Idea

[azekeil]

I want a website, potentially a semantic wiki, that lists things that have changed in recent history, or are about to change. Things like laws, technological advances (e.g. cloning, etc). Like Wikipedia they should be editable by the masses and referenced from a reliable source, but the idea is that they should be fairly minimal, to allow displaying in list format. The idea would be that people could view categories of these facts to catch up on changes in their area of interest. Other information that would be useful would be information on when it last changed (and perhaps a history of changes).

I find I read news sites to understand changes to facts about the reality I live in, but rather than read through all sorts of stuff I'd like to simply be able to look up the latest advances in, say, the fight against cancer.

What do people think? Would this be interesting/useful?

Update: This was inspired after I realised that there were a few additional 'dwarf planets' detected that I didn't know about..

Comments

[deluwiel.livejournal.com]

Assuming this would be categorized country by country?

The problem I can foresee is what would constitute a change.

The example of cancer treatments, they go through years of trials, research, even if the treatment works it may not even make it to being used in hospitals because of cost, which of these would constitute a 'change'? Would it relate specifically to government policy?

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

It could simply be tagged rather than strictly classified with the appropriate country, meaning if the change affected a number of countries, these would show up on searches of each individual country.

In the example you give, you'd have two separate (but possibly related) facts or reality.. (they need a name; I haven't come up with a good one yet). One would simply say that there is a cure for cancer in labs (if that's the case). The other would say that there is not a publicly available cure for cancer. Public in this case would have to be defined to clarify whether this is generally available on the NHS or only to those with deep pockets, etc.