Crowd-Sourcing Of Theory Development

[opentheory]

Open source software development has demonstrated that unaffiliated volunteers from all over the world,  can produce projects of quality that equals or exceeds that of small(er) groups of paid professionals. The volunteer status of the contributors is only coincidental. The reason for the success of the open-source paradigm of development is that it enables an unlimited number of minds from all over the world, not necessarily affiliated beyond a common interest in the project, to work together. Ideally, everyone, paid as well as volunteer, will contribute merely because they have something to contribute. This concept should work equally as well for theory development as it does for software development.
A website attempting to pioneer this Open Theory concept is  http://www.vidainstitute.org  Anyone with a quality theory in the physical or natural sciences, or related, may submit it. All registered users can post contributions and comments.

[pgrmdave]

Open source software development has demonstrated that unaffiliated volunteers from all over the world,  can produce projects of quality that equals or exceeds that of small(er) groups of paid professionals. The volunteer status of the contributors is only coincidental. The reason for the success of the open-source paradigm of development is that it enables an unlimited number of minds from all over the world, not necessarily affiliated beyond a common interest in the project, to work together. Ideally, everyone, paid as well as volunteer, will contribute merely because they have something to contribute. This concept should work equally as well for theory development as it does for software development.

A website attempting to pioneer this Open Theory concept is  http://www.vidainstitute.org  Anyone with a quality theory in the physical or natural sciences, or related, may submit it. All registered users can post contributions and comments.

Keep in mind that the best open source software projects work not because there's a large group of people working on them but because there's a very good and small group of gatekeepers deciding what code ends up in the main branch. Open source science will work only as well as the gatekeepers.