Everyone, This may not be completely off-topic - true freedom depends on individuals making well informed decisions.
I have decided to start a website which will provide a sort of score card for all political parties and political individuals based on an objective and fact based criteria. Amongst other things I plan to document and permanently store all statements/decisions/actions by public figures. I feel it's needed and has the potential to provide a deterrent to political parties from relying on the fickle memories of the Indian public. Of course, everything including the source code will be either under a Free software license or in public domain. The primary goal is to make the database as comprehensive as possible while retaining objectivity and balanced opinions. I feel (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) that both these aims can be achieved by making it completely open, perhaps by ensuring that a structure of checks and balances operates automatically, pushing good opinions to the top (something like stackoverflow?). So I'm looking for ideas and collaborators on how to do all this - 1. Create a permanent data format for storage and retrieval of event details including actions and intentions of individuals and the context surrounding them. 2. An objective and automatic criteria for scoring each individual based on their history. 3. A system that enables everyone to participate easily and in a structured fashion. 4. A system of checks and balances that ensures that only the best opinions are the most visible ones, while still giving non-mainstream opinions a chance to become popular. 5. A convenient user interface that presents all the information in the easiest way possible (Natural language search anyone?). I apologise if I seem incoherent and/or generic. I don't have any idea of what such a system could look like. Infact I just came up with this "idea" after seeing all that has been happening in our "democratic" country today. We have become desensitised and forgetful, and not on purpose. I believe the situation can be improved by providing the public with enough context to make better decisions. -- Anupam _______________________________________________ Ilugd mailing list [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
