What language is best for my really weird idea?

There’s 3 ideas I really like that seem to do poorly alone, that I’d like to merge into the equivalent of a cyber mall. I made a basic mockup and posted it at Mockup.Lawgen.Org if anyone’s curious.

The first part I could find using media wiki, but I don’t know if I could modify code from them to work for the other parts effectively, because they’re probably just too different.

The whole thing’s built on the equivalent of a Wikipedia for solutions to problems. -Virtually all problems, from academia to activism, or languages, or areas.

But because groups sometimes need to vote on things, it would also have peer-governance features

And because it’s intended to spread itself virally by being helpful to people it should also have a time bank, and offer space in accounts to say what items or services people have or want, and if there’s anything they’d be willing to trade for, (like time credits).

It’s a weird idea that incorporates a lot of interesting challenges. Because people are gonna fight over everything constantly it also needs 2 communication tools. First people can add “layers” to posts, so for example ‘biologists’ and other experts can discuss matters and collaborate in and out of their fields without making the main page/post impossible to understand. (They keep their professional lingo to their own layers)

The second feature is the ability to drop hypertext icons into posts, next to any word you want. So people can expose myths, link to important information, and debate. The debate layout lets people rate individual arguments so people can see what concerns really matter to others, making it easier to synthesize ideas or compromise intelligently.

Can you see why I have no clue what languages to use? I want it to be an open source wiki, and we might use blockchain technology to secure the time credits.

What programming languages would you recommend? And do you know of any groups/foundations that might be interested in offering support?

These days, just about anything you can do in one language you can do in another. Don’t focus on the “what”, but the “how”. How are you going to implement it?

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I think before you dive into developing your idea you have your target audience test out your prototype—if reception is terrible (and can’t be fixed no matter what you do) or if it’s not actually a new “market” that you can create, you may want to think twice before devoting resources into it.

To be very honest, after reading your post and poking through the mock up, it’s not immediately clear what the problem you are trying to solve is—in fact, it feels like you are trying to solve too many problems at the same time and there is no focus. If you can’t communicate your ideas through any easier than this, and build a prototype that is easier to use to support it, then I don’t think you will be able to spread it “virally”.

That’s just my opinion as a “potential” user, so please take it with a grain of salt. I hope that helps. :slight_smile:

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There’s an international movement for Direct Representation that’s beginning to pop up. I’ve been talking with a lot of groups about this and they’re ready to check the idea out.

If we use crypto-currency technology to make the time credits then there’s another portion of society we could potentially get interested.

Plus it’s built on the idea of mimicking Wikipedia’s success, only instead of building a place for descriptions of things, we’re making a place for solutions to problems.

In any case I feel pretty compelled to at least see if the idea takes off. I just don’t know how to make this project appealing to programmers. Or if there’s an organization I should contact that might be able to offer help or advice.

That’s certainly an extremely important consideration, and turns out to be the primary barrier for most other projects working on these kinds of networks. “The adoption barrier”, right?

I’ve been studying where these other projects failed to garnish enough support and it seems to boil down to them not being useful until a certain threshold of other users start using them. That’s why I want to incorporate Open Source Governance software into a wiki for solutions to all problems. To build a ‘generalized’ technology that can be used to optimize anything, including itself. This way whether people just like video games, or they hate the 2 party system, they can use it and spread the network. To finally get past the adoption barrier. Does that make more sense?

I know people who already want to be using this wiki, I just haven’t met any programmers who can do the SRS and everyone’s giving me conflicting advice on what languages to use. But man,it’s been a real challenge. If any recommendations or advice come to mind, I’m all ears.

That’s because without any clear technical requirements, all you’re getting is personal opinions. The fact is that any server-side language would do the job, so it’s just a matter of finding someone to put the time into doing all of the actual work in your project. If you had started learning the first time you posted here about your idea, you would have the knowhow to do this yourself. If you had started the second time you posted here, you would be able to start the thing yourself and have a project that’s open to contributions. Third time is definitely not a charm - you’re still not getting anyone to do your work for you. However, let’s see if we can maybe take this from a vague, formless idea in your head and transform it into something you can communicate to another human being. Once the idea exists in a shape and has properties you can point to, then you can ask for more specific and useful help than “what language is best for my really weird idea”, which doesn’t make any sense at all.

Think about infomercials. Not the campy music or bad acting, but the format. They start with someone having a bad day because of some problem. Next comes a scene where someone has found COMMODITY X, which totally changes the way they clean their cat, organize their backpacks, or whatever. Only after the narrator has sold you on the usefulness of the Magic Toothpick Magnet do they ask anything from the viewer. So, try this:

  1. Describe the problem that you’re trying to solve. Make sure you can give some sensible, real-world scenario that people can relate to.
  2. Describe the ideal solution to this problem, also giving some real-world scenario where someone uses your solution to affect some positive change in their life.
  3. Describe your specific solution and explain how it fully addresses all of the obstacles in 1) and faithfully implements the demonstrated solutions in 2). Also differentiate your solution from the competition. For instance, Zendesk offers a way for users to suggest and vote on things. How is your idea different? You may need to really flesh out 1) and 2) to make your case here.

With these done, you should be able to write out a list of features that can be implemented by programmers. Understand that jargon that you’ve already attached to functionality (like “layers” or “time banks”) don’t mean anything to anyone who doesn’t live in your head, and their rationale probably won’t be clear to other people. Have a sense of project scope and be willing to delay certain features for future versions, or remove them altogether. Ideally, you’ll get started on the project yourself, or at least be able to ask for small favors like getting a Node server running, connecting a database, and displaying wiki entries.

Frankly, I don’t think your project is going to get any traction unless you buckle down to learn how to code yourself. That is, by the way, the point of this forum and the fact that you’ve created several topics here without putting in an ounce of effort towards learning reeeeeaaallly annoys me. This is not a place to beg for labor. Do not create another topic like this.

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