Search Ideas

My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

Veritula emphasises making one point at a time for ease of criticism and discussion, which is useful in a forum but makes absorbing the totality of an idea a little more tedious compared to a quick glance at an encyclopedia article. (It is possible I have misunderstood some aspect of Veritula here.)

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

One thing that Wikipedia articles are very good for is providing well-structured information on a given subject. Discussion threads are not so well structured (the order of information is not based on how high-level or foundational it is, like an encyclopedia entry would be, but rather on the nested chronology of whatever discussion happened to take place.)

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology?

Yes, sure.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

We ‘just’ need to get more users. As I wrote in #628, posting a breaking news story could work. If users submit ideas on events as they unfold and then criticize those ideas, visitors see what’s happening at a glance. It could be easier for them to know which ideas they can adopt than on conventional news channels or even Wikipedia, IMO.

There are also ‘timeless’ debates that have been going on for decades where Veritula can offer clarity. Like on the abortion debate. People shouldn’t have to keep debating that over and over when it’s a matter where objective truth can be found and then acted on.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

I went ahead and implemented this feature since it was a good suggestion.

You can edit your discussion here.

I started a discussion earlier, and what I wrote in the “about” section of the discussion was not written well. I would like to revise it. Is this possible? If not, is there an intention to make this possible eventually?

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology? Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia) has said that he now thinks Wikipedia should have competing articles on the same topic to allow for the fact that people disagree.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

Hardly anyone reads those, and many of those who do forget.

There could be an explanation somewhere stating that emoji reactions do not have epistemological relevance.

Those run the risk of turning Veritula into yet another social network like Reddit or messenger like Telegram.

Not necessarily. Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement; some way to indicate that a particular thread of a discussion is resolved, at least for the time being.

But not everyone will always use the platform in an ideal way, and I don’t want to make it easier for issues to compound.

That only happens if people submit bulk ideas, and people shouldn’t do that anyway.

Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.

That limits the scope of the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. A single recipient could still react in a distracting way.

Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes over multiple screens.

Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes with multiple screens.

Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.

People could wrongly think they have epistemological relevance. For example, they might adopt an idea that has pending criticism just because it got positive reactions.

How about emoji reactions?

Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

If there’s no criticism, that implies agreement.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement.

By the time someone receives an email notification, they will probably have forgotten whatever they wrote originally that prompted someone to reply to them.