alternative solution.
2. Help people refining their idea/dream/wish
Based on the tags in the previous step the system can suggest an improvement/refinement of their idea if this possible or just give the user various advices and guides such as how to write in a letter to your local political authority and who decides over what matters so that the user can perhaps be taught that it's not the council that decides over the park but rather the county (just an example). The purpose with this step is to really work as an objective evaluator of your idea before the third step - user interaction.
3. Find other people with similar ideas/dreams/wishes and make them communicate with each other in the event that they have similar goals
Here you could just have a simple system where other users can search a database for other users ideas/dreams/wishes that they then request to join up with and/or a system could automatically pair you up with other people based on the tags you have in your respective ideas.
The point isn't that you have to find as many users as possible to support the idea but rather that you find like-minded people in order to increase the success of your idea being put into action. You might be the only user interested in your idea and that's fine, but if there are others with the same or very similar ideas then you probably will have a higher chance of pulling it off if you're cooperating with them.
4. Give the user(s) the tools they need to implement their idea
This is the part where you involve non-users of the system in addition to other users. From step 2 you've been given advice and here you can be given tools to implement your idea in the form of on-site petitions, guides, forums where you can gather support/criticism/constructive input on how to achieve your goals and much more. In order for this site to not devolve into a petition/popularity contest there need to be a number of alternative tools which the users can use to make what they want come true.
Below I've created a number of ideas and respective tools that I think are required to make them happen:
I want abortion banned
"I would like abortion banned for X reason"
This idea would for an example need mass support in order to create a political change so the tools required would be petitions, forms that make it easier to send a voicing of this idea to your local politician or to politicians/entities that support abortion, forums to create rallies and demonstrations against pro-abortion activities institutions.
I would like to learn French
"I would like to learn french and know a little already"
Various language guides and youtube videos would be enough here and you could have other users who find this idea link them to this person. Or some other user could contact this user and offer free/pay-for sessions so there'd need to be some form of PM system on the site or maybe a way for users to contact each other for further contact information such as mail, messenging user IDs and so on.
Stop supporting Burgerking!
"Their food is awful and I would like them to disappear from the market so that people will eat at Wendy's
I suppose a forum would be enough of a tool here. There could also be various guides and tips on how to defame something so perhaps the site would need some form of user-contributed resource bank.
___________________________________
To conclude this I must say that I'm not even remotely clear on what this site really is about and I feel that it might be a bit too wide when it comes to purpose. Should for an example people's dreams of becoming a singer be grouped together with a communist desire to create change in his native country?
And what about less "tasteful" dreams and wishes such as someone wishing homosexuality to be banned?
How feasible is this entire site as well and will it be possible to run it for free?
Anyhow, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas on this all.
Shanadeus on
0
Posts
So users input a bunch of text for an idea - and then it connects with other users who share a similar idea, and then they... do something about it.
Ideas like this are limited by the amount of users on your site. Unless you hit a critical mass, you'll just provide an abyss into which ideas are shouted. So, maybe a facebook App is a good start.
What I find fascinating is that the problem I'm having right now, how to implement this all, is exactly what this site would be about and what we're doing right now with me asking for advice and you providing some advice is pretty much what this would all be about.
It'd just be a more streamlined process that kinda semi-automatically refines your idea by connecting you to people that have the knowledge/competence/ability/goal you need or by giving you the information you need to accomplish the same.
this is your problem. the idea is fine, the idea doesn't matter - ideas are cheap. what's not cheap is hard, technically minded work, particularly in the bulk that a concept like this would need.
ask yourself if, irrespective of the refinements and subtleties, and not yet even thinking of actual visitors, you could put a basic framework that does half of what you've described online
Technically?
No way in hell.
I'm just a law student so I am somewhat certain that I could handle the whole legal aspect of it all but that's all I'm good for as of this moment.
That's why this is a pie in the sky idea (that I wouldn't mind being taken by someone with the competence to implement it) until I get the knowledge necessary to do the technically minded work you're speaking of - or find someone that can do it for me.
I kinda touched on FB integration in the opening post but a FB app would probably help in getting it off the ground as it will depend on there being a great number of users of the service.
stop
you're complicating things. stop complicating things.
"semi-automatically"? what does that mean? you do understand that, in order to "streamline" a system and make it "automatic", you're going to have to do the heavy lifting to accomplish it, yes? there's a great interview with the guy who made Instapaper which illustrates this point perfectly:
personally, this idea -- in its very basic, simplest form -- reminds me a lot of Kickstarter, a fund-raising site for creative projects. your site, in theory, would operate similarly; people would post up their goals or ambitions or social causes, and other people would "pledge" their action, or advice, or help, or, hell, maybe even their monetary support or other donations. there's no reason, right now, for your site to do any more than that. there's no need for any sort of "latent semantic indexing" just yet. maybe, once you've got it off the ground and you've got more of an idea about the scope and scale of the site, you can implement something like tags or categories so people can find things easier. a search function. but that's it. keep as much of the actual functionality in the hands of the users, not some "system" that will just create endless amounts of extra work.