Lots of brainstorming about how best to manage this Project. I have been researching how other think tanks operate.

Some reflections on the Wisdom Rating.
Whether or not individual post rating actually will translate into a reflection of a person’s genuine “Wisdom” depends of course upon the nature of the discussion. On an average message board posts would be rated highly for any number of reasons. For instance posts might be rated highly for their entertainment value, which certainly is not an indication of Wisdom.

So I have started to realize the best way to use the individual post rating is to use it differently based upon the purpose of each forum. Again, this could easily be modeled upon the setup of the Straight dope and other forums.

Questions of Fact (General Questions)
Questions of Opinion (IMHO)
The Lyceum (Great Debates)
Anything Goes

The people with the highest rated posts under questions of Fact will be people who at least appear to “know” the most or to ask the best questions. Therefore we could use the individual post ratings there as an indicator of “Intelligence”.

The people with the highest rated posts in the Opinion forums (small questions and big questions) will indeed be people who appear to have the most insight and genuine “Wisdom”. Therefore we could use the post ratings in those forums to generate a wisdom rating.

The open general discussion forums will have all sorts of dialogue. The post ratings in that forum will best be used to score someone as to their level of “entertainment value”.