

Ask YC: Review my idea - Online book discussion - ssanders82

I'm reading Taleb's "The Black Swan" right now and, while it makes some amazing points, there are important sentences in the book that leapt out at me as being grossly oversimplified or non-rigorous (don't know if that's a word but it makes my point). I'd like to discuss/ask someone about them but nobody I know is reading the book currently.<p>Here's my idea, (which actually would NOT work for copyrighted works such as "Swan" but could be implemented as an addon to the Gutenberg project for public domain books) - create a discussion site in a 2 column layout, where the book text is on the left and user-added notes are on the right. Notes are editable by anyone, Wikipedia-style. I particularly think this would be useful for older works as by Shakespeare to decode some of the old terminology.<p>The notes would be the equivalent of author-added asterisks or footnotes, and could encompass explanatory text, interesting historical references, links to other sections of the book, or could link to a "discussion" thread for the book section.<p>In a physics textbook, alternate examples could be given. In a poem, hidden or dual meanings of a word could be explained. You get my drift.<p>I feel the Gutenberg project is filled with enough important works to stimulate interest in discussion, and this would perhaps make reading the classics a little easier. (Have you ever tried to read Ulysses?) I know there are dead-tree explanatory texts of each of these works but there's no chance for a dialogue - you can't ask the reviewer for clarification or raise points of your own.<p>Thoughts?
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javery
What's the plan for making money?

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ssanders82
None

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byoung2
Maybe you could let people or companies sponsor their favorite lines or
paragraphs?

