The Vision

Bring ideas together … research, debate, understand, stir curiosity, become friends … draw people to our Creator and each other … build evidence, pursue truth, grow knowledge, develop wisdom, appreciate.

The Mission

Create networks of people in local communities and across world cultures to come together, solve problems, and enjoy each other's company.
Provide tools for debate, instruction, problem-solving, entertaining interactions, etc.
Provide counseling and references with both practical solutions and proposals of possible solutions. The counseling might be for personal finances, family issues, career development, people interaction, health issues, dependency issues, educational challenges, etc. We’d bring together experts and lay people to provide actual examples and anecdotes of solutions that worked for individuals.
Find solutions to complex conundrums.
Publish.
Build websites and brick-and-mortar sites (coffee shops?) where people from multiple cultures and regions can engage socially, collaborate, and share backgrounds and ideas.

Features

Knowledge Repository

This will become a live, continually updated set of databases with information that can be used by debate teams, journalists, policymakers, etc. It will be a little like Wikipedia but more research-oriented.

The Idea Heap

Quick Notes (personal thoughts)

Write down short ideas as thoughts come.

Note Cards (notes from websites, books, periodicals, videos)

Build a note card system with bibliographic references to gather information from websites, books, magazines, videos, etc.

Articles, Essays, Blogs

Enable project members to compile information across Quick Links, Quick Notes, Lists, Comparisons, and Formulas using keywords and hashtags.

Comparisons

Keep notes on contrasts, differentiation, juxtapositions, paradoxes, correlations, similarities, and differences.

Lists

We will allow the development of lists. They will have similar features as mentioned for the outlines below, plus each list could become part of an outline itself.

Outlines

First approach: Start with an outline, then drag-and-drop quick links, note cards, quick notes, comparisons, and lists to be attached to the outline topics and subtopics. An author can build a rough draft of a full-fledged article with in-depth thoughts and evidence.

Second approach: Allow an assortment of titles from quick links, note cards, quick notes, comparisons, and lists to be imported and dragged around to create an outline.

Formulas

Include tools that enable standard notation of fractions, summations, integrals, chemical equations, etc. This will enable discussions on technical topics.

Hashtags/Keywords

Enable project members to gather research across each other’s Quick Links, Quick Notes, Lists, Comparisons, and Formulas through keywords or commonly accepted hashtags.

Search

Enable project members to search content across Quick Links, Quick Notes, Lists, Comparisons, Formulas, Articles, Blogs, etc.

Collaboration

Essays

Write essays individually and collaboratively, enable editors to review the essays, enable publication of the essays, and allow monitored reader comments at the end of each article after publication. Examples of collaborative groups include:

Online Writing Communities: Amateur writers on platforms like Reddit, Wattpad, or forums collaborate on essays, stories, or zines.
Citizen Journalists & Bloggers: Collaborate to document events, offer commentary, or co-author posts on shared interests.
Academics & Researchers: Commonly co-author papers, literature reviews, and theoretical essays within or across disciplines.
Journalists & Editors: Collaborate on in-depth feature articles, opinion pieces, and investigative essays.
Corporate Teams (e.g., Marketing or Thought Leadership): Professionals co-write essays, reports, and blog posts for branding or strategic communication.
Educators & Curriculum Developers: Work together on essays, guides, and explanatory materials for instructional use.
Homeschooling Networks: Parents and students often work together on educational writing projects and essays.
Advocacy Groups: Work together to draft position papers, open letters, or articles promoting a cause.
Students (High School & College): Often collaborate on essays for group projects, study groups, or academic clubs.
Nonprofits & Think Tanks: Teams often draft white papers, policy briefs, and research-based essays collaboratively.

Forums

Engage on a collaborative platform where scholars, students, experts, and curious laypeople share ideas, present findings, and engage in thoughtful discussion on various topics. Its purpose is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, encourage critical thinking, and support the development and dissemination of knowledge through active participation and peer feedback.

Forum discussions (traditional)

Allow for an interactive and collaborative experience, but typically a linear series of thoughts.

Forum discussions (spiderweb)

Enable interactive discussion based on nodes where the traditional linear discussions can branch off in several directions.

Debates

The debate section of the website provides a dynamic space for structured argumentation, critical thinking, and creative expression across various formats. It includes

Oppositional debates: Teams argue both sides of a proposition in successive rounds to gain a deeper understanding of complex issues;
Collaborative debates: Participants contribute ideas to either side of the topic as they come to mind;
Multi-dimensional debates: For multiple-sided issues, these debates explore problems from multiple perspectives;
Humorous debates: Offer a lighter, comedic take on topics to entertain and provide relief from everyday stress.

Together, these formats invite users to sharpen their reasoning, challenge assumptions, and engage with others in thoughtful—and sometimes playful—exchange.

Resources

Build a list of references where ideas can be found: libraries, media, universities, government resources, business resources, church resources, other nonprofit resources, experts' contact info, etc.

Build database repositories where ideas can be stored, retrieved, and browsed.

Media

In addition to blogs, forums, and debates, we also want to enable users to produce vlogs, videos, chats, and streaming of real-time events.

Language Translation

Many members won't know English, so we must add language translation capabilities to the site.

Professions

Education

Some teachers do fantastic work teaching students. Others retard the learning process. Our effort will focus on successful processes and determine how to avoid methods that are discouraging or harmful to learning.

Music

Too often, music students, both in school and private lessons, learn to read and regurgitate music. But they still don’t know how to do music on the fly or play by ear when the teaching is done. We need to revamp our approaches to education where we fall short so we develop the creative side of music.

In other words, we need to teach students to play by ear just as we teach them to play from sheet music. If someone can sing the melody of a song they just heard, they can also play music by ear.

Examples of topics to help music students learn to play by ear include:

Intervals (Recognizing melodic and harmonic intervals; Ear training for major, minor, perfect, and diminished intervals)
Major and Minor Scales (Construction of scales; Sound of each scale degree; Relative major and minor relationships)
Chord Construction (Triads: major, minor, diminished, augmented; Seventh chords; Chord inversions)
Chord Progressions (Common progressions like I-IV-V, ii-V-I; Cadences; Harmonic function)
The Nashville Number System (Assigning numbers to chords; Transposing progressions; Hearing function over letter names)
Roman Numeral Analysis (Understanding functional harmony; Recognizing chord functions in context)
Diatonic Harmony (Chords within a key; Functional relationships between chords)
Voice Leading (Smooth movement between chords; Awareness of note motion)
Modulation and Key Changes (Common modulations; Recognizing pivot chords and tonal centers)
Chord Substitutions (Diatonic and chromatic substitutions; Secondary dominants, tritone subs)
Ear Training with Solfege (Movable Do system; Melodic dictation)
Rhythm and Meter (Internalizing time signatures and subdivisions; Rhythmic dictation and groove recognition)
Form and Structure (Recognizing song forms like AABA, verse-chorus, 12-bar blues; Predicting sections by ear)
Transcription Techniques (Learning to notate or reproduce by ear; Working from recordings)

Mathematics

Similarly, our educational systems often teach too many students to hate math and conclude they’re not “math people.” I’ve tutored a number of students in math who, at the beginning, hated it. But after filling in the holes where they didn’t “get it,” teaching it intuitively, and making an effort to build curiosity about it, they wind up loving math. They understand why it’s useful. New worlds open to them where they see things they would never have been aware of before. They discover essential and practical truths that prevented them from finding solutions before.

Ideas on how to build curiosity and creativity in students in mathematics:

Visual Representations (e.g., graphs, fractals, tessellations, geometric constructions using Desmos or GeoGebra)
Patterns and Symmetry (e.g., Fibonacci sequence, modular patterns in music, Islamic geometric design)
Puzzles and Games (e.g., Sudoku, logic puzzles, Set, Prime Climb, math-based escape rooms)
Storytelling in Problem Solving (e.g., math problems embedded in mysteries or adventures, biographies of Ramanujan or Turing)
Creative Expression through Math Art (e.g., M.C. Escher-style tessellations, mathematical mandalas, golden spirals)
Inventing Problems and Theorems (e.g., having students write their own puzzles, explore "what if" questions, write recursive computer code to discover unexpected patterns)
Open-Ended Exploration (e.g., investigating patterns in prime numbers, exploring infinite series or fractals)
Connections to Music, Architecture, and Nature (e.g., rhythm in music, golden ratio in buildings, symmetry in plants)
Collaborative Problem Solving (e.g., group math challenges, math circles, peer-led discussions)
Mathematics as a Language (e.g., using metaphors like "functions are vending machines," writing math stories or explanations)

Also, encourage students to try to disprove surprising mathematical discoveries in sociology and psychology:

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (No voting system can convert individual preferences into a collective decision while satisfying a few seemingly reasonable conditions—fairness, non-dictatorship, independence, etc.—all at once.)
Simpson's Paradox (A trend that appears in different groups of data can disappear or reverse when the groups are combined, revealing how group-level and individual-level conclusions can conflict.)
The Friendship Paradox (On average, your friends have more friends than you do—because highly connected individuals are overrepresented in people’s social circles.)
Condorcet Paradox (Voting Cycles) (Collective preferences can be cyclic—even if individual preferences are not—so group decisions may have no clear winner.)
Game Theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma (Rational individuals acting in self-interest can end up with worse outcomes than if they had cooperated, modeling conflict, trust, and betrayal in social dynamics.)
The Law of Large Numbers in Psychology (Gambler’s Fallacy) (People often mistakenly believe outcomes in random processes will “even out” in the short term, ignoring statistical independence—revealing flaws in human intuition about probability.)
Statistical Learning Theory in Behavior Prediction (Mathematical models like regression or neural networks can predict complex psychological behaviors better than human intuition, challenging assumptions about how “unique” or “irrational” people are.)
The Nash Equilibrium (In many strategic situations, people tend to settle into stable patterns of behavior where no one has anything to gain by changing their own strategy alone—even if the outcome is suboptimal for all.)
Information Cascades and Herd Behavior (People may ignore their own private information and follow the crowd, leading to fads, bubbles, and mass movements—even if initial signals were random or weak.)

Writing

Once again, we want to grow creativity in students, kids and adults alike. People find fulfillment when they learn to write well. We want to assist those who wish to develop their writing skills, whether to write books, articles, essays, opinions, or lyrics. Examples of writing composition skills include:

Sound Devices (Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Onomatopoeia, Euphony, Cacophony, Internal Rhyme, Slant Rhyme)
Verbal Rhythm & Structure (Rhythm, Meter, Rhyme Scheme, Cadence, Sentence Variety, Parallelism, Pacing)
Figurative Language & Technique (Imagery, Metaphor, Simile, Personification, Symbolism, Allegory, Hyperbole, Understatement, Irony, Allusion, Foreshadowing, Juxtaposition)
Tone & Voice (Tone, Mood, Voice, Register, Consistency of Tone)
Theme & Conceptual Development (Theme, Subtext, Motif, Narrative Arc, Philosophical Depth)
Diction & Word Choice (Word Connotation, Word Economy, Genre Matching, Audience Awareness, Formality vs. Informality vs. Colloquialism, Vivid Verbs & Precise Nouns)
Structure & Form (Paragraph Structure, Transitions, Opening/Closing Techniques, Narrative Perspective, Chronology & Time Manipulation, Genre Forms)
Clarity & Coherence (Grammar & Syntax Mastery, Cohesion, Clarity of Argument or Theme, Avoiding Ambiguity)
Creativity & Experimentation (Originality, Constraint Writing, Genre-Bending, Voice Shifting, Visual Poetics)

Secrets

Two big secrets:

Stimulating curiosity and creativity for all subjects.
Teaching collaborative skills that build each other's knowledge and understanding, expand skill sets, discover solutions, and bounce ideas back and forth off each other.

Boldpost Tools for Supplemental Education:

Databases to both retrieve and submit information and evidence for good education
Principles for sound education
References on building educational outlets
Education equipment guide
Quality online educational resources
Budgeting and financial guides
Online instruction to develop teaching skills
Forums to discuss how to improve public, private, and home-school educational systems

Journalism

Complaints about journalists have been a recurring theme throughout history, often tied to issues of bias, misinformation, sensationalism, or conflicts with those in power. Some journalists reveal truths regarding serious harm done to individuals or society. These typically are healthy. At other times, they spread falsehoods and lies, wrongly stirring up the public to harm good, helpful people. These bear the negative and, too many times, evil consequences of journalism.

We want to create a journalism environment that encourages and assists good journalism, and exposes and discourages lousy journalism.

These tools should enhance good journalism and track journalistic accuracy:

Reference system that tracks the accuracy of journalists and news outlets over time. All ideological sides could submit evidence regarding accuracy.
Reference system that tracks blatant bias that results in inaccurate news reports. An example of blatant bias would be when a reporter declares someone else's claim as being false when there are too many unknowns to determine that. But since they wish it were false to fit their narrative, they declare it false.
Databases for the public to submit, store, and retrieve information and evidence for all topics of general interest
List principles for sound journalism
References for journalists and publishers on how to grow journalistic outlets
How to develop contacts with movers and shakers for gathering news
Journalism equipment guide
Writing guides
Videography guides
Publishing guides
Budgeting and financial guides
Online instruction and links to training to develop journalistic skills
Provide news website services that journalists can license to use as their news outlets at attractive prices
Language translation services
Forums to discuss how to improve journalism

Law

Provide research regarding what makes good law and how to make law fairer and more effective:

Reference system that tracks how law has facilitated society and individuals, and how it has damaged society and individuals.
Reference system that tracks blatant bias in law throughout history.
Databases for the public to submit, store, and retrieve information and evidence for all topics regarding law
Develop systems that link the general public to legislators and their staffs to collaboratively research the best ways to solve complex problems in society
List principles for sound law
How to develop collaborative relationships with staffs of legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government
Online instruction and links to training to develop legal knowledge and insight
A publicly accessible database that monitors which issues can be effectively resolved through legal frameworks versus those that require solutions outside the legal system (distinguishing statutory laws vs. laws of the heart)
Forums to discuss how to improve legal systems

Business

Provide business tools to enable people to start new businesses:

Databases with information and references on how to build meaningful and successful businesses
Principles for sound business
References on finding assistance with building a new business
Budgeting and financial guides
Online instruction to develop business skills
Language translation services
Forums to discuss business

Social Services

Provide research regarding what makes social services effective and how to make social services fairer and more effective:

Reference system that tracks how social services have facilitated society and individuals and how they have damaged society and individuals.
Reference system that tracks blatant bias in social services throughout history.
Databases for the public to submit, store, and retrieve information and evidence for all topics regarding social services
List principles for sound practice in social services
How to develop relationships with staff of social services
Online instruction and links to training to develop social services, including getting funding, finding workers, managing finances, etc.
Database for public use that tracks what problems can be reasonably addressed through social services
Forums to discuss how to improve social service systems

Truth, Facts, Information, Knowledge, Skills, Wisdom

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.

--Clifford Stoll, astronomer

The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

----Niels Bohr, physicist

Truth: Whatever is, regardless of whether people are aware of it, can perceive it, explain it, verify it, or comprehend it
Fact: An objective statement about reality, used as a fundamental atomic element, a starting point on which later arguments, discussion and explanations rest. The element itself might break down into smaller components, but this element sufficiently represents a starting premise for the discussion at hand. It may or may not be verifiable, but it is true.
Information: Gives context to facts. It can also involve interpretation, analysis, or organization to make it meaningful. Information can be factual, but it can also include opinions, trends, or subjective perspectives.
Knowledge: The understanding, awareness, or skills that enable decision-making, problem-solving, and deeper insights.
Skills: Learned abilities to perform specific tasks proficiently, often based on underlying knowledge.
Wisdom: The ability to apply knowledge effectively in complex situations, often based on accumulated experience, to understand puzzles and purposes, to maintain fulfillment and well-being,