[open-economics] Setup an OSQA for Open Economics?

Thu Feb 16 23:40:52 UTC 2012

Dear List,

The Effectopedia post got me thinking about the Metametrik/KillOrCure
for econ idea we developed at the OKCon in Berlin.

I was wondering if we could get a quick implementation set up using a
tweaked OSQA?

For example, people could post a question such as "What is the impact
of openess on growth?". Each reply would simply be an answer with a
link to a paper that provides some evidence in favour or against the
case. The rating function could be simply tweaked to show the number
of papers that argue for either case (thumbs up = good for growth,
thumbs down = bad), and we could eventually easily identify research
questions that are still unresolved. Tags can be used to categorize
the questions (e.g. Macroeconomics, Trade, Microfinance etc.).

It would be very cool to set it up and start collecting a couple of
entries and see which adjustments would be required to adopt the OSQA
to our needs. Personally, I would start adding content just as a way
to summarize/review literature. The cost of setting this up would be
minimal, and the return potentially large: Ideally, I could imagine
this turning out to be the starting point for every empirical
literature review in economics (we could, of course, also link to the
datasets for people to replicate!). People could also use it as a
platform to discuss literature (since each answer - reflecting one
piece of evidence - can have sub-responses). This would certainly be
something every economist would love to have!

It is also comparably easier to implement than the original Metametrik
idea. So what do you guys think? Could we just have a quick push and
deploy an OSQA for Open Economics (@Rufus, in particular) to get this
started? Would that be something to set up for the OKFN Labs?

Guo