Monday, March 14, 2016

An updated proposed solution to misinformation

In discussions with classmates, lab colleagues, friends, professors, and others, here are some ideas for improving the solution first proposed here.
Solutions Require Collaboration

A modified proposed solution:
A new platform would be created. Features of that platform:
  • Users register with their professional names, tie in to LinkedIn, etc so that there are not anonymous accounts making comments or posting articles, and making it a little harder for special interest groups to post wrong information.
  • The credentials for users are recorded when they first register, and hobbies and passions are also included as credentials, not just official training, so that if somebody professes that they've built and flown model planes for years, you know that they know about it despite not having officially studied it in a school.
  • The platform would have similarities to academia.edu, where people could post their research for free, but a peer-review process would be added that is very public and open, allowing viewers the ability to check credentials of both poster and reviewers.
  • The platform would include a section that explains, simply, core principles that touch issues, and authors would be expected to tag their work with the core principles that feed the work. This work would also be crowd-sourced, so other users can link it to the core principles involved.
  • Each work would include a discussion forum similar to the ones for EdX classes, that allow explanations and evolution of the ideas, as well as a vetting ground for cross-references and other works.
  • The platform would also offer paid and crowd-sourced services, where the publisher (person who wrote up the research or information) or a user could pay for added accessibility on the paper/research/work, which could include:
    • Translation to a simple, entry-level version
    • Translation to a simpler, intermediate level that basically strips out the industry-specific jargon and writes in a more clear way (rather than the convoluted grammar mess that is a lot of academic papers)
    • Translation to another language
    • A definition and cross-references for the technical jargon or industry-specific key words
    • To be tagged with the appropriate core principles, though this could also easily be a part of the peer-review
    • Addition of other cross-references
    • Creation of videos, similar to the ones on one of these channels or these web sites
    • Addition of other media, video, images, etc, though this will also be crowd-sourced by people reading it
    • Mediator monitoring. Mediation will be both paid and unpaid, but the monitoring will be a paid service to somewhat regularly check in on works to make sure that the links are still valid, and that people aren't spamming by linking to many things that are very loosely connected. The date of the last mediation, and the mediator profile information, would be documented.
The point of the platform would be to increase the usability of known knowledge, and facilitate the spread and creation of new knowledge, as well as provide a powerful resource (with time) against misinformation.

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