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Comment by switch33 | Hacker News Reader

As an interesting idea; why not host a contest for summarizing wiki pages to promote growth and usage of the system? Also, I think besides your algorithmic ranking system, can't you also incorporate crowd-sourced ranking into the equation? Don't sell this business before it really grows. I really think that shortened topics with good information can be a lot more beneficial and even grow to be the new facebook or google sort of deal.

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Hi, this is a great idea and we're definitely going to give it some serious thought. If you have some experience with these kind of things, would you be interested in talking about it a little on Skype or by mail?

As another idea you can also look at how Duolingo has developed since it is mainly crowd-sourced. As for the Wikipedia summation contest I would say do it by number of tl;dr's as well as quality and have some kind of cash award for users that post the most with best quality.

I'm no expert on any of this; just a college student with a interest in a lot of things. But growth is what will make or break this as a viable service. Duolingo is successful because it is an incentive to learn another language.

The incentive to summarize something that is difficult is there; but if people are not willing to read the whole thing in the first place then they probably aren't willing to summarize it. The problem is to solve this by providing at least some form of incentive or general interest in it. That requires some key thinking.

yes you're absolutely right. We think summarizing content is useful for one person because it help sink knowledge in and really understand what one is reading. The fact that it can help thousands of people save time and browse more efficiently on the Internet is the cherry on top.

Thanks for your input!

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