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Collaborative journal by the public

Capture arguments and further science with them
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There is presently a huge amount of energy expended in arguing various points of view over the internet. These arguments may often end in novel ideas and useful statements about the world. However they're never ever taken seriously because they lack rigor and aren't undertaken by people with the right initials after their names.

This internet forum would attempt to distill various internet arguments into a high-quality journal of science.

As people create, revise, and bicker over various topics, and statements containing links to peer- reviewed journals would be automatically be culled. A computer would be assigned the task of deciding whether the linked journal actually supported the argument.

When enough similar and high-quality statements about a particular topic were collected they would be automatically compiled into a paper and the paper published. Published papers would be prominently displayed for users to begin bickering over again.

In this way the common man can contribute meaningfully to man's knowledge of the universe in his spare time.

This is different from Wikipedia in that people wouldn't get to pick and choose and change papers. The only consideration would be whether claims are well supported.

Voice, Apr 18 2014

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       Same thing we do every day Pinky...   

       The fact that poop contains small bits of food does not improve the chances of producing food from poop.   

       The fact that internet diatribes contain references to articles by people that really do have the right initials after their names does not mean that diatribe authors have those initials, or have any greater prospects of writing things that make sense.
bungston, Apr 19 2014
  

       If this was redirected to require that an experiment be devised to test the ideas at issue before it went any further, maybe you'd be onto something. The paper and ink of the journals, or the certificates of the writer don't matter half as much as the experiments they describe.   

       In fact lots of little half-baked experiments slip through during the certification stage of your paper-producer's career that might have meant more, had the sample size been just a bit bigger. Maybe an ideas forum could help there, where consensus that an experiment is well designed, and seems to have a usefulness beyond just the securing of a certificate, is what determines whether the forum members become willing to each do their little bit to scale the experiment up sufficiency.   

       This might even work for some of the more hard-pressed journals.   

       ... But what planet am I now imagining we come from?   

       Really the chances of anyone actually Doing this are ludicrously small -- although you're welcome to come up with evidence (by experiment) that refutes this assertion.
skoomphemph, Apr 19 2014
  
      
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