Very compelling idea here, I like it. It would also be interesting to see how the media affects the general morale of a given situation.

I have really have difficulty in understanding the idea...

" I wished there were a way to measure how much hope people have for the future on various topics. "

What does it mean?

Can you give an example by a real user scenario? E.g. when i look at a climate change article..i found a fact that can be used at my debate competition..then I tag it.....then maybe i have a collections of fact about the climate change...then??

I like the idea on the face of it, but I wonder if hope is the right measure to be applying to things like information. For example, if I read an article about climate change which ignores the scientific evidence and paints a rosy picture of our future, that makes me more hopeful, but it also makes me woefully misinformed. I'd much rather tag that article as false and misleading rather than reward it as inspiring hope. Sometimes the bad news is true, and we need it even if we don't like it. In those cases, we often need it MORE than we need the good news that reinforces our hope.

I can see "hope" being a useful measure as part of a larger tag system. For example, it would be applicable to human interest stories that restored your faith in humanity. However, I don't think it's really applicable to things like science where you should really just rate based on truth and usefulness.

Hi Micco,

It has certainly occurred to me that the binary could be something other than hope/lack of hope (what is the opposite of hope?). That is just what my passion is personally, so that is what I want to focus on. I can see that focusing on other binaries opens up a whole other world of expansion possibilities. That's half the fun. But have to start somewhere, no?

On the other hand, don't think that I am interested in this to put some rosy spin on the future. Quite the opposite: as a user, my scoring of articles and facts would likely be tagged solidly in the "red". The overall point of the site is not to give hope to people. It is an expirement to project the direction the world is heading, good or bad. Assuming it actually catches on, it would create a secondary stock market. In the same way the stock market doesn't measure an economy's actual worth but it's perceived work, this would measure our collective and individual perceived hope.

One nice thing about idea is that you are linking the fact with the url it came from, so you always have the source. Perhaps one could tag other people's sources as questionable? This seems like an advanced option, one to think about for down the road.

But the fact that you are not only collecting facts but also sources means that one can point out if someone else's sources are suspect or not well-rounded.

You are not rating the articles as truthful because that is still the good/bad binary, trying to convince people whether or not the _article_ is worth reading. Instead, you are bookmarking it for your own use and tracking it as part of this larger project. Rating a page or fact does NOT add value to the page, bloggers are not trying to earn a positive rating. I can't emphasize this enough. Any rating at all gives them a trackback so bloggers should be motivated to have their pages ranked, regardless of which way it is rated.

Particularly with climate change looming, I think there are a lot of people who are grasping at straws and really scared about what the future looks like. There are others who have already made up their mind, for the good or the bad. These are the people this site would target: people who are politically engaged, asking questions, debating the issues. People who are already subscribed to every political blog they can get their hands on. It would organize and track these sites and give them this new way of measuring and tracking what they come across.

Hi Magickaito,

Have you used Stumble Upon? I think that is the easiest way to understand this idea. Your example:

I am reading an article from National Geographic. In the article it says, "In the last year the glacier Jakobshavn lost twelve cubic miles of ice." This fact makes me feel pretty grim and I decide it is the kind of fact I want to hold onto and share with others in the future. So I select the text and tag it, either using a toolbar at the top of my screen or right clicking (you would have to have downloaded and installed this browser modification). I would tag it "global warming" and "climate change." Then I would rate it negative: this fact makes me feel less hopeful about the future (Obviously the wording of that would have to be perfected, but that's the idea).

Effect: on my personal page on the hopeproject site, there would now be a link to this article, the link would be red-colored (for negative), my hopemeter score would be rated -1 negative as would the overall tag cloud for the phrases "global warming" and "climate change," and finally, the overall hope meter for all subjects would get a -1 rating.

The addition of the scores that people give to these issues, all the negatives and the positives, determines the overall score of each issue and these combined scores rate overall hope.

Does this explain how it would work? The benefits of tagging, while incredibly useful, would be secondary to the overall goal of tracking hope. You can't think of this as something everyone in the world would use. It is not a utility. In the same way that people use their bandwidth to help out NASA, people would rate stuff because they are engaged in the ongoing debate. If you want to think of it in a strictly political sense, think of it as del.icio.us for the politically obsessed.

Oops: That last line was supposed to read, "If you think of it in a strictly PRACTICAL sense." Thanks for the feedback! More criticism is certainly welcome. =)

Another dimension to tag URLs with. Good thought, but is kind of hard to imagine launching a meta-news-site around this particular angle. It makes me wonder if the dimensions for the next meta site are simply one of the possible configurations.

For example, rate this URL based on:
- Hopeeness
- Truthiness
- Interestingfulness
- Eroticness

And of course you could submit custom dimensions for other members to rank by as well.

Exactly. It could spin off in so many directions. Hope is merely the one that I am personally most interested in.

I have been struggling with the loss of hope that many people are facing with the looming environmental crisis. Every other day I hear someone say/blog "I feel so hopeless" and they think they are the only one. And other people say, "Cheer up, there's plenty of innovation and hard working going on to change these things." I am very interested in this dichotomy, and finding out where most people stand on any given day.

I think it is important to start simple with one concept and see if that takes off.

One important difference: "truthiness" and "interestingfullness" and even "eroticicness" are all measures of the quality of the webpage, which is really what Digg and StumbleUpon are already measuring. Hope-iness is a measure of your feelings, not a rating of the merits/qualities of the story.

well i think am in love with this simple sounding idea! cant you see me smiling :)

Logic dictates correct action. Actions based on feelings are usually less than good.

But hope is what keeps us going. It keeps us motivated for the next day. Is what you hope for worthy of that desire?

I think your idea is set apart enough from other sites like Digg and Stumbleupon that it could be viable. It's a new idea. Different. Integrates well within the social networking world. Typical rating systems are so boring to read unless your really investigating some particular product before a purchase.

Hope is good. Truth is good. Maybe add a rating for perceived truth. That would allow you to not only show things of hope, but also of truth. A truth meter. Seperate the garbage from the good.

What is the difference between social weather surveys on this one?

see: http://www.sws.org.ph/

Its a nonprofit social research institution. Its members, called Fellows, are social scientists in economics, political science, sociology, statistics, market research, and other fields. Find out more about the Social Weather Surveys and how SWS operates. Thank you for visiting our site. Your comments and suggestions are welcome at sws_info@sws.org.ph

The Social Indicators Perspective:
Multiple Social Concerns
Democratic Values
Social Science as Social Persuasion

The SWS Strategy: Survey-Based Social Monitoring
Socially-Relevant Research Agenda
Quot homines tot sententiae: Respect For Diversity
Insistence on Academic Excellence

Objectives of the SWS Strategy:
Education: So eyes may see social conditions
Conscientization: So hearts may feel social problems
Analysis: So minds may understand their solutions

Hi White Tulip,

Great site! These are very different ideas, though the objectives are similar. The SWS must rely on professionals (sociologists, etc) to gather data as part of research. While important, this is still a top-down approach that doesn't give Average Joe a chance to provide data, unless they happen to be chosen for a study.

The Hope Meter would allow any individual to contribute to the zeitgest whenever they happen to be surfing the internet.