Standing on the shoulders of crowds: How Yoomoot turns discussions into ever-improving information resources

Categorised in:

Problem: The same discussions repeat themselves again and again
Becausehardly anyone can be bothered to read through big, messy online discussions before adding their own post, newcomers to adiscussion frequently make points that have already been made and failto build on what has already been said. Even the original postersstruggle to retain an understanding ofthe entire convoluted discussion. Once thediscussion is over, it disappears and is forgotten about, leading toendlessly repeating cycles as the discussion resurfaces amongst peoplewho fail to build on previous discussions. To prevent this, Yoomoot makes it easy to find and update old discussions, preventing needless repetition and information-loss.

Solution 1: Editable posts and notifications of edits
Bymaking moots editable, and having a notification system which emphasizes major edits,yoomoot emphasizes the continuous improvement of existing content overthe needless creation of new content.

Solutions 2 & 3: Auto-suggestion of similar posts
To make the most of existingcontent Yoomoot will suggest similar-sounding existing postswhenever you create a new post (This feature is not yet implemented).

Solutions 4 & 5: Search and sophisticated collaborative categorization
yoomoot also makes old contenteasily discoverable via its robust search engine and via categories.Every article, question and bookmark is placed in a category. Thesecategories are collaboratively managed by all 'trusted users'. To prevent duplicatecategories (e.g. 'US', 'USA' and 'United States') Yoomoot allowscategories to be merged together (and unmerged) and for lists ofsynonyms to be created. Each category has its own history interfacewhich is specifically designed to make it easy for dedicated users toensure moots aren't inappropriately added or removed from categories. (The categorization system's full feature set is not yet implemented)

Solution 6: Connect old discussions with new discussions
Finally,yoomoot allows you to reply to a moot with someone else's pre-existantquestion. The question then exists in two discussions at once, alongwith all its answers and the replies to those answers. The samequestion will often be relevant to multiple different discussions, sowhy waste time writing it out (and all its answers) all over again?