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Learn Anything White Paper

github.com

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Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#61

Post by gitgud »

nikivi wrote: post #56
gitgud wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about adding some kind of reputation system? To give incentive for contribution by users. A voting system could also be useful in verifying that the content is accurate/relevant to users.

A voting system is already in place. Users can upvote or downvote resources according to what they like and think is useful. Having some kind of reputation system is also a really good idea. You were thinking of having it similar to Reddit where you get `karma` for posting good resources?

Thanks for the responses (to both threads). Yes, reputation is an important factor to the success of all these platforms; Reddit, Stackoverflow, Imgur, Hacker news....

It gives a quantifiable measure of how much you're helping a community. Without it, members can't see the effects of the contributions they've made, and are probably less likely to continue contributing.

I personally believe it's an extremely small minority of people who will contribute to your website for altruistic reasons alone.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#62

Post by mcny »

nikivi wrote: post #51
mcny wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 'premium' features will simply be extra things that we will build like the mentioned `Experts` that you can get direct help from. Sounds like the 'premium' features are completely unrelated to this project. I think it will make life easier for you if you completely removed them and spun them off to a different project. (I anal btw)

I actually agree with you there. And I think this is the way we will do it. So our current ways people can support us are through donations and that is it. Is there anything else do you think we can do aside from advertisements which we want to avoid?

Thank you for keeping an open mind. I don't think people will mind static ads but it shouldn't be a priority. Once you have enough eyeballs, I think you'll be saying no to the ad offers. I think of ads as fairweather friends. If you don't have visitors, they don't even need to kick you out. You'll get a $0.00 payout every month. So, I agree with you. Avoid ads for now. I think a static ad that's basically a tracked link to a sponsor isn't a bad idea and if there's no jacascript involved and it is just a link, I doubt there will be any backlash.

I think someone like linode or digital ocean or heroku would be a good fit as an advertiser? I don't know how these things work. I do know that the money won't be free.

You can't please everyone. I'd say when in doubt, listen to your contributors and donors.

Thoughts?

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#63

Post by nileshtrivedi »

nikivi wrote: post #37
y4mi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not the parent, but wouldn't contribute on a website that a) gets its content solely from its users and b) locks features away behind a paywall especially if it's for learning. But to each his own and you cannot please everyone. Don't feel discouraged and keep going. The product looks pretty good. ( your simile with wikipedia breaks apart on the b btw, thats why nobody minds it there )

This is just an idea. As we are still not sure what the best way to support this project financially is. The other option would be to use advertisements but we feel that would actually not help with our goals of providing the best resources available as sponsored content does not necessarily mean the best. For now, the only support we get is through Patreon but that currently does not cover the costs for the servers…

So, make it a business. Don't try to be a business AND ask for voluntary contributions at the same time.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#64

Post by arbie »

aSockPuppeteer wrote: post #60

Please add pre-requisites as well to the model. For the vectors > linear algebra example: someone may need to re-learn a few techniques before diving in. Another revenue stream to consider may be https://coinhive.com/ It uses the clients computer to mine monero(crypto currency) which you can then exchange for bitcoin or anything. It is less intrusive than a banner or transaction request and a user merely needs to cli…

Adding prerequisites would make a great beginning to a universal tech tree!

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#65

Post by nileshtrivedi »

nglgzz wrote: post #31
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #29

You are asking for contributions from people and at the same time, you have plans to "monetize" the website by building premium-only features. It feels like exploitation.

I'm really sad you feel that way. Wikipedia also asks for contributions and donations, does that feel like exploitation to you? No it doesn't, cause there's a massive amount of work that goes in projects like these and there's costs too. Costs that donations don't always pay. Would you prefer a huge banner while you're browsing asking you to donate and telling you that if we don't meet a certain quota we're shutting…

When I donate to Wikipedia, I get the assurance that the work produced will be available to the public at large and not locked behind paywalls. Superficially, that's true here too. But I don't want to contribute to projects that are building walled gardens - even indirectly. I would rather contribute to others.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#66

Post by nileshtrivedi »

nglgzz wrote: post #45
echelon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Why would I offer to build someone else's castle without reward? I'll gladly contribute to something everyone owns and has rights to, but under no circumstances will I do this for complete strangers that seek to capitalize upon my efforts. I only do that in exchange for a salary.

I take it you don't use YouTube then. All their content is user generated, you get ads, they capitalize on your "efforts", and you have premium features that you can access only by paying (ie. YouTube Red).

So, if your model is like YouTube and Reddit, it's fine. Just make it clear. They didn't collect donations like Patreon when they started.

Personally, I would rather "contribute" to Wikipedia than to YouTube.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#67

Post by nileshtrivedi »

nikivi wrote: post #51
mcny wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 'premium' features will simply be extra things that we will build like the mentioned `Experts` that you can get direct help from. Sounds like the 'premium' features are completely unrelated to this project. I think it will make life easier for you if you completely removed them and spun them off to a different project. (I anal btw)

I actually agree with you there. And I think this is the way we will do it. So our current ways people can support us are through donations and that is it. Is there anything else do you think we can do aside from advertisements which we want to avoid?

I believe you're still missing the point. If you're going to create a business while controlling the underlying non-profit community, it creates a conflict of interest. You are misaligning your incentives. You stand to benefit if the non-profit website directly or indirectly drives users to your business. If "personal help/mentoring by experts" is the business, then the website is incentivized to put out confusing/contradicting content, so that users NEED expert help.

It's okay if you still want to take the same path. But it does feel like exploitation to me. I feel much better contributing to Firefox than to Chromium - for example.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#68

Post by lsc »

One side of being an adult learner is that this is self-directed. I don't know what comes before what; I want, for example, a good math education. What does a good math education involve? I don't know! I mean, one of the big things college does is that it serializes your learning. Gives it order. I kind of do the same thing when I read; one book will recommend another in an introduction; with the kindle, I'll often stop reading the first book, go buy and read the recommended book, then return (or not) to the first book. But that happens a lot more in Literature than in Mathematics books, it would seem.

I type in 'calculus' and it seems to start with calculus, rather than giving me all the prerequisites. It does have a nice list of links (most of which I've seen before, but that I've decided I need more math background to properly digest)

The prerequisites, in my experience, are super important. if you skip the prerequisites and think you understand, you are probably getting the "Malcom Gladwell" version of the subject; which in many ways is worse than nothing at all; that's how we've got so many people who have even less math knowledge than I do who think they can explain quantum physics to me. I at least know enough to know that I don't understand, I understand that shrodinger's paradox is not enough to understand what's actually going on; I mean, I know the paradox, and explaining it to me slowly saying, "You understand?" won't help. I need the math background to give the paradox meaning. You do too.

I guess the other problem here is that for basic math, Khan academy is super hard to beat. I can tell Khan "I want to learn calculus" and it will make me do all the prerequisites for calculus. I think that doing this for basic math after Khan is a little like starting a new encyclopedia after Wikipedia; I'm not saying that creating value there is impossible, but you have a hell of a competitor.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#69

Post by jyu »

nglgzz wrote: post #21
ropeladder wrote: post #19

Hey this looks really cool. Are you familiar with Metacademy? ( https://metacademy.org/ ) (previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617683 ) Looks like you are trying to do a very similar thing, although they are maybe operating on a more conceptual level. What have you used to build the site and do the layout? I'm always interested in how people are using graph-based UIs since I've been working on one…

Yeah we were partly inspired by it and the idea is similar. Although, they seem to focus on ML and Math, while we hope to cover as many topics as possible. Another difference is that we don't host any content, but just links to resources. For rendering the maps we're using React and D3. D3 is used for calculating the position of elements on the page and, React for rendering and manipulating those elements. Before we…

If you link to resources instead of hosting content on your own site, consider having a plan to deal with link rot and site policy changes.

Re: Learn Anything White Paper

#70

Post by nglgzz »

origami777 wrote: post #53
nglgzz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you don't use YouTube then. All their content is user generated, you get ads, they capitalize on your "efforts", and you have premium features that you can access only by paying (ie. YouTube Red).

As a side note, I’m not sure if you’re aware but you’re coming off very argumentative. People are trying to give you feedback and you’re arguing to change their minds. The only thing you’re succeeding at is looking like you’re no fun to work with. If you’re trying to build a community of contributors this is not a good look.

You're right. I apologize, I didn't want to come across as arrogant or defensive.
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