Looking for a website where users can get together, share/critique new ideas, and volunteer to collaborate on new projects.

June 25, 2009 7:28 AM

Are there any sites out there for organizing people to work on collaborative projects or new ideas?

I can't find anything on AskMe about collaboration that doesn't involve specialized tech-related projects or collaborative office software. Am I missing something? If there's something out there on the internet that can do this I'd love to be a part of it. For example, "Write for my blog," "contribute to my map of the area," perhaps even more cerebral stuff like "critique the new political system I invented!" If there's a fun, useful wiki/crowdsourcing type space where people can get together, brainstorm, and work together, I want to find it.

I'd like to emphasize that I'm looking for something as open-ended as possible. Ubuntu Brainstorm would be a wonderful idea if it weren't limited to Ubuntu. Think that, but for the whole internet! Where is it?

(The history behind this question: This MeTa thread I posted last week ended up morphing into a discussion on the existential nature of MeFi Projects and the possibility of a collaborative space on Metafilter, but an important precondition to that discussion was whether or not sites like this already are out there on the internet. If you don't know of any other site on the internet like this but think it may be a cool idea to propose that we do it right here on MeTa, say so, but please remember that AskMe is not for talking about Metafilter.)

Apologies if this is impossibly open-ended or chatfilter.

posted by Muffpub to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I see many small startup groups using a PBWiki account -- especially among the non-technical.
posted by SirStan at 7:41 AM on June 25

Funny you say that - we actually use PBWiki to collaborate at my job.

Maybe I should clarify - I'm looking not just for collaborative tools, but an entire community where people can connect with other potential collaborators. I wasn't aware you do that on PBWiki. (Can you?)
posted by Muffpub at 7:50 AM on June 25

Recently I signed up at the website www.bulbstorm.com I'm not quite sure its exactly what you are asking for, but it may be something atleast worth looking at. I'm also not personally convinced yet that its the type of site I would actually use (at the same time, I havent put a lot of exploration into the site either)
posted by jmnugent at 8:11 AM on June 25

Sounds a lot like Google Wave would work for you.
posted by jefficator at 8:12 AM on June 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm not sure that Google Wave is exactly what Muffpub is asking for. Google Wave seems like a great tool if you already know the group of people you want to coordinate with on a pre-arranged project/idea.

It sounds to me like Muffpub is asking for a tool more like Ubuntu Brainstorm or DELL's IdeaStorm. A discussion board where people can post random ideas, and other random "helpers' from the internet can assist them refine and improve those ideas. Some kind of collaborative space organized by tags,etc.

For example, the website REDDIT has a sub-forum called "Collaborative_Hub" ( http://www.reddit.com/r/collaborative_hub/ ) that is basically a open community driven collaborative idea factory.
posted by jmnugent at 8:28 AM on June 25

There are definitely lots of communities with a collaborative bent to them, though maybe not for the sorts of things you'd like to collaborate on. What sort of project are you hoping for collaboration on? In particular I can think of stenciling, knitting, art in general, etc. Heck even this color palette website has a lot of interaction and riffing off other people's color palettes. You can also find this sort of thing among open source software people, with discussions being held on bug tracking sites. There is one website where you can suggest a bug fix, and then have people donate money or suggestions to whomever is in charge of the project, but I cannot find it.. maybe someone else has the link handy.
posted by shownomercy at 11:27 AM on June 25

Too soon, this is the site where you can suggest a bug fix and get donations.
posted by shownomercy at 11:28 AM on June 25

What about one of the communities hosted by ning.com?
posted by miles1972 at 12:42 PM on June 25