Jude CEO and Founder of Golden here. Super excited to take this live. We are out to build the next place for canonical knowledge on the Internet. It has been a long-term mission for me to open up the knowledge coverage of billions of niche topics, companies, technologies and new concepts. Our aim is to cover in excess of 10bn topics in high detail over time. Although we all love Wikipedia, there have been various issues in the last 18 years, from constant deletion of data (product hunt was almost removed a few months back) to fact validation and automation of processes/work and UI/ease of user. We also believe there are many more features that users want, like a knowledge feed, keyboard commands, AI assisted feedback on editor contributions and tables that can automatically update. We have set out to: 1. Cover all topics that exist over time rather than just ‘notable’ topics. 2. Go into greater depth around a topic, from its timeline to videos and other useful resources surrounding the topic (eg learning videos, further reading, blog posts, Q&A, podcasts etc). 3. Support a larger population of people trying to learn about topics. 4. Make knowledge more accessible, richer and fun to read about. 5. Allow you to track topics of interest and be updated when new information is available on the subject. 6. Save time making the knowledge in the first place by using design, UI and AI to aid construction of the information. Especially by automating repetitive tasks and bring smart editor features. Initially we have kicked off with various areas from ‘cell and plant based meat’ to synthetic biology to cryptocurrency consensus mechanisms to artificial intelligence, microbiome, stem cell technology and startup topics. We expect these areas to increase in scope over time covering space, medical food, clean technology, robotics and many more exciting fields. We are still early on our journey to delivering our vision and very much looking forward to product feedback and help with building up the content. Our team is hard at work making the product easier to use, we are up for taking every flow to its simplest form and removing every bug. If there is a feature you have been dying for on Wikipedia but could not get it, please also let us know. We look forward to seeing you in our community and covering topics especially under represented elsewhere. You can find out more about what are making in this blog post here: https://golden.com/blog/introduc...

This is one of the more ambitious startups I've come across. Wikipedia is an amazing resource with deep defensibility. What's been the biggest learning or surprise so far, @judegomila?

Not sure why would anyone come up with one more idea for one more way of organizing knowledge that isn't intuitive, or needed for that matter. Humans have already shown that all they need is a clean & simple search engine, not a busy cluster of things to navigate through. It actually reminds me the old AOL and Yahoo, which couldn't succeed for variety of reasons, and aren't used anymore.

Pros:

Organized knowledge

Cons:

Busy, gadgety, gimmicky, unclear, "unfree", unintuitive, unnecessary.

Wikipedia is a non-profit which has democratized knowledge for millions of people - why would you want to compete with that?

As long as a service like this is run by for-profit .com I have no interest in leaving Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. They have been an invaluable source of knowledge for the better part of my life, and I know where my donations are going and what they support. I think the pitch behind Golden is making mountains out of molehills when regarding the current Wikipedia UX or lack of features, and while I wish you luck and success, I do not see myself using Golden for the aforementioned reasons.

The Golden team is grappling with all the right questions. Wikipedia covers 6 million articles, there's entire industries that are missing, how to go about that in the right way, how to balance AI and human contributions. Excited to continue using Golden as a user and contributor.

Pros:

- Golden's AI-assisted editor makes contributing easy - Deep coverage of synthetic biology - Golden team gets the knowledge industry

Cons:

- AI-assisted editor is still being built out. However the team is super responsive to feedback, both in my own experience and others online

1. The reviews all look like shills (friends of the founders). Golden basically has little to no content compares to wikipedia. (Tried a few topics, all have no articles). I don't understand how you are getting such glowing reviews on product hunt 2. This is ambitious. How are you going to make sure that this is going to turn out differently from Microsoft Encarta. Why would millions of contributors contribute to you and help you make money? 3. You have very little content. How do you plan to bootstrap your content? Do you plan to focus on a particular set of topics first? I randomly tried a couple of things, no articles: https://golden.com/wiki/Depth-fi... https://golden.com/wiki/Maximum_... https://golden.com/wiki/Ordinary... 4. I don't understand why everyone is so hyped about your UI. Sure, it looks fancier and maybe it's better for getting those VC dollars. This is pretty slow considering how little you are doing. Wikipedia is extremely fast and loads fast in basically every browser. The UI is also definitely not more usable than Wikipedia, let's compare the 2 https://golden.com/wiki/Ethereum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et... The golden UI is prettier at a glance, maybe. But the wikipedia UI is just more functional. The font color of golden is softer and has less contrast. the lack of divider makes it harder to realize that you are going across sections

I have only 1 question...will it be better than Google? :)

Super interesting product! Question- wikipedia is written by 90%+ men. What are you going to do to ensure diversity on your site?

I've been a user of Golden since August 2017 and have contributed towards hundreds of topics.

As someone who's previously TRIED to spend time contributing to Wikipedia, I can say that they really make it hard for a layman user. The editor is confusing and can require you to use "Wikitext" markup language to achieve what you want, I also ran into bureaucracy in the way of random rules and politics, all whilst just trying to be helfpul. I'd spend hours writing a topic on Wikipedia only to have it deleted for some random reason that I didn't fully understand. Golden addresses a lot of these concerns, it's a purely WYSIWYG editing interface with no coding needed; I was also able to submit content without much by way of random rules. That said, I did find the difference between "clusters", "topics" and "categories" to be confusing - I still don't think that I fully get that part.

The AI editor is pretty raw in terms of its functionality, but it's clear to see its early promise - it can pull in content from other websites and format it all for you etc. very cool and saves a huge amoutn of time.

As a user of the site right since its very early inception, I have sometimes come across bugs (e.g. posts getting lost in my drafts folder), but the team has addressed these very fast when I've reached out, many times within a few hours.

I look forward to continue contributing to Golden, I find it very fun in a way that I had wished Wikipedia would be when I first started trying to contribute there.

Pros:

+ Don't need to deal with bureaucratic rules/politics like on Wikipedia + I like the easy to use editor + AI editor has early promise

Cons:

- I don't understand how the leader-board algorithm works - Some bugs - Some parts of the site are confusing

I have not used this resource yet, but intend to in the future. As a student, a website such as this would be a great resource, which I, as well as many other students, will benefit greatly from. In interviews founder, Jude Gomila has boasted its accessibility and easy access to resources and websites cited and used in each page. If done correctly, the set up of the website could easily make finding the useful information that you’re after, easier than in Wikipedia. As a student, it also makes citing any sites or resources in any of my works much easier and smoother. As well as the accessibility, Jude also explains the excellent use of AI which will feature in Golden, used to prevent people from creating fake or alternate accounts and adding fake information, or removing useful information, effectively making it more difficult for trolls to sabotage any information, making this a more reliable source of information as you would not have to worry about whether what you’re reading is correct, or edited by someone who’s wanted to add false info. The AIs don’t just prevent any of this from happening, as there will always be a few people who will succeed in trolling. The bots used will also detect any biased or false information, in the situation that any fake information is added, it will be made known so that people can fix it. I feel that this will become an excellent alternative to Wikipedia and do look forward to using it in the future!

Pros:

I feel the two greatest advantages this website will have over Wikipedia are the accessibility, and reliability.

Cons:

None

I've been contributing to Golden.com for over a year and the Golden team has added and refined many tools for making it easier to add content to the platform. I find the content cluster pages and query tools are great for exploring topics I am interested in like biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies compared to using Wikipedia or generic google searches.

Pros:

Golden tools for adding content save time for menial tasks like citations, adding information, and formatting so it's fun to contribute.

Cons:

Not as much content as similar resources like Wikipedia at the moment, but you can find many topics not covered on Wikipedia.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Wikipedia does have millions of pages of information but over the past few months, I have noticed a gap in knowledge in more than one area.

@judegomila I think that we might have discussed this before, but what did you consider RE building this on the blockchain? I could think that there could be some argument that it could help accountability about changes etc? what did you consider when making the decision not to?

From what I understand of how Golden manages data, this seems and feels like the future & a genuinely useful tool with purpose for both the general user and at enterprise level

Pros:

I like how the data returned by searches is structured. Fluid experience searching for information. User interface encourages discovery.

Cons:

None, the platform will get even better given time and increasing contributions

Really enjoyed the tools they provide to collect and source the knowledge.

Pros:

So much easier to use than Wikipedia

Cons:

Still small # of articles.

Congratulations on absolutely fantastic launch - looking forward to where you can take it and whether you'll be able to overtake Wikipedia as main source of information one day. As long as you can keep the quality of the content up (and ideally improve it over time), I think you might definitely succeed. Good luck!

I love it. I'm interested to know what do you count as the most impressive reason (e.g. your past achievements, business model, ambition, etc) investors are backing Golden & you? (for learning purpose)

There is a ton of potential here. I much prefer this UX to the Wiki UX. I have always had a problem with how Wikipedia updated its content. I like that you have put who did the updating. Keep at it. You are definitely on to something.

Looks amazing Jude. Looks like a smarter wikipedia(both for readers and editors). Plus a real business model so you don't have to bother people for money all the time. I can imagine Golden making a huge positive impact on society. Best of luck!