“I am excited at finding the incredible resource but disheartened that the important information is just sitting there untouched.”

Get out there and submit the most interesting items you’ve found thus far to Digg, Delicious, and BoingBoing! The links will spread and you can sleep a bit easier

Caleb,

First, thanks for mentioning me in your post.

Your observation is the big dilemma of the Internet.

The answer: We need editors to identify all the amazing things that reside on the Internet. Digg and others are not the answer. Why? There’s too much junk on them. Thus they become a waste of time.

YouTube is a perfect example: There’s a goldmine of video on YouTube (and other sites). However, identifying the gems is a daunting task. So, much of it will never be seen. The needle in the haystack will be hidden to the masses.

So, until a formal edited approach is used, it’s a free-for-all on the Net.

Ken: I would hardly classify community-driven index sites as a waste of time. Even respectable researchers can split their time between original research and extracting the cream of the crop from Digg-type aggregators.

No need to toss out the results of millions of man-hours of searching just because Digg is cluttered. It’s still less cluttered than the Internet itself.

Both of you made some very valid points. Diigo is my bookmarking site of choice but if the desire is to get information out there I would need to become more engaged in many communities and building relationships rather than just keeping to myself. I guess we have to practice what we preach. To be honest I am horrible at tagging my bookmarks. They make sense to me but if anyone else looked at them they would be totally lost. If the goal is to help others I would need to make it easier. Ken’s point is also very true. Being able to sort through all the garbage and clutter is becoming increasingly difficult. What things would you suggest doing to more effectively sift through the information? Dan? Anyone?

do you know about eParicipation European program ?

I suggest you to read this :

http://195.251.218.37/eP/

fred

Caleb, I think we have plenty of tools and organizations for sifting through data now. High-profile sites like the New York Times are already running blogs where their writers report on the newest trends and tools they’ve spotted online.

I really feel like Ken is hoping for a top-quality curated site that caters to his interests. If there’s not already a big-media site out there that suits his needs perhaps he could consider setting up a Google Reader feed with a few hundred good sites and then paying a virtual assistant to sift through it using his pre-determined rules and preferences.

I can’t quite get what it is that you two are hoping for in terms of a higher-quality information filter. Can you maybe describe what success would look like and then we can use that as a base for talking through our solution?

“Caleb, I think we have plenty of tools and organizations for sifting through data now.”

Ha ha, I agree. I hope I didn’t come across to the contrary. If so, I blame it on staying up too late celebrating my first my first Civic Holiday in Canada. I love finding out about new holidays that give me the day off.

No, I’m not looking for some regulation or filter dictating how people use the internet. That would take away all my fun. I enjoy the randomness of YouTube. In my spare time it is nice to sit back and see what pops up.

I was just looking for some examples of those different tools and organizations out there that help people and organizations connect. Obviously orgs like the UN need to do more than just post their information and wait for people to come…Well, what can they do and where can they go?

For individuals “Googling” isn’t the end all be all to search. Often times it is very limited… so, what can a person do? Where can he go? Are their sites that help people learn these things? When I first started doing research it was difficult. We cover all kinds of different topics and so I had to learn the ropes.

I don’t know everything. I always like to hear of new ways to make my life easier, and I know there are many other people who struggle to find important data when they need it.

So if there are some holy grail amazing tools, orgs or methods that help connect people with important info, it is always nice to learn something new.