Scientific extension to Wikipedia

At the moment Wikipedia is the best instrument for general knowledge. I propose to extend it with a scientific knowledge and add a special tool for global scientific research acceleration.

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

Scientific extension to Wikipedia
Status of the proposal
Status	rejected
Reason	Wikiversity can probably achieve this. No other support.--GZWDer (talk) 06:02, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Technical requirements

How new technologies and scientific discoveries are made? Existing technologies solve certain industrial problems and simultaneously create new opportunities and problems and cycle (problem-> technology and knowledge combination -> solution -> new problems) repeats again. The goal of scientific extension (may be science.wikipedia.org?) resource is to gather all technological and scientific knowledge, become unified resource for scientific discussion, gather all specialists and researchers in one place and facilitate process of technological knowledge exchange and combination. Global mission of the resource is to accelerate technological progress of humanity.

Problem

1. There is no free online encyclopedia of global scientific knowledge, although modern computer systems allow that.
2. There is no efficient streamlined process of scientific knowledge exchange - magazines and conferences are "bottle necks".
3. Discoveries are made sporadically. Science is guided by unsolved problems. New technologies eventually allow solution of older problems but in turn create new problems. And cycle problems -> combination of technologies-> solution -> new problems repeats again. Combinations of existing knowledge in application to existing problems are not tracked explicitly but evaluated randomly.
4. Sole specialist or a group of researchers suddenly get necessary combination of knowledge and experiment results and they create discovery which gradually spreads among relevant professionals and scientists. Every step takes some time because usually knowledge is spread in different magazines and articles and people are spread geographically. Moreover most valuable research results often contradict general views and scientific magazines may reject such publications preventing spread of information.

Solution

1. We will create catalog of all areas of science will be added to Wikipedia (math, chemistry, physics, etc)
2. Everyone can create wiki page of type "scientific problem". And similarly - anyone can create pages with technology description or new method, or new information, related to one or many scientific problems.
3. Visual map of problems and related wiki pages will be displayed for each area of science. Relations will be inferred automatically from page hyperlinks. It will display in color number of pages revisions, page novelty, number of page views, etc. So it will act as a map for researchers in this field allowing them easily spot new changes and tendencies. Sample problem map
4. For any given problem huge 2d matrix of combinations between all wikipages in a given sci area (with new technologies, method descriptions, etc) will be shown. Each cell will be represented by wikipage and will display same statistical information - number of visitors, number of edits, last edit date, etc. For each cell people can think about application of this combination of technologies in relation to the given problem and write their thoughts to this cell. This 2D map will act as crowd-sourced guidance for this particular problem solution and will allow exploration of technology combinations in a more efficient manner. Sample 2d map of technologies
5. Later on registered people might be able to mark familiar areas of science (wiki pages) and therefore form map of their own knowledge (this map can also be visualized on the map of problems). This will allow them plan their research and education.

Educational nature

Scientific extension is important for most efficient education. Most universities tech students only old theories and knowledge and rarely touch frontiers of science where too many unknowns and contradictions. Another example - patents, students are rarely get familiar with those and there is no explicit connection between patents and educational theories. As well as no explicit connections between existing problems of any industry and available technologies.

Scientific extension will allow new level of education and knowledge management.

Relationship to other projects

Scientific extension to Wikipedia can relate to Wiki University.

Benefits

Benefits are clear:

1. Scientists and students interested in particular research topic can subscribe to specific problems and technologies changes and receive immediate notifications when those wiki pages change. The advantage here is speed and absence of intermediates like magazines and conference organizers.
2. Problem maps will allow people easily grasp structure of any given subject field and easily plan their educational and research activities.
3. Problem maps will allow to connect problems, theories, patents, companies, products, etc in one place, creating valuable synergy of different types of knowledge in easily searchable and readable format.
4. By looking into technology combination map people can easily participate in the hot discussions (wiki pages with significant visits, change rates, etc) or explore and research novel combinations of technologies (shown as white spots on a map) Therefore those combination maps will efficiently direct crowd sourcing efforts of scientific and academic community.
5. This simple system removes bottlenecks from research and education process, coordinates global scientific community and yields faster global innovation progress.

Alternative names

• Map of technologies
• Wiki science

[Open to suggestions]

Related projects/proposals

• Wikiversity

Domain names

• http://science.wikipedia.org for example

People interested

1. Wanjem (talk)