WikiName:About
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Our Mission Statement
To provide world's most complete source of all human knowledge including facts, arguments, counter-arguments, opinions and experimental hypotheses using tools for collaborative editing, indexing, ranking quality of arguments, and mind mapping of belief systems.
Our Current Status
This is a concept site. No company yet exists to implement the ideas herein. This site exists to propose, refine, and develop ideas for both collaborative and protected development of human knowledge and viewpoints.
Expanded Statement of Objectives
Facts-n-Views exists to provide a site to discover, document, index, summarize all human knowledge--and even to create new knowledge.
Much of humanity's knowledge includes incomplete facts, claims, arguments, conclusions and beliefs that are subject to debate, discussion, grading and refinement. (See for example Theories regarding the causes of human consciousness.)
Therefore the guiding purpose of Facts-n-Views is to provide new tools and policies that help to refine, test, or at least improve the presentation of every fact, view, opinion or thesis the may be a subject of interest or debate.
What makes us different, and better than, Wikipedia
It may help to see why Facts-n-Views is needed by comparing it directly to the most popular encyclopedia on the planet, Wikipedia.
In fact, this prototype of Facts-n-Views is built using the very same, open source software as Wikipedia. But our goals, policies and rules are very different.
This box is an example of how sidebar counterpoints can be inserted into any article. In the future, this box would only show three lines, with an option for the reader to open it to it's full length.
Wikipedia has policies in place specifically for the purpose of restricting controversy.* Contributing editors are encouraged to develop a "consensus" of what like-minded editors believe is most commonly accepted and reliable information, while allowing "due weight" to minority views. Sounds great. Wikipedia editors are constantly fighting over what is truly verifiable, reliable, neutral, much less how much "weight" should be given to any or all "minority views." The result is that it takes only a few of the most active editors, especially those who have been granted administrative status, to unilaterally ensure material that challenges their "consensus." This is called "wiki-lawyering" and is a process that drives away most of the people who try to edit Wikipedia.
The problem with Wikipedia is that its policies assume that editors can actually reach a "true consensus" that can fairly report what is true while keeping false viewpoints "in their place." From this perspective, it is right and just for editors to engage in endless arguments over giving more or less space to viewpoints that either confirm or challenge each individual editor's worldview. As a result, literally every article touching even remotely on a controversial issue is especially prone to "edit wars" designed to silence facts and viewpoints that challenge the "consensus" of the small group of editors who "control" the article.
Another problem with the core policies of Wikipedia is the ban on "original research." This rules blocks experts in a field from posting material based on their own expertise. FactnViews fixes this problem by creating an opportunity for experts to publish and control the presentation of their content, under their true names, while still owning the copyright to their own material, in order to obtain comments and feedback from others or simply to make their material more easily accessible to general readers.
Finally, Wikipedia takes not responsibility for its content. Responsibility for both the content, and decision making regarding what is both published and not published, is shifted to a diffuse, anonymous, and unreliably polled "community" of volunteer editors. FactsnViews is different because our staff is accountable to both the contributors and readers to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to present their material either as individuals or in a collaborative fashion. There will be public accountability for the policies and decisions made regarding published content.
A better platform for creating and debating content
By contrast, at Facts-n-Views we believe that controversies should be explored, not suppressed.
For many, perhaps most topics, different viewpoints are a most critical part of the human knowledge. Therefore, we are committed to providing a platform for all viewpoints to present the different facts, rationales and belief systems. We also want to make it easier for each faction to collaborate in presenting their position in as convincing of a fashion as each faction can muster, while also exposing their position to criticism, debate, and a public ranking of the quality of their arguments. See for example, the link for Global_warming.
The only caveat is that we want to also provide a way for competing viewpoints to interact in a healthy, constructive way, allowing readers to find, discover, explore, and even vote on the viewpoints with which they most agree or disagree.
We believe that by providing a healthy, structured way to not only record but to debate and then refine these different viewpoints, we can help to directly advance human knowledge.
These goals are achieved by having different types of pages which are governed by different rules for editing and commenting on material. There are several types of pages:
Encylopedic Pages
- Wikipedia with Comments: These are copies of Wikipedia pages with user comments, including links, attached.
- Encyclopedic pages: Whenever our users believe the Wikipedia page is inadequate, they can create a new page with the same title that offers a basic outline of the topic with a list of related articles defending, or criticizing, various views on the topic. (See, for example, Global warming.) These public domain pages are shared and collaboratively developed by our users and will be linked to the Wikipedia article and vice versa.
Original Research and Opinion Pages
- Collaborative thesis: These pages offer a defense of a specific propositional statement jointly developed by like-minded authors. The page will also show short comments and links to counterarguments on by others. The content will belong to the public domain.
- Personal thesis: For an extra charge, these pages offer original research or a defense of a specific propositional statement jointly developed by one person or a small group invited by the creator of the page to collaborate on the article. While the primary content cannot be changed by others, anyone can create limited comments including links to other articles. Also, the copyright to the content is retained by the author(s) and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without their consent.
Organizational and Ratings Pages
- Lists and Categories: collaborative or individual lists of links to articles or other lists to organize the discovery of content.
- Mind Map Pages: mind maps created by individuals showing the linkage between propositions defining a set of beliefs
- Ranking Articles: a ranking system will allow readers and editors to rank articles on multiple factors. The data from these ratings will be used to create generated page ranking and rank sorted index pages, including, for example, statistics on the propositions receiving the highest, and lowest levels, of support from readers
Administrative Pages
- Administrative: Policy and help pages
- Dispute Resolution: Resources to investigate and initiate a dispute over content or policy.
- Development Notes: These are ideas for developing and improving the site, including pricing structures.
Learn about each of these before you begin to edit.
In addition, we provide and enforce editing rules to safeguard each users contributions while also providing an appropriate space for contributors who want to offer alternative views and facts.
Your Help is Needed
Help us prioritize the development of Facts-n-Views by filling out this survey.