# Trails, the Memex, and SourceCred

**URL:** <https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/trails-the-memex-and-sourcecred/213>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [September 17, 2019, 3:21am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/trails-the-memex-and-sourcecred/213 "2019-09-17T03:21:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![burrrata](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sourcecred.io/burrrata/32/135_2.png) [@burrrata](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/u/burrrata)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2019, 3:21am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/trails-the-memex-and-sourcecred/213/1 "2019-09-17T03:21:39Z")

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So I just posted [yet another long ass comment](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/credsperiment-progress-report/206/5). I then went on a walk and thought about it, can came back to add more details. I feel really good about it and think I had some really great things to say. If I could I would boost my own post! Wait… I can’t. Actually no one can. My “comment” is actually like 8-10 replies to various other comments in the thread. If someone “likes” the post how do I know which part they are liking? What if someone agrees with part of the comment, but disagrees with another? How do they show that in a way that can be transparently seen by the community and the SourceCred alg?

This made me think of the [Memex](https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/23/as-we-may-think/). The idea was to curate “trails” through the archives of scientific databases so that researchers could credit and promote all the work that was part of their research for a project. This would be much more inclusive and dynamic than simple adding references at the end of each paper. They came up with this idea just after WW2 because there was too much damn data! Now look at us…

It would be really cool if there was a way to “tag” various comments (or parts of a comment) with topics like `governance`, `economics`, `CredSperiment`, etc… so that people could create, view, and contribute to trails of ideas. This could start on a chat forum like Discourse, but then expand to include code from repos, articles, live projects, etc… Then you could boost an entire trail vs just a post or comment.

If you’re thinking that this all sounds like a lot of work, you’re right. To address this the Memex ([at the end of the post](https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/23/as-we-may-think/)) also has the idea of [historians and curators](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/cred-historians-and-curators/194). It would be cool to see something like this integrated into SoureCred. People could blaze their own trails, but you could also contribute to others as well.

- The more people use a trail the more cred flows through it.
- If you want to support that trail you could boost it to boost everyone/everything that has contributed to it (where contribution = creating the trail or the content in the trail) would get cred.
- (in an ideal world where data is immutable and verifiable and rules are enforceable) If someone does something awesome (breakthrough research! killer app! commercial product!), and it can clearly be proven that it depends on on stuff in a trail, then cred would flow back through that trail

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/trails-the-memex-and-sourcecred/213)._