This project began the way many do. I thought to myself “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a website that was a one-stop
shop for expert consensus on any and every topic?” Upon finding that no such site existed, coupled with the fact that I
have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, I decided to create it myself. It’s currently a work in progress
(I’m currently going back through my code and realizing I should have done many things different and more efficiently)
but I hope that, one day, it may take on an important cultural role for curious laypeople, experts wishing to become more
knowledgeable about related fields, or, my true end goal, creating a more well-informed general public and thus a more
responsive political establishment that is better aligned with the desires and wellbeing of its citizens.
The site is based on the IGM Forum, which is a site that aggregates consensus from experts in the field of economics,
but my site has loftier goals. I want to draw on expert knowledge not just in economics, but in law, medicine, political
science, philosophy, and many other fields.
I enjoy reading books on philosophy, science, and politics in my spare time, and I have listed myself as an expert in
philosophy, which is far from true. As I’ve said, this site is a work in progress and those currently on it are just
showing off what the site would look like when it’s complete and has become more well-known. It’s merely a prototype
at the moment, not an official source of information.
Features.
This site will eventually allow any user to sign up for it, but only verified experts will be able to create content on it.
Currently, anyone who signs up is able to follow a given expert, at which point they will be able to see notes
(similar to Twitter posts) from these experts on their home page. These notes may contain anything from announcements about
a new blog, debate, or poll the expert created or took part in, or they may contain links to other sites or merely a few
thoughts the expert has on a given subject.
The content each user can create are blogs, debates, and polls. Blogs are fairly straightforward; they are simply essays of any
length that a user may post. Debates are authored by a given user, with the category of the debate being set to the user’s
academic field. The user then creates the topic of the debate, provides a basic description of it, and challenges another user
on the site to the debate. If the other user accepts, each will be able to post a response to the other in turn
(you may only post one response at a time, with turns alternating between the two people engaged in the debate). A user may also
author a poll, and only users within that field may vote in the poll, and they may only vote once.
Each user who signs up may create a profile with a profile picture, a biography, and links to other sites of theirs. A user’s profile
shows which other users they’re following and who follows them. The user may choose to follow or unfollow another user from their
profile. You may also send a user a direct private message from their profile.
Where is the site going from here?
Over the next several months I will be continuously working on this website and adding a number of features to it. The first priority
is restructuring the code so it is more efficient and cleaner. After this I plan on adding a notification system, a section which
addresses current political candidates, tracks their policies, and subjects them to expert analysis, and perhaps even a section
which allows public peer-review of various politically important and/or controversial opinions in an attempt to address the constant
promotion of misinformation on the internet.
This website is written in Python using the Django framework.