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New Collaborative Project Wants to Systematize Complex Problem Solving Online 42

Posted by timothy from the end-spam-and-I'll-be-convinced dept.
New submitter albert555 writes A new collaborative project emerged lately and its goal is pretty ambitious: solving complex problems. Anyone will look to Google or Quora for the response of a usual question that requires one single answer, but nothing exists online to solve complex problems with multiple solutions. The website uses brainstorming techniques coupled with the Problem Tree Methodology to them. In simple words: decomposing the main issue into subsequent small-ones and providing solutions to the sub-issues, the result taking form of a node tree. Users are free to provide meaningful content to the nodes (and therefore may help understand the causes of the issues) or to provide solutions to the ultimate sub-issues. Contributions are placed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. While Wikipedia proved that collective intelligence could provide quality contents able to compete with the major encyclopedias. Eris Solver intends to channel the wisdom of the crowd to find the best solutions to the most complex problems available. The idea is interesting, though so far the project does not have contributions pouring in like Wikipedia does. You can add your own questions or answers; "user contributions to Solver questions and general questions [are] licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0."
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New Collaborative Project Wants to Systematize Complex Problem Solving Online More

New Collaborative Project Wants to Systematize Complex Problem Solving Online

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  • And what about net trolls? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday January 18, 2015 @01:11AM (#48843089) Homepage Journal

    How will this work in reality since we know that net trolls are frequent and willing to insert their skewed view into the results?

    • That is an issue overcome by Wikipedia quite rapidly. One or a few trolls per hundred contributors are rapidly swamped out. Look at Slashdot. ;) My suggestion would be that the rather collaborate formally with Wikipedia, and tap their infrastructure, to get it going for real. I realize this may feel awkward and may hamper enthusiasm and funding opportunities if proposed the wrong way. Yet, it would give the idea a stronger start if they are more interested in their idea than in funding. Questions related t

  • If all you have is a hammer... (Score:3)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Sunday January 18, 2015 @01:24AM (#48843125)

    Checked the site. Seems like the answer to every problem I saw is "regulate it".

  • I wonder if this kind of effort will eventually lead to a solid theory for the P=NP problem.

  • Wikipedia "proved"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by binarstu ( 720435 ) on Sunday January 18, 2015 @01:43AM (#48843175)
    From the summary:

    While Wikipedia proved that collective intelligence could provide quality contents able to compete with the major encyclopedias...

    Wikipedia proved that "no cost and good enough most of the time" outcompetes "expensive and authoratative/reliable". I think this has a lot more to do with Wikipedia's success than the supposed quality of the contents.

    Wikipedia also wins on its huge breadth. If what you want from your encyclopedia is plot summaries of television shows and extensive biographies of those shows' fictional characters, Wikipedia is really your only choice.

    • > Authoritative/reliable

      Ha. Haha. Good one.

      If anything, it's more "Averaged opinion of a whole lot of people" > "Opinion of a small number of people"

  • Terrible Design, Doomed To Fail ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrollstonButterbeans ( 2914995 ) on Sunday January 18, 2015 @04:07AM (#48843467)
    Site requires a log-in, is difficult to navigate, doesn't look very fun or interesting.

    And has a "Copyright blah blah Consulting" remarkably visible on the page without scrolling, reminding you that unlike Wikipedia which is a non-profit, that you are contributing to someone's interest and ownership. Nothing wrong with that, but is marketing and perception fail immediately --- tone deaf.

    Regardless of the supposed license, unless you can download the database then the license is irrelevant --- and it has some nice -- "Yeah CC 4.0 for user contributed stuff" whatever that means ---and you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

    Crowd sourcing projects that succeed tend to be sincere in want to promote a common good (which may happen to be very profitable privately --- take Wikia which is the flip side of Wikipedia).

    • Crowd sourcing projects that succeed tend to be sincere in want to promote a common good (which may happen to be very profitable privately --- take Wikia which is the flip side of Wikipedia).

      There's lots of Wikis on Wikia which are Shittia (see what I did there?) than the official Wiki for whatever, but they refuse to just make those Wikis go away and they just sit around poisoning search results. If they were trying to make money by being good guys, they would do that. They aren't. They're trying to make money by shitting on the web. If some of that shit is useful to people, so much the better.

  • A new collaborative project emerged lately

    Anyone will look for google or quora to the response of a usual question that requires one single answer

    I'm guessing the submitter's first language isn't English, which I shouldn't be able to do if the editors were doing their job.

    Still, nice to see a summary that isn't a copy-and-paste of a couple of paragraphs from the linked article.

    • I'm not a native speaker either (too?). I think I can fix the second sentence
      (Anyone will look for google or quora to the response of a usual question that requires one single answer
      Anyone will look for Google or Quora for the response to a usual question that requires one single answer
      but I would probably write the sentence differently anyway)

      but what is wrong with lately in the first sentence?

      I would have written recently myself, but according to the dictionary it means the same.

      Bert

      • Lately means recent by nature, not merely recently.

      • It's a bit hard to put my finger on it, but suffice to say it just doesn't sound right to me. You would say "I've been very tired lately" but you wouldn't say "I went to Dubai lately."

        "Recently" applies to both events and situations, while "lately" really only applies to situations, particularly ones that are ongoing. To me, anyway. There are probably specific names for the different tenses, but I have no idea what they are.

      • ... look *on* Google ... for

  • so solving the comple problem will be reduced to the not less complex problem of weedign out the spam created by idiots?

  • As far as I can tell, our biggest problems are (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Sunday January 18, 2015 @08:23AM (#48844039) Journal

    political in nature. Science denial, a willingness to kill in the name of religion, etc. Can it address that type of problem?

  • This project seems to have similar ambitions to the Justify [appspot.com] project. Justify's creator has a good overview of Justify [mit.edu] and has published some thoughts about why softwear like this is important [mit.edu].

  • In simple words: decomposing the main issue into subsequent small-ones and providing solutions to the sub-issues, the result taking form of a node tree.

    The entire community is going to get stuck on one of those unsolvable graph theory problems.

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