20081220204255: Putting opinion in a Wiki (under construction)

20081220204702: Motivation: high!

1. 20081220204728: A wiki is great for facts, as Wikipedia is the leading & most-incredible proof of.
1. 20081220210430: And no surprise: with an agreed fact, there is (by definition) no debate over what is true, so dramatically less debate over what needs to be said, which is critical if you have infinite editors.
2. 20081220210439: But the fact is facts are only a part of life.  What about opinion?
   
1. 20081220210514: Indeed, for every fact there are often 10s if not 100s of opinions.
2. 20081220210543: It's not obvious nor easy how to handle opinions in a wiki (nor actually well in general!)
   
1. 20081220210631: And Wikipedia has seemingly largely taken the stance of essentially "Opinion doesn't belong here; keep it and cut it down to just the facts" (which is often requested by police for their reports as well).
   
1. 20081220211134: And indeed it seems for many essential details this works very well.  But for enough details? For all critical details?  Not at all actually, since people decide & act dramatically based on their opinions.
2. 20081220211234: And even in encyclopedic & factual Wikipedia, the truth is some opinions, such as a religion (which an opinion of what is philosophically & spiritually correct) are so widely held or influential that Wikipedia must write about it.  But then generally only when an opinion has grown so big that people have assigned a common name to it (as the title of a religion or a philosophy).
1. 20081220211531: But that doesn't handle:
1. 20081220211700: the vast majority of opinions, including the many leading opinions and thoughts, sometimes held by millions but which no one has yet assigned a name to (as the name for the latest fashion trend which many people clear see), and indeed the name itself would be matter of opinion!,
   
2. 20081220211714: and by the million+ times greater number of opinions (as seemingly millions held by every living human) which control what they do in every aspect of their life, even though they may never have spoken their opinion (such as a racial preference) nor frequently may not even be consciously aware of it.
3. 20081220212432: so the truth is thinking of "Opinions don't belong here" (or "Only if the opinion has an agreed name") will cut out over 99% of the information really out there there and really controlling our lives.  So rather
   
4. 20081220213850: we need to devise ways to organize & present opinion, most especially in a wiki which has maximal fine-grained collaboration (potentially everyone writes everything).

20081220214336: Converting opinions into all facts

1. 20081220215301: a proven (and arguably great) model this is the way America (the world's oldest democracy) conducts public voting. 
   Each state: 
   
1. 20081220220430: presenting to all:
1. 20081220215554: The key question.
   
1. 20081220215608: The possible answers.  Including for each:
   
2. 20081220215626: Further definition.
   
3. 20081220215825: Pretty much uncontested consequences (as certain financial consequences)
4. 20081220220005: leading arguments for and against it (but point-by-point)
5. 20081220220152: rebuttal to each of these arguments.
2. 20081220220307: for each voter, collects his her answer
   (which is always hidden, though a more advanced system might share data; and it also should now be done via the web!)
   
3. 20081220220545: averaging the responses
   (which, in a more advanced system, might be weighted)
2. 20081220220759: As an example of where I strongly attempt to do this, see domain names per org.
   
3. 20081220215443: At least initially, this makes things dramatically & upsettingly more verbose than just saying "Do x" or "x is Good". 
   
1. 20081220221539: to fix that:
1. 20081220221858: Follow the topic question by the thus-far agreed answer, with the answer a hyperlink to where it comes from.
1. 20081220222020: As an example of see the title[Motivation: high!] above.
2. 20081220222529: Provide software to compute and splice in the latest summary.
1. 20081220222633: The simplest example of this would be software which would insure a reference to something referred to it by its official name (as generally it's latest name).
1. 20081220222814: Most SQL database applications have this, since they typically (correctly) internally refer any entity by a number so display it's name, so have to do this in results as the numbers would be generally meaningless to all but this internal database.
2. 20081220223322: A much more advanced example would be to compute and display inline (within one line) a snippet of the referenced text, or maybe even a weighted average summary, and NOT require a programmer to implement it.
3. 20081220223110: Sadly most blogging & wiki software (I've seen) don't do any of this
1. 20081220223211: websites which support a macro language (as JavaScript) might be fixable at least somewhat.
   
4. To be continued.