Thread: The Collectivizer - the ultimate online directory

I've just got an idea for another project - far more realistic then my last though, about The World Simulation Project. That one would take 10 years to fully realize - this one, only a week. The Collectivizer. A free online database program, that allows users to enter all their personal information, weight, skin color, eye-color, traits, education level, name/address, etc, or as much as they want, and that stores that information in a central repository for anyone to use.

What's the use of this? This is practically useless you say. Not true. There are infinitely many good possibilities for such a program. You can search your city for people - or just collect demographics about it. How many red-heads living in this city for instance? Oh this many - where do they live? Here. How many people live in Berlin, Germany? Etc. Voluntary contribution. Any suggestions? I'm planning on starting work on this soon, and can have it up and running within a week.

I was involved in a similar project in Second Life. I say similar. It was the same concept but a database about the avatars rather than people. Here are my thoughts on the idea:

that allows users to enter all their personal information, weight, skin color, eye-color, traits, education level, name/address, etc, or as much as they want, and that stores that information in a central repository for anyone to use.

How many people have signed up to display their private information in a public database? Our studies showed less than 10% of people were willing to have their avatar information collected for this database. Remember this was non-personal facts about the avatar itself and in no way could identify a real life person.*

- this one, only a week.

If you think you can organize a global plan in a week, you are the man. It took weeks to gather a sample set of avatar data from the digital world.

What's the use of this? This is practically useless you say. Not true. There are infinitely many good possibilities for such a program.

...and infinitely many bad ones.

Voluntary contribution.

This is a key problem. This means the data is incomplete, and therefore inaccurate. You could only see how many red-headed volunteers lived in the city.

Any suggestions?

Don't invest anything you are not willing to lose in this project?



*With some work and a hole in security in 2008 it may be possible to link real people to avatars who were registered users at the time of the security breach.