Video lesson on how to use this template
Principles
- Broad research. Rather than cherry-picking to prove our own ideas, the goal is to get a broader understanding on the overall topic and people’s specific submissions. It’s actually good if we disprove our ideas, because it means we’re making the quality of the overall idea more powerful. Furthermore, rather than have black/white thinking, we believe that we live in a multiple variable world, and we like understanding the nuance.
- Self-Contained. The resources should be valuable in and of itself. The reader shouldn’t have to follow a link in order to understand what something is saying. For example, let’s say there was a section on academic research. We don’t want to link to a bunch of articles and that’s it. That would require the reader having to read the whole reports and understand the citations in order to evaluate how to use the research. Instead, the person reading the document should be able to see the number of citations and overview/summary and not even need to follow the link. For example, if you’re doing research, you should leave a comment explaining why you’re linking to a URL and provide a quick summary (non-academic ideally) of what the research is about.
- Eventualism. Eventualism is an idea borrowed from Wikipedia. When an article starts on Wikipedia, it isn’t the highest quality. But the more attention the article gets, the better it becomes until it is eventually one of the best resources on that topic on the web. Our content follows the same trajectory! As we write articles on the same topics multiple times, we’ll be able to re-use research and also improve upon it.
- Easy-To-Navigate. Rather than overwhelming, the research should be easy to understand and navigate. See template format for a research brief below.
