Opasnet brochure

Scope

Opasnet brochure is an easy-to-read promotion leaflet about Opasnet. It should tell the basic idea and major functionalities of Opasnet. The target audience is anyone who hears about Opasnet for the first time and is interested in learning what it actually is and where it can be found.

Definition

It's title should be the main slogan: "Anyone can solve common problems". The title should be described in one paragraph.

It should contain the descriptions of the five main properties:

• Completely open participation.
• Systematic information structure (research questions and attempted answers).
• Everything is subject to scientific criticism.
• Formal argumentation is used to resolve disputes.
• Quantitative estimates are uploaded to a database where anyone can use them.

It should invite the reader to read more from Opasnet and contribute in other ways.

It should tell about some real assessments where the reader can contribute.

It should have a few illustrative figures.

The format of the brochure should be double-sided, colour-printed A4. It should be folded once (to size A5) or twice (height of A5, width 1/3 of the height of A4). It should also be available as a PDF file.

Result

Anyone can solve common problems

The world is packed with common problems that are waiting for solutions - global warming, urban air pollution, contaminants in drinking water and food to name a few. There are also plenty of people with a will to make an effort, but who have been lacking the means to contribute to solving these problems. Opasnet is an open workspace in the internet where anyone can bring in their knowledge and values for informing decisions and actions about common problems.

What is Opasnet?

Opasnet, short for Open Assessor's Network, is an open workspace in the internet (www.opasnet.org.) that collects, synthesizes and communicates knowledge and values for the purpose of guiding societal decision making to produce better decisions. Like Wikipedia, it builds on the power of mass collaboration. In Opasnet anyone can initiate new assessments, contribute to existing assessments, or just go and read about existing assessments on practical problems. Opasnet consists of a wiki-type web system and a database for storing big amounts of quantitative information.

Opasnet exists in the internet and is available to anyone. It has a systematic information structure supporting effective knowledge collection, synthesis and communication. The information in Opasnet is split into manageable chunk-size pieces according to specific research questions along with the attempts to provide answers to them. All pieces of information are also subject to scientific criticism, making it necessary to be able to defend and support ones contributions if contested. Formal argumentation, taking place within the Opasnet workspace itself, is used for structuring the critique and for resolving disputes about the information content.

Get involved with Opasnet!

Go and see for yourself what Opasnet looks like at http://en.opasnet.org and find more information about what Opasnet is and how it works. There is also more information on how one can participate by either reading Opasnet content, commenting Opasnet content, participating in polls, creating or editing variables, assessments or studies, providing data to the Opasnet base, peer-reviewing Opasnet content, or moderating parts of Opasnet.

There are several interesting on-going assessments where contributions by anyone interested are welcome.