Volunteers needed to build the Wikipedia of Personal Development Guides

[Cat Dancer]

Status as of Wednesday, March 11:

Number of guide writers: 1 (Ralph)
Number of guides written: 0

The vision: a site of Personal Development Guides, collectively written, helping people step-by-step through to the solution to their problems.

Originally Posted by Ralph

Since a while now I have a dream of an interactive software that guides people step-by-step through various techniques. Something like Windows XP help:

Do xyz. Now:

a) helped a lot
b) didn't help because abc
c) didn't help because deg

Originally Posted by Brutha

Your program might ask:
"What problem do you have?" let the user make a choice between multiple problems.
"What did you try already to solve your problem?" and store the answer in a database to give them to other people later.

That the idea of the web2.0 you... find a way to let your users build your content.

Imagine that someone has a problem, an issue that they need help with. They go to the Personal Development Guide site, and there are hundreds of guides addressing specific issues. They choose the guide that addresses their need, and the guide takes them through step-by-step asking questions and offering suggestions, leading them to a resolution of the problem.

Now imagine that this particular guide isn't extensive enough yet to address the particular situation that this person has. They can now go to a forum (such as these forums here, for example) to ask for further help. They can include a link which shows all the answers they made in the guide, saving them time (they don't have to repeat their description of their situation, and saving time for people in the forums who might help them.

Someone in the forums helps out, giving the person useful advice. The helper can then go into the Personal Development Guide site and extend the guide, adding some questions and suggestions so that it now covers the situation the person had. Now the next time someone has that problem and is in the same kind of situation, the guide can help them.

So how do we get there? Paul Graham is the expert on how to create new systems like this that have never been done before. He writes in Six Principles for Making New Things:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Six months from now creating or extending a guide is going to be easy. Just login to the Guide site and type away.

What we need now, today, to get started, are volunteers who are willing to write up some simple guides here in the forum as if the Personal Development Guide site already existed.

I'll implement the guides, as the Personal Development Guide site would once it gets built. I'll then be able to make the real Guide site, because I'll have already implemented some guides manually so I'll know what the site needs to do automatically.

Just as we're starting with a very crude version 1 of the Guide site, a guide that a volunteer posts today in the forum can be a very crude version 1 of the guide too. You can start off with asking one question and offering one suggestion, and then let other people add other questions and other suggestions to flesh out the guide.

Once the site is up and flying with plenty of guides and information, it will be obvious that it is successful and useful and cool, and lots of people will be interested in contributing. To get the site off the ground, we need to recruit some special kind of people. Not necessarily experts in personal development, but people who are excited enough by the vision to contribute before there is something to see.

[Brutha]

I wish you good luck with your project. I probably won't write a lot of guides but if you want I bit of feedback when you have written a bit of code I'm there.

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Brutha

if you want I bit of feedback when you have written a bit of code I'm there.

The most urgent need right now is the recruitment of more guide writers.

I will have a rapid development cycle, getting the first versions of the software up quickly and then iterating rapidly based on feedback. So there will be plenty of opportunity to see the system and give feedback once we get to that point.

But our dependency chain looks like this:

Guide Writers ===> Guides ===> Software to Implement Guides ===> Feedback on Software

[bellbird]

Hi, your idea is certainly noble. If you want to do it go for it! With a lot of things you might save time referring to this very site as Steve Pavlina has accomplished a lot already... (I mean this as a friendly jest.) That or set up a life coach scenario. I wish you all the best with this giant task.