I run a knowledge engine project that actively mines facts from web-based sources and third-party data dumps. It was featured on the front page of HN a while ago, and has a total of $10 in funding (from a single donation; not a typo). I have, however, put a ton of time into it, and it's something I'm very passionate about. I'm fairly confident Wikipedia can have success making initial headway on their grant objectives with $250,000.
If you had enough contributors, a sponsored "spotlight comic" feature could work. Or you could potentially offer subscriptions to a "webcomic round-up" type service, for people who want the best comics (potentially in certain categories) packaged together as a digest for them.
A couple of days ago, I shared a link to a knowledge portal demo (https://tuvalie.com/fae/?q=Albert%20Einstein). It stayed on the front page for quite a while and got a fair amount of attention, so I thought I'd show off the larger project that it's a part of. I'd be happy to talk more about it if anyone has any questions!
Thank you, DrScump. Both of these have been fixed. Users will be warned to change their security question if they're using an old, insecure question type, and no one will be able to select those questions beginning immediately. I was using a standard list of security questions, but I absolutely see the value of avoiding such info.
Thanks for the info, and again, I really do appreciate the feedback! I don't want people to have to make up their own rules for things simply because the defaults aren't sensible. For this particular project, certain UI considerations were deferred until later. I never expected this post to garner more than a handful of views, so needless to say, it was an abrupt call to action to start fixing those things once it broke 10,000+ views.
Thank you! I can honestly say that comment put a smile on my face. As far as the scroll bars go, I just didn't want to take up too much screen real estate for those individual sections. (So that people who want to spend time with them can, but those who don't can skip over them a bit quicker.) Do you think there's a better way to handle that? I'm very open to suggestions for just about anything!
I'm a big fan of the timeline, myself! I actually regularly export some of the timeline data to a TSV file for others to be able to use in their own projects. http://endlessorigins.com/ -- I'd love to know what kind of uses you can find for it!
Hey folks, I just wanted to apologize. I got an influx of several thousand views because of this post and exceeded some API usage limits, so the web and some of the image results were down for a bit. They're back up now, but if they exceed the limits again, they'll have to remain down for a bit (financial limitations :S).
Hi, gkya. The noscript element has been added. Based on some other feedback I've received here, I also reduced the font size and line width for encyclopedic information display. (It may require a hard reload to notice the difference.) Since you had a positive impression of the original design, it'd be good to hear that it hasn't changed with the update. And thanks again!
Hey, if you're willing, could you shoot me an e-mail from the address it doesn't like? You can reach me at hello @ the domain of the site. That's the first I've heard of the issue, and I'd like to make sure it gets fixed. (And thanks!)
Hey, xjay. If you do a hard reload in your browser, you should see that the encyclopedic data is now bound to a 32em width (with a smaller font size). Does that look a bit better to you?
I made a couple of small tweaks. If you have a moment and are willing to take a look, I'd love to hear your thoughts! (You may need to perform a hard reload in your browser.)
Hi, eric. I haven't touched the header yet, but after doing a hard reload in your browser, can you tell me if you like the body style more? (And thank you!)
Thanks for the kind words! You might have seen the UI after I just pushed a small improvement through (it was right around the time of your comment), so it may have been less offensive for your particular viewing! (If it doesn't change when you do a hard reload, you saw the updated version.) Hopefully that addresses some of the issues, but I agree that focusing on the core service is more important in the long run.
Hi. Thanks for the feedback. If I can help it, I don't want any advertising to touch the knowledge functions of the site. It's part of a larger project that offers subscription services and sponsorships for interest communities, so all of this is just one piece to that puzzle. Donations would be wonderful, but I don't really see getting a lot of them. If nothing else, I still love building this stuff. I've been at it for several years and my interest level hasn't diminished at all, so I have that going for me!
Hi, xjay. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'll experiment with it later on today. If you don't mind me asking, do you have a reference site I can look at that you think really shines in terms of readability?
Hi, eric. Thanks for the feedback. If you don't mind me asking, do you think it feels that way because of the color choices, spacing, order of content, or something else? The colors are tied to specific themes, which can be changed by registered users -- but I can still tweak the default theme if it would improve things.