Wikidea

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This is an archived version of this page, as edited by Mindspillage (talk | contribs) at 19:55, 28 March 2006 (Wikicities->Wikia). It may differ significantly from the current version.

Wikidea is a future extension to Wikipedia that uses Wiki technology to allow individuals to share their own ideas and theories regarding how the world works. Until now, unique insights like those found at HedWeb[1] were spread out over the internet with little reader input or collaboration between individuals. Like Wikipedia, Wikidea will serve as a large free repository of ideas, theories and works of fiction collaborated on by people from around the world.

What kind of articles will visitors be able to post, revise and edit on Wikidea?

The articles found on Wikidea can deal with a wide range of topics and can be written for a wide number of purposes. Because users aren’t limited to posting only well accepted theories and facts as in Wikipedia, Wikidea serves to encourage creative thinking and will serve in part to compile insights into how the world works, how people think, and why people do the things they do, based on anecdotal observations and personal insights. Wikidea will also serve as a repository of statistics and data that may give credence to certain viewpoints or point out key areas of waste, injustice in or abuse of the current system. Wikidea may even be used by political campaigns to get collective input and suggestions from their constituents.

Insights can simply serve to expand upon well accepted ideas, they may attempt to explain current events, or they may offer a distinctly unique or even a humorous new perspective with which to approach a topic. Users are free to post ideas for everything from new devices and innovative ways to use current technology, to ideas for television shows and other works of fiction that users can collaborate on to produce a detailed coherent plot with interesting scenarios, characters and dialogue. Users are free to post a compilation of free resources online regarding specific issues and policies that readers may add to or revise. Users are also free to post observed trends in politics and economics that offer insight into future trends, or users can share their unique life experiences, perspectives, philosophies, thought processes or insights on a political issue and can even propose their own compromise to an area of concern that other users can either expand on, or post a critique of. For example, individuals can post their specific concerns about the current drug policy or post suggestions to improve the current antidrug campaign that other readers can elaborate on or offer up criticisms of.

Why Wikidea?

While Wikidea will be used for a wide range of purposes including some that probably haven’t yet been conceived, it was primarily created to serve as a giant public policy think tank to which all individuals can contribute for the betterment of humanity. A significant portion of what drives our private sector economy is fresh new ideas. By giving private citizens and statisticians a venue through which to share their data and insights, as well as a venue to share fresh new ideas for political policies, Wikidea serves as a means through which the public sector can achieve the same increases in productivity and efficiency that the private sector continuously experiences. By giving all individuals the ability to edit and contribute to these ideas, readers are free to bring up challenges a policy may face as well as offer up suggestions as to how a policy can be improved upon or made easier to implement.

Currently, there are numerous lobbies that serve to represent specific interest groups and put forth legislative reforms that help their specific constituents. There are also various media organizations that are at least in part motivated by a desire for more ratings. Yet there are very few organizations to which policy makers can turn that serve to accommodate and accumulate the collected knowledge and concerns of all individuals. Thus Wikidea like Wikipedia, serves to empower individuals not just in public policy but in all aspects of life.

Will there be any type of copyright protection offered to individuals who submit ideas that could be used for commercial purposes?

That is an aspect of Wikidea that is still largely unexplored. Separating out the fiction aspect of Wikidea into a separate entity called Wikifiction where individuals can collaborate to create large, detailed, works of fiction and be credited for their contributions, is being considered. However, that still wouldn’t address articles dealing with ways to improve upon or new ways to utilize current technologies, products and services.

How can I contribute to Wikidea?

Please send all suggestions, questions, or concerns regarding Wikidea to vikram.vaka@gmail.com. If you wish to be added to the network of people already working on this project, please email vikram.vaka@gmail.com. You can also address any suggestions, questions, or concerns to that address as well.

For now, there are already certain active Wikis that serve some of the individual purposes of this Wiki. http://en.constitution.wikia.com/ , http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php , http://wikireason.org/ , http://novelas.wikia.com/ , http://academia.wikia.com/ .

More will be added as more projects are created.

The best way to contribute would be help make these sites popular search results whenever people search for the words "idea" or "theory" or "forum" and other relevent terms. This will be accomplished using the techniques outlined here (http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlebombs.htm).