[WikiEN-l] Harnessing the Power of Mistakes

[Jason Ruck]

Harnessing the Power of Mistakes

By Jason Ruck



"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly
live long enough to make them all yourself."
-Sam Levenson


History books provide accounts of man's successes and failures so that we 
may learn from them to better our future. However, detailed accounts of 
geopolitical wars and ethnic disturbances are of little use when one is 
trying to renovate the kitchen or decipher the fine lines of an HMO 
application. The fact is that there is little literature written about the 
mistakes of everyday pursuits, and if there is, it is often segmented, 
outdated or incomprehensive. Inviting the internet community to detail their 
mistakes on an online open-source encyclopedia would provide an invaluable 
resource for users.

Equating this is monetary terms would be difficult but providing an example 
might help illustrate the point;

Let suppose you live in an apartment and the intercom system has 
mysteriously stopped working. You contact your body corporate and they get 
the company in to inspect. After a few  weeks you hear nothing and upon 
calling the company they tell you that your system is old and a new one 
would cost $200 per apartment. If you went onto WIKIhistory (the name I'm 
proposing) and typed in "apartments" and then clicked on intercom, you could 
read that one user found out that her next door neighbor was on holiday and 
"left the receiver off the hook". Such a simple solution would save your 
block thousands of dollars for a new system and a lot of inconvenience.

This is a specific example and I'm sure countless other examples involving 
encounters with tradesmen and choosing the right material for a job could be 
cited.

Supposing that on average each person makes 1 unique, notable mistake a week 
that's 52 mistakes a year, and within a few months 10,000 people have 
contributed to WIKIhistory. With each mistake saving an average of 5 
dollars, this conservative estimate predicts that WIKIhistory's intangible 
worth at one year to be equal to $260,000. Suppose then that In the course 
of one year each bit of advice is headed in total 5 times by users of the 
site, the savings could then be posited at $1.3 million.

Putting aside monetary considerations, WIKIhistory's worth could be 
appraised another way. 10,000 years of experience in one year.

Such centralization of wisdom coupled with the navigational simplicity of 
Wikipedia would create an extremely useful system.

Wikihistory should not be a forum where people pour out detailed advice but 
rather each a succinct paragraph  backed up by real-world cases.

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