This is a quick memo that outlines a few speculative thoughts on Golden - a platform that I am extremely excited about. I'm aware that most of the hard work when it comes to creating a great product is triaging, saying No, and continuous craftsmanship. These are just some thoughts that'll hopefully contribute to your perspective on the idea maze. The feedback I get from you guys will help me get a better idea of what Golden is + inform my learning as a student. You can see more of my writing, etc here. Would love to connect:

krish💥 (@krishkhubchand) | Twitter

Layering Information:

This is the general model / perception of what Golden is and it'll inform the downstream requests.

I think the most useful way to look at a Wiki is that it starts off as an experiment in pure information. The project's aim is to synthesis, contextualise, and map the world's information on a set of topics. In Golden's case, I think there are 4 sides to this experiment:

  1. The transcription of the information — The information already exists elsewhere: in books, articles, people's heads. The task here is to get a community of contributors to work towards transposing that information onto the wiki. In Golden's case there's a cool twist: You don't just rely on humans to contribute, Golden AI does a lot of the heavy lifting as well.
  2. The representation of the information — The aim for Golden is to be a map of the world's knowledge. That obviously means that it doesn't want to be the territory. It's job, then, is to synthesis and curate.
  3. The social life of the information — I'm not sure about the state of Golden AI, but until it can construct an entire wiki on its own, I think the community of readers and writers is a first-class concern for any wiki. When we look at the past wiki's that failed, whilst Wikipedia succeeded, community drove it (it's also driving its demise)..
  4. There's also a potential fourth side, regarding Golden's data querying business model. I haven't tried these features out yet, so I haven't been able to develop any thoughts there.

Fragmented Ideas That Follow:

These are the fragmented ideas / 'feature-requests' etc that follow from above.

Golden Research Plans

Most Wikis aim to be maps of knowledge, but a map is nothing without a compass / tour guide. One way to potentially improve the UX exploring a cluster would be via enabling the creation + tracking progress on your personal Golden reading list:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/a6086cf6-bbe9-4045-a58b-71ba133c74f6/Untitled.png

This could help readers better contextualise the information in the Wiki, avoid getting overwhelmed, and, I believe, increase the time spent exploring the site — thus helping with activating potential contributors (gotta be a reader before becoming a writer!).

People could also use others' reading lists, or pre-set ones, which could include outside resources as well. Some resource lists would be for beginners, others wouldn't. Users could select them, or be pointed to suitable resources, via something like Arbital's form for finding background-resource fit: