One project that has been knocking around in my mind for many years (12+) is a news filter that is publicly filtered. By publicly filtered I mean that people are in charge of how a search yields news results, not a mathematical algorithm, not elite editors. I am sure this idea has been thought of before and the reason I think it isn’t already out there is there are powerful people in America who don’t want people to be able to consciously filter their news for themselves. So, I will probably need to hire a lawyer at some stage during this project.
The main innovation is that the program will have more than just a simple “like” way to vote on news. The facebook system is still one-dimensional even though you can choose “laugh” “cry”, etc. For this news filter you can react to a news article more than once using the following dimensions (at first)
Scales (instead of binaries) on the following: “about people vs about institutions” “Democratic vs Republican vs(?Anarchism?)etc” “asks a lot of questions of the reader or tells them statements” “How factual vs how interpretive” (and a separate discussions of the facts and the interpretations available for comment) Also just a rating of how much they liked/disliked the news article. Perhaps you could add the conventional classifications “world, local, science, etc” In addition, I’d like to have people offer and vote on other classifications. Also they can vote on news outlets and filter according to that as well, and the votes could be revealed publicly, so people actually know where most others are getting their news, or like getting news.
There will be two settings: an entry setting that allows you to vote on any news article online, and the other setting is the search setting, that allows people to search based on these votes putting in the search criteria (the same criteria that is voted upon in the entry setting).
Here is a very preliminary sketch. Depending on the amount of donations I can make this much better or hire to work on it.
This is where you come in. I am putting a donation button below, donations will let me know how much time I should devote to this project, and how easily I can argue with my wife that time should be devoted to it. I promise to do this project, and that it will remain 100% free to use. However how pretty, how streamlined, and how much time it takes to finish this project depends on the donations I receive. Thank you
click the link and type in zweihanderdawg at gmail dot com to donate to my paypal. Thank you.
cashtag:
BarnhurstNews
and the most expensive, in that it takes the largest bite out of your donation, is a gofundme:
Questions Are Power 