The new World Discovery site

At present this site is at the planning stage. This page currently records the plans and specifications in progress. If, after reading this material, you would like to be involved in this site or have suggestions for its improvement please email me.

Aims

  1. Positive learning, tolerance raising and eye-opening experience - awareness raising, pro-tolerance of differences (exploring, enjoying and celebrating rather than ridiculing)
  2. Popular/worthy but not sensational - mass market, global audience, accessible, suitable to both children and adults
  3. Recognition of "worthy, positive, non-profit, non-bias voice"
  4. Harness interested volunteers to assist with admin/growth
  5. Able to support its own growth financially via sponsors (or possibly advertising or sponsored links)
  6. Attract official and non-official support - worthy enough to attract word of mouth, educational and great links type recommendations
  7. Low maintenance - recognition that time is limited and that it must be able to continue on a semi-auto pilot, while recognising that new third-party material needs to be approved before public release

Proposal

An evolutionary project with the following components:

  1. A "where/who/what am I?" puzzle/competition, where users can select a category (based on geographic area, historical period and difficulty) and be presented with a sequence of textual, visual (still) and sound clues as to a location/person/thing. The competition element is enhanced by rating the locations/persons/things and the clues with a degree of difficulty and keeping records of puzzles and clues accessed. Contributions invited of raw material and/or finished puzzles.
  2. A "moments" database divided into three categories: "historical moments", "travellers' tales", and "my world", with these also divided into age categories. Strong invitation to contribute own moments. Need acceptance process. Need reader rating process. Need random selection option.
  3. World prices of "standard goods". Invite contributions, show in common currencies. Need feed of exchange rates.
  4. World slang, words that mean different things in different parts of the world. Invite contributions. Need acceptance process. Need feed of country names.
  5. Questions/surveys of interest, points pro and con, with invited contributions subject to vetting process. Surveys and displayed results on key questions.
  6. Limited Links library to [1] schools etc that get involved, and [2] key reference sites for each country.
  7. World recipes - idiosyncratic and national foods/recipes.

Choice of front-end interfaces: one designed for children and the other for adults - both with light animation. Competition show format with Honour Tables, by area and age. New material contributions from users (subject to approval before being publicly accessed) via automated process. Subsidiary material to include links to relevant travel/school sites.

Use Flash for who/where/what am I? puzzles. Use SQL database for database backend to allow for heavy use. Use graphic artist for front-end layout.

Issues Outstanding

  1. Database handling of pictures and sounds
  2. Flash handling or use of templates/database sourced multimedia content
  3. Content size control - images and sound files need to be constrained to avoid both database size and download time and bandwidth blowout
  4. User data aging - data held on users (preferences, logs on puzzles and clues etc,) to be dropped after a preset period (3 months?) of non-use
  5. Multilanguage capacity - start with English only but design to allow multi-language if demand eventuates
  6. Graphic Designer/Animator needed
  7. Answer checking technique - how to check entered answer (problems of spelling errors, incorrect detail level), or how to avoid giving it away with multiple choice answers - perhaps eight choices?
  8. Marketing strategy - need to profile as schools friendly and be supported by educational and travel groups, schools to highlight their own area

Users Handling

Users at different levels with different information requirements and approval levels, proposed as follows:

Author Group Info Required Authentication/Storage Technique
Browser First name, age, & location, join date Cookie (6 mo)
Content contributor Above, last name, email addr, contrib areas, no of contrib, latest contrib date Cookie (24 mos) & Database Users table
Content approver Above, password, content approval areas, address, phone no., no of approv, latest approv date Cookie (24 mos) & Database Users, UsersAdmin & AreaControl tables
Area administrator Above, administrator areas Cookie (24 mos) & Database Users, UsersAdmin & AreaControl tables
God Above, master database & web server user ids & passwords Cookie (24 mos) & Database Users, UsersAdmin & AreaControl tables

Need to have privacy policy and statement.

Content needs to be coded as suitable for one or more broad age-relevant categories, both to target material of interest and to provide a degree of age-censorship:

Development Log

6 Dec 02

  1. Edited this page

18 Sep 02

  1. Created SQL database
  2. Specified database data tables
  3. Tested connection to database from test page