/r/BigProjects
Reddit project to analyze the impact of driverless cars in major American cities. Please join by subscribing to /r/Driverless and participating in the official threads that are listed in our plan!
BigProjects is an incubator for supporting reddit projects that require groups and a platform for development. The constructive users of this community are united by their determination and creativity, and we can help each other with the lessons we learn. Launch a project here or link to projects from elsewhere. Common project examples from other subreddits:
Use this subreddit as a headquarters for your project where you can be surrounded by other constructive people, or as a place for quick recruiting and advice. The following post types are encouraged:
How can we help?
Petitions
Go ahead and post petitions for now but we will have an ongoing discussion about whether to allow those here.
/r/BigProjects
We're working on something big. We are selecting group of individuals of about 100 or so online people and having them submit 5 items of their choosing into a digital, online time capsule. Which will not be opened until May 1, 2030. This project is called the EDEN404 project. We have many people on board but lack promotion. But we're getting there.
An alternative to petitioning, conditional pledging lets people unite via social media to take direct action for themselves.
The condition is n other people make the same pledge as you. The group is automatically notified to act when the threshold number n is hit, with no obligation to act if not hit.
For example…
How things are:
Bank Z’s immoral practices cause public outrage but its customers don’t switch banks; relevant sentiments including, “Why bother? What difference would it make anyway?” A united minority lords over a disunited majority. There’s little or no justice and Bank Z’s competitors may be incentivised to act like Bank Z.
How things might be:
You join (if not initiate) a pledge to leave Bank Z on the condition 100,000 other people pledge the same. The threshold number of 100,000 is hit: the pledgers are notified and take direct action; Bank Z loses a substantial amount of money to its competitors. Alternatively the threshold number isn’t hit, suggesting the sentiment of the pledgers was never representative of a large enough number to make much difference originally; individual or other action may of course still be taken as always.
Generally…
Conditional pledging can most obviously be realised through social media, where pledges are organised with hashtags and account users join pledges and receive notifications online. Users can also initiate pledges, which take the same structure: If n other people join me, I will […]
Pledges might comprise taking direct action against global warming, poverty, hunger, etc. through collectively consuming responsibly, boycotting the products of morally corrupt companies, fundraising, etc.
In the right embodiment, conditional pledging might even empower otherwise relatively helpless individuals to unite and overthrow warlords or dictators; also providing thereafter a safety net for democracy.
Thank you for reading about my idea and I hope you can help promote or make conditional pledging a reality.
Power to the people!
The basic idea is to use the mainstream popularity of political elections (not just in the US, but anywhere!) to promote a new way of living and working for a healthier, resilient, joyful, and thriving planet.
What I need from those who are excited about this sort of change is some time and energy and maybe a few resources such as website hosting, PR, printing (flyers/stickers/buttons?), and maybe support for me and others to do some low impact traveling while doing fun workshops and such.
Here is my plan, in detail, for anyone who's looking for a whole lot of thoughtful blather!
...
The Party: Everyone! - the 4 dimensional party that includes all life on Earth (and beyond)!
The Mission Statement: Focus all of our shared resources on efficiently and effectively serving the basic needs of individuals, of all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, ages, species, and histories, unconditionally — in the same way as a healthy, living biological body works — so that we are able to be our best possible selves as a living planetary system, and all of us individuals are most able to achieve our highest dreams for what we were naturally born to most want to create and contribute to the world.
The Platform: Prime Directive Earth
1D. Focus the efforts of local individuals and organizations on meeting the basic needs for health for individuals, at all levels, unconditionally:
Body - high quality food and water generation, storage, and recycling
Home - high quality air and warmth generation, storage, and recycling
Community - high quality electricity and communication generation, storage, and recycling
Mass Media - high quality theory and idea generation, storage, and recycling
2D. Network these organizations together to create a set of global functions that aim to serve the Material needs of all individuals, the Informational needs of all the individuals, and the logistical needs of the various organizations.
3D. Create and maintain a core circulatory system and nervous system architecture for the whole of life on Earth in all forms — animal, vegetable, mineral, and otherwise — that most effectively and efficiently allows the free flow of material and informational resources from where they are offered to where they are most useful in helping every individual on Earth (and beyond!) get what they need to be their best possible self, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and philosophically.
4D. Support the heath of the planet’s evolutionary process so that Earth herself can create offspring in whatever form seems viable, so that life on Earth can have a robust chance at expanding out into the vastness of all of space and time, bringing the best of who we all are out into the universe.
The Plan: Physical - Run an ironically serious campaign with a bottom-up approach that aims to disruptively “win” the election and entirely reverse the status quo so that we can allow democratically elected top-down authoritarian power to go extinct as gently as possible, while reclaiming the truly healthy bottom-up political power which allows every single individual human to be officially, legally free to speak up for, and work towards, their own most creative dreams and ideals for themselves and their planet.
The Presidential Write In Candidate: “Everyone” — A vote for Everyone is really a vote for you!
Emotional - Using enjoyable and intriguing multimedia stories for all kinds of different audiences, create a peer-2-peer movement that evolves into an actual pro-social, cooperative government based on the very simple idea of using the voluntarily offered resources of the world for directly serving the increasing health and well-being of the world, as defined and assessed by those who are actually in need.
Intelletual - Spread the basic meme through the media that, whenever possible, Everyone plans to remove the money, violence, profits, and competition from politics and replace those sick behaviors with the healthy behaviors of courage, compassion, creativity, and community so that we all have the high quality resources we need to be our best possible planet.
Philosophical - Create a networked community/database where every one of us individuals has the opportunity to “vote” for the things that matter the most by sharing our own answers to the two primary questions that the world needs to know, which only we can personally answer:
Which of the ten elements of a thriving planet would I personally find most meaningful and rewarding to contribute to the world: high quality food, water, air, warmth, light, and information, and ways to recycle and reuse our bodies’ excess solids, liquids, gases, and energy?
Which of the ten basic needs — inputs of high quality food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and ways to fully express my body’s excess outputs of solids, liquids, gases, and energy — do I most need right now for me to be able to work most effectively towards my highest goals?
Hey, Just thought if I could gauge interest in a website that aims to store, make searchable and catalog all things manufactured stored as STL files in an online database.
Basically the aim of the site is an assembly\collection based viewer that people can search through for anything they might be looking for to view, download or print.
Mesh matching will also be a search feature. If you scan in a mesh you can find ones that are similar.
To explain some more here is an example:
Say you search for a motor for a Mustang, that assembly and all of it's sub and super hierarchy components come up in a viewer, you can view an assembly animation of the motor or any sub assembly just through the viewer itself.
Having this catalog of data kind of accomplishes a lot of things besides copyright infringement. :) I think it will propel the usefulness of 3D printers, provide machine learning a vast database of stuff to play with, give mars colonization all the comforts of home by making all things available through one database, give remote places access to print things that are hard to get to, and allow people to see how things work and get put together.
With the growing range of handheld 3D scanners this site can really actually happen.
I have started an HTML\MY SQL\Three.js site that is local. But I'm no programmer\designer. But if there is any interest I can try and post more about it. I am aware my explanation is probably confusing but I'll answer any questions if it piqued any interest.
The weekly project roundup is a way to keep up with projects on reddit so that you can participate when there is a good opportunity. Please be supportive. Comment below or PM the moderators if you wish to have your own project added to the list.
New Ideas
Type | Project | Location |
---|---|---|
Gaming | Creating an asteroid mission/prospecting browser game | /r/AsteroidVentures |
In Progress
Name | Description | Current Tasks |
---|---|---|
Crowd Book | Writing a book with a different user as the author for each chapter | Writing! Accepting volunteers for next chapters |
Futurist Party | Form 30-year political initiative advocating change | Launching Texas registration |
Driverless City | Present impact of driverless cars on major city | Creating Visuals |
Reddit AMAle | Create a unique Redditor-recipe for home brewed beer | Brewing the first batch using the recipe |
Meta Discussions & Notes:
Our Mission
Our goal is to make this subreddit a successful incubator supporting big projects that are taking place on reddit. We are also coming up with methods to improve the chances of success for these projects.
Our History
We got off to a good start ~10 months ago:
A lot of our work is summarized on the sidebar (like this post). We also created and spearheaded our own project, Driverless City, to serve as an example wherein we could test and perfect a system. I got into a counterproductive argument with the mods of /r/selfdrivingcars and lost focus. Our project had lots of success and enthusiasm but we stopped before the key stages.
Where are we now
I left this work behind for the last 6 months but I've regained interest and I want to get things back on track. I have proposed that the mods of /r/selfdrivingcars should take over the Driverless City project so that it has the support of the relevant community on reddit and so that I can focus on /r/BigProjects while still monitoring that project as an example. Really hoping that other users will still be interested in volunteering and helping out here! Please let me know if you want to be a mod or have any ideas.
I put together a list of senator emails so everyone one of you can contact them about your disgust over how the U.S. is treating the internet.
Also included is the FCC emails.
Alabama Jeff Sessions
Alaska Mark Begich
Arizona JeffFlake
Arkansas John Boozman
California Barbara Boxer
Colorado Mark Udall
Connecticut Richard Blumenthal
Delaware Tom Carper
Florida Bill Nelson
Georgia Johnny Isakson
(Saxby Chambliss](http://www.chambliss.senate.gov/public/index.cfm)
Hawaii Brian Schatz
Idaho Mike Crapo
Illinois Mark Kirk
Indiana Joe Donnelly
Iowa Chuck Grassley
Kansas Jerry Moran
Kentucky Rand Paul
Louisiana David Vitter
Maine King Angus
Maryland Barbara A. Mikulski
Massachusetts Ed Markey
Michigan Carl Levin
Minnesota Al Franken
Mississippi Roger Wicker
Missouri Roy Blunt
Montana Jon Tester
Nebraska Mike Johanns
Nevada Dean Heller
New Hampshire Kelly Ayotte
New Jersey Cory Booker
New Mexico Martin Heinrich
New York Charles Shumer
North Carolina Kay Hagan
North Dakota John Hoeven
Ohio Sherrod Brown
Oklahoma Tom Coburn
Oregon Ron Wyden
Pennsylvania Robet Casey
Rhode Island Jack Reed
South Carolina Lindsey Graham
South Dakota Tim Johnson
Tennessee Lamar Alexander
Corker Bob ** Texas** John Cornyn
Utah Orrin Hatch
Vermont Patrick Leahy
Virginia Tim Kaine
Washington Maria Cantwell
West Virgina Joe Manchin III
Wisconsin Tammy Baldwin
Wyoming Barrasso John
FCC people
To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail Chairman Tom Wheeler: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov Commissioner Ajit Pai: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: Mike.O'Rielly@fcc.gov
Civics2.0
Civics 2.0 is a new way of interacting with the political side of all our lives, it is essentially a series of surveys which identify the political issues you care about and your opinion of it, which is then compared to the voting record of any legislator running for any office. It will then give you a Political Compatibility Rating (PCR) of all the current politicians as well as candidates in an election.
It would also provide a political profile of candidates which identifies their truthiness (I.e. how often they have been caught lying to the media, or telling half truths or whatever), a library of all their proposals, a full list of campaign donors with amounts (when available), compare their voting record to media releases so we can know if they have a habit of saying one thing and then doing another, as well as a campaign promise keeper rating, and whatever else we the people have the right to know about our political leaders.
What’s more I think this should be done in an open source, Wikipedia like manner, so that no one person is truly able to fully control a powerful tool of political education, or receive funds for selling it to those it is watching, who will benefit from the commercial sale of the personal information and political ideology of its users. Political regulation by the people, for the people, of the people.
Why am I posting this?
This is something I really want, for everyone, in every republic, because I believe that the complete lack of accountability which politicians face for violating their duties can lead to nothing but worse and worse violations, but unfortunately don’t have the time, skills, or interest in setting it up myself, either alone or in a small group, so I hope someone on here likes the idea and can run with it!
What could an app like Civics2.0 mean?
It means that our politicians will be publicly culpable for their actions at the speed of the internet, an unprecedented political feat in human history. It would make campaign promises mean something again, and act as an unbiased screen for lies and manipulation to be caught in. It would even mean that you could go to the voting booth on Election Day, check the candidates and issues on your phone for the first time, and so long as you know what you believe, you can know exactly the candidate who will represent you the best, regardless of political affiliation, and based on actions, not just words.
Below is the collection of notes I’ve put together while thinking about this project:
Potential Functions of the Civics 2.0 Website and App:
Political Profiling
There should be two distinct types of profiles, those for the general public members of our generation, and those for professional politicians. User Political Profiles User Political Profiles should include, but not be limited to, the following: From the POV of another User
While in own Account
Professional Politician Profiles
Every profile for a Professional Politician should include, but not be limited to, the following:
NOTE: Profiles of Professional Politicians should not, in my opinion, display their political party affiliation, at least not conveniently. CIVICS2.0 should use metrics that are based on pre-displayed values-compatibility specifically because people are becoming polarized even by hearing the name of a political party. If a Republican candidate has a voting history more in line with the values of an areas local Democrats, or vise-versa, then we need to give the citizens the chance to see that without instantly being put off by the idea of voting for “The Other Side”, or they risk being tricked into voting against their interest. It will also work to level the playing field for independent candidates, by not allowing for them to be discounted as less relevant. This is not intended to assess political parties, and it is not relevant to the question of which candidate your values are most aligned with.
Data Collection
NOTE: I am writing this section with a still limited understanding of the best method of asking questions and analyzing the statistics. If something in this won’t work, or would be best served to alter, figure out how best to make it work so that we can continue the conversation on how to write politically fair, but still useful, survey questions.
Political Compatibility Rate (PCR) Data
These are the Surveys that will be used to identify their specific political views, and compare it to the voting history of politicians.
*Strongly Agree *Agree *Neutral *Disagree *Strongly Disagree
NOTE: These questions should be written in a way that the survey taker will not feel like they are taking a stance on a political issue, but making a real life decision for themselves and their loved ones. As such, questions must be written as politically neutral as is possible, foregoing popular buzzwords with specific, practical examples of the bills potential outcome.
“Flavor” Surveys
These surveys are used separately from PCR surveys. While the PCR focuses on specific and immediately practical knowledge to be the most use for voters, “Flavor” Surveys will distributed to explore the positions our generation has not yet considered.
Data Analysis and Presentation
Have a section where they may view interesting statistics and trends within our generation. This will be used to start discussion on policies we can agree upon, and also provide more immediate validity to our organization.
Forum Access
Users should be able to communicate and interact with one another on Moderator Managed, Reddit-Styled Forums, or even a link strait to a subreddit.
My Representatives
Locate and view Representatives based on the National, State, County, District, Court Circuit, and eventually city levels, and allow a simple navigation to their direct representatives and the bills on the floor currently relevant to them.
My Issues
Identify specific issues that matter to you, follow your issues political journey, and be an involved citizen by simply sending the SUPPORT or OPPOSE email
Sources which may be used to further this project, with notes:
Voting Records
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/legvotes.aspx http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php
Committee Positions
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/d_three_sections_with_teasers/committees_home.htm http://clerk.house.gov/committee_info/index.aspx
Media Releases
-Each Senator and Representative page has a Press Room/Media Section -No large databases found of Other Medias
Fact-Check Fails
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/ -It will be necessary to devise a formula to calculate a score based on their media releases
Campaign Donations and Donors
http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/disclosure_data_search.shtml http://www.followthemoney.org/ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/disclosure.php http://www.campaignfinance.org/linksstate.html -There are a number of orgs dedicated to these statistics, we must simply be diligent in checking their numbers and providing all sources, so as not to accidentally misinform our users, and lose credibility.
Criminal Records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_state_and_local_politicians_convicted_of_crimes http://www.wwco.com/~dda/criminals.php http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_US_senators_and_congressmen_are_convicted_felons -There does not appear to be a large database of politicians with criminal records, and I am having difficulty finding charges prior to having them reduced. Will probably be a very time intensive feature.
EDIT: Formatting
I just started in /r/Nearth, a new RPG sub. It will mimic those "mock-UN" debates that you may have done in middle school, but it will be more fun. Users create a country, or join one, and help decide the fate of the country by voting, if they're allowed, on legislature and resolutions. Come join in the fun!
^(Disclaimer: ^I'm ^also ^looking ^for ^citizens ^to ^join ^my ^nation, ^the ^New ^Bajurian ^Empire)
The weekly project roundup is a way to keep up with projects on reddit so that you can participate when there is a good opportunity. Please be supportive. Comment below or PM the moderators if you wish to have your own project added to the list.
New Ideas
Type | Project | Location |
---|---|---|
Collaboration | Authoring a fantasy universe and novel | /r/Fantasy |
Discussion | Starting a reddit book and video club | /r/Books |
Gaming | Writing letters to start quests and an rpg campaign | /r/Rpg |
In Progress
Name | Description | Current Tasks |
---|---|---|
Social Nextwork | New social network with anonymity and user monetization | Hiring partner |
Futurist Party | Form 30-year political initiative advocating change | Writing bills |
Driverless City | Present impact of driverless cars on major city | Forming small teams |
Hyperloop CA | Drafting a CA ballot proposition for the hyperloop | Recruiting lawyers |
Reddit Island | Buying and settling a tropical island | Defining parameters |
Big Projects | Developing a system for all future reddit projects | Developing strategies |
Testing project | ||
Book Club | Reddit's monthly group reading selections | Reading books |
Love..Time of Cholera | ||
Hunger | ||
Nucleus | Creating collaboration application to change the economy | Defining parameters |
Selecting APIs |
Meta Discussions & Notes:
The weekly project roundup is a way to keep up with projects on reddit so that you can participate when there is a good opportunity. Please be supportive. Comment below or PM the moderators if you wish to have your own project added to the list.
New Ideas
Type | Project | Location |
---|---|---|
Venture | Create social network with user-controlled privacy | /r/Bitcoin |
Social/Political | Renaming San Francisco-Oakland bridge and fighting current plans | /r/BayArea |
Social/Political | Create an ongoing dialogue with a world leader | /r/BigProjects |
Collaboration | Group attempt to solve the Lonely Runner Conjecture | /r/LonelyRunners |
Projects Under Development
Name | Description | Current Tasks |
---|---|---|
Driverless City | Present impact of driverless cars on major city | Finalizing content |
Announcing content | ||
Futurist Party | Form 30-year political initiative advocating change | Growing subreddit |
Writing bills | ||
Hyperloop CA | Drafting a CA ballot proposition for the hyperloop | Growing subreddit |
Recruiting lawyers | ||
BigProject System | Developing a system for all future reddit projects | Developing strategies |
Testing project | ||
Nucleus | Creating collaboration application to change the economy | Defining parameters |
Selecting APIs |
Meta Discussions & Notes: