We're trying to create something more practical to help people find scientific papers and reliable information on several subjects. In essence, there are three problems we've always had with Wikipedia and Google Scholar:
1. Finding scientific papers on what you're looking for is a pain.
2. It's quite hard to figure out what the scientific consensus (if any) on a topic is.
3. Wikipedia's deletionist policy. (See #23 at ycombinator.com/ideas.html)
Here I could explain in great detail how we'd like to achieve this, but you can get a basic idea by visiting the site below. Note that the site doesn't actually do anything, and its sole purpose was for us to structure our thoughts and figure out exactly what we wanted.
http://isharestuff.net/?page=asdf
or
http://isharestuff.net/?page=Classical%20Mechanics
(Now don't get scared because of the domain name, we're definitely going to use a different one. I happened to have this domain name lying around, so it could be used to show HN what we had in mind.)
Having said all that, our question is simple: would you agree that the three problems I mentioned are problems, and would you try out new solutions to these problems?
Much to my frustration, one of the papers I tracked down and quoted on my website is no longer available. My credibility is on shaky ground to begin with so things like this likely do my reputation enormous harm. I think it is certainly an area with room for improvement.