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[Bug-gnupedia] Ideas


From: jzeigler
Subject: [Bug-gnupedia] Ideas
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 20:21:51 -0700
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.12i

Hello,
  I was very excited by the announcement of GNUPedia, 
it is in the vein of an idea I have been kicking around
for a few years now. I have been reading this list and 
disseminating the information so as I present a few of 
my thoughts  and ideas please understand that they are 
influenced HEAVILY by what I have read in the past few
hours. 
  Let me start of with the concepts I have been kicking
around. There should be a centrally located DB of meta-
data that is used to quickly search and retrieve 
information in a common(xml) format. This meta-data 
contains, author, subject(s) Media included, format 
for special content (i.e.math, music, CAD/CAM), Title
and keywords. All of this would be decided by the 
submitter and not by any authority. Various 
'distributions' could be created from this data as 
earlier espoused in this list. 
  The actual content from a semantic point of view is 
irrelevant. The DB and format are in no way related to 
any authority of the information. They are there solely
for the purpose of finding the common format data. 
Authority's would be comprised of submitters who 
designate articles that they approve of. The main DB
would store selections of submitters that could be
used to compile encyclopedia's. 
  With this model nupedia would be the first authority 
in this project. It would also produce the VERY 
important aspect of 'neutrality' in the actually DB.
Any one could make a 'dist', but the most likely 
occurance will be coalitions (or company's) that make
a concerted effort to compile a version for a specific
audience (i.e.schools, businesses, afficianatos etc.).
  Once the DB is set up there will need to be controls
in place for deprecation, updating, and eventually 
preference rating. Is article 'foo' or 'bar on subject
'quux' preferred by readers? If a data set disappears
and x people try it to no avail, remove it from the DB.
Hey article 'quux' has been updated by the author update
its entry and inform the approvers. 
  The stated focus of the DB will be 'educational'. This
would include; how-tos, FAQs, Articles, fictional story's
ad infinitum. I would hope that at some point it would
be possible to design class sylibi and curricula with
resources from this project and those would then be added
into the DB. 
  Links and relations would be the responsibility of 
'distribution maintainers'. This would enable the DB to
be as portable and efficient as possible by removing all 
of the 'user interface' concerns. Also by not centrally
storing references you easily avoid cultural differences.
  I feel classification should be done with a 32 bit 
number broken into 4 8 bit sets. The first three sets
would be 'cardinal' subjects (i.e. science, history, 
philosophy) and the last set would be for bias. using
this each topic could be a color and its depth of color
would be decided by the bias of the article. 
  Bias is simply the human element in fact presentation. 
Fantasy story's would have the highest bias levels.
historical fiction would be middle bias and papers on 
mathematical formula would have a very low bias. 

These are just a few of my ideas on what this project MAY
be. It is by no means a statement of 'it should be this
way'. I simply throwing it out in the hope that something
useful can be gleaned from this drivel.

Closingly ,
Justin Zeigler, address@hidden
COO, Open Source Education Foundation
--

If I have a dollar and you have a dollar,
 and we trade dollars, we each still have one dollar
But, if I have an Idea and you have an Idea,
 and we trade Ideas, We each have two Ideas.



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