[Wikipedia-l] Proposal for new sister project to Wikipedia (Chains of Reason)

[Derrick Farnell]

This message was sent to the foundation-l mailing list about a week ago, so
apologies to those subscribed to both lists.

Hi

I've recently posted a proposal for a new sister project to Wikipedia,
Chains of Reason, at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason

The following are the crucial sections of that proposal:

"In a nutshell, Chains of Reason aims to be for reasoning what Wikipedia is
for knowledge. Of course, Wikimedia projects are solely about spreading and
promoting knowledge, but Chains of Reason is compatible with this goal
because it aims to be an encyclopedia of reasoning. That is, it aims to be a
reference for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning behind
particular beliefs - moral, political, scientific, religious, or whatever.
As explained below, Chains of Reason is *not* a forum for debating
particular beliefs. ...

Jimmy Wales once famously said about Wikipedia: 'Imagine a world in which
every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all
human knowledge. That's what we're doing.' In an interview earlier this year
he was pressed on why this was desirable, and he replied that a major cause
of most war and poverty was ignorance. Of course, another major cause is
another 'i': irrationality. It will ultimately only be through a combination
of knowledge and the application of sound reasoning that we will be able to
significantly reduce, if not cure, the world's ills, including poverty,
disease, illiteracy, injustice, conflict, and environmental damage. While
Wikipedia aims to spread knowledge, Chains of Reason aims to spread sound
reasoning. I therefore believe that Chains of Reason would make a natural
sister project to Wikipedia."

There is a demo site at http://www.chainsofreason.org

Any feedback, and perhaps even support, would be greatly appreciated -
please either reply to this message, or post on the above proposal's talk
page.

With best wishes

Derrick