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Standing on the shoulders of crowds: How Yoomoot turns discussions into ever-improving information resources
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Problem: The same discussions repeat themselves again and again
Because hardly anyone can be bothered to read through big, messy online discussions before adding their own post, newcomers to a discussion frequently make points that have already been made and fail to build on what has already been said. Even the original posters struggle to retain an understanding of the entire convoluted discussion. Once the discussion is over, it disappears and is forgotten about, leading to endlessly repeating cycles as the discussion resurfaces amongst people who 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
By making moots editable, and having a notification system which emphasizes major edits, yoomoot emphasizes the continuous improvement of existing content over the needless creation of new content.
Solutions 2 & 3: Auto-suggestion of similar posts
To make the most of existing content Yoomoot will suggest similar-sounding existing posts whenever you create a new post (This feature is not yet implemented).
Solutions 4 & 5: Search and sophisticated collaborative categorization
yoomoot also makes old content easily discoverable via its robust search engine and via categories. Every article, question and bookmark is placed in a category. These categories are collaboratively managed by all 'trusted users'. To prevent duplicate categories (e.g. 'US', 'USA' and 'United States') Yoomoot allows categories to be merged together (and unmerged) and for lists of synonyms to be created. Each category has its own history interface which is specifically designed to make it easy for dedicated users to ensure 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-existant question. The question then exists in two discussions at once, along with all its answers and the replies to those answers. The same question will often be relevant to multiple different discussions, so why waste time writing it out (and all its answers) all over again?