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From Substepr

Welcome to Substepr - the logical collaboration tool for anyone with a problem to solve. Substepr is a research wiki website. Here, we work together to understand problems and provide detailed, step-by-step solutions on absolutely any subject.

The purpose of Substepr is to gradually understand problems more clearly and collectively progress toward solutions. The problems could be related to biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, medicine, mathematics, physics or any other subject. We're here to help anyone with a problem by allowing them to make use of an open and collaborative online community for free. Through understanding and solving problems and making that information openly available we're directly contributing to human progress.

Substepr pages have a well-organised structure. This guides the development of the page, ensures that no problem-solving effort is wasted and encourages a high standard of precision. It's designed to make large-scale collaborative problem-solving as logical and efficient as possible.

Content pages

Popular pages

Long pages

Topics

To find an exact problem page, type some search terms into the text box on the left and click on the Search button. To go directly to an exact page, type in its title and either press enter or click on the Go button.

All-time Top Donors

Rank	Donor	Amount donated
1.	Alex Vasiev, Glasgow, UK	£5 (British pounds)
2.	Ikhlaq Ahmed, Sheffield, UK, Compare-hajjumrah	£1 (British pounds)
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Would you like to have either your name, your organisation name, a permanent link to your website or your most important problem on our all-time Top Donors list? A link placed anywhere else on Substepr would have to be strictly relevant to the research of that page, but here you can submit almost any website link. Plus, the traffic to the Main Page is many times higher than any other page and the Main Page cannot be openly edited, so being featured here is an exclusive privilege for our donors. Please refer to our Donor name or URL submission instructions for further details.

Our all-time Top Donors list is here to give our visitors an interesting way to see how important Substepr traffic is to our donors and how generous or wealthy a particular donor is. It also provides a way for people to draw more attention to a problem that's important to them.

Our Top Donors - 11th place and beyond

Top Donor hall of fame

Year	Most generous Top Donor	Amount donated
2012
2013
2014

Our most active users

All-time most active in a week

Rank	Player	Score
1	Admin	35
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You may have noticed that there's a countdown running in the top left corner of this Main Page. When it stops on Sunday at 3pm EST (New York, USA) or 8pm GMT (London, UK) your score for the past 7 days will be ranked (but that's not the only reason we have a countdown - have you ever heard of "thinkering"? Have a look at the next section). A permanent link to your user page will be listed here until you're beaten by 10 or more other players. Judging occurs only on Sunday and is based on your 7 day cumulative score (as shown below).

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Score	Pages	Changes	Username
36	19	88	Admin (Talk \| contribs)

If you are one of the top 10 most active contributors (Substepr wiki editors) over the past 7 days, a link to your user page will automatically appear here for all to see. If you link to your most favoured problem on your user page then more people will see it, which will make it more likely that you'll find a solution. You could also link to a website from your user page to increase its traffic. Please refer to our External website guidelines to find out which websites we won't accept.

"Thinkering" sessions

Substepr.com is hosting online problem-solving meetups every Sunday at 3pm EST (New York, USA) or 8pm GMT (London, UK) (when the countdown in the top left of this page is complete). The session will last for as long as you care to stay online.

With an agreed meetup time you'll find more like-minded people to motivate you as you work on a problem with them. It will also allow you to see which problems people most want solved and join in with them to solve it more quickly. If you'd like to amaze a live audience, this is also your chance to shine. Join us at Substepr.com on any Sunday.

Thinkering is a portmanteau of "thinking" and "tinkering". It means thinking about something by tinkering with objects relating to the problem under consideration. It's usually unguided, exploratory and individual and often a very good way to explore aspects of difficult problems or to find solutions where none are obvious. In other words, an active form of thinking. [Urban dictionary - Thinkering]

Any level of experience for any subject background is welcome. Create an account and join the Substepr community!

Track our progress

Substepr progress data: Special:Statistics.

How Substepr pages are structured

Title command

The title of each page is a command to be completed which concisely but precisely sums up the problem of that page.

Understanding section

This first section consists of only relevant facts and deductions (and includes a detailed description and exploration of the problem).
Content in this section can only be phrased as facts and mathematical statements (not as commands). If stacked columns of mathematical statements (lines of working) are to be treated as extra facts then they should be shown here).
There is no strict structure - free-form prose is used (sentences, paragraphs, subheadings and sub-subheadings).
Data and external evidence in the form of links or images are presented, described and analysed in the understanding section. This is open scientific investigation and deduction. Investigations may take place under the title command of "Understand what causes x" or "Find evidence of y in the data produced by experiment A".

Method section

Method 1

Write every step or substep as a command in this section.
Write out every step of mathematical working as a verbal command (as opposed to simply stating the lines of working stacked in a column).

Step 1
1. Substep 1
  1. Substep 1.1
  2. Substep 1.2
    1. Substep 1.2.1
    2. Substep 1.2.2
    3. Substep 1.2.3
  3. Substep 1.3
2. Substep 2
3. Substep 3
4. Substep 4
5. Substep 5
Step 2
Step 3

Method 2

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4

Everything else

This contains free form text, images, code, artwork, interesting puns, observations, pointing out how a certain method could be reapplied to another application, ..., etc.

The difference between the everything else section and the discussion page is that the discussions are to be preserved there. The everything else section can have comments but once those comments are no longer relevant they will be deleted and will no longer be visible except in the page history.

References

References to other material in a conventional bibliography format (aiming to be consistent with existing chosen conventions).

A normal Substepr ("substepper") page contains an understanding section and a method section. The understanding section contains only relevant facts or deduced understanding. The method section is a list, or multiple lists, of chronological steps, so that each step must only be performed after all those that came before it. The title of a Substepr page is a command such as "Create a new page in Substepr". The title command and problem definition is clarified at the start of a page in the understanding section. In the method section each step is a clear and explicit command to follow in order to complete the command in the title. Wherever possible, a step or substep in the method section will be clarified by substeps of greater specificity and detail. This makes the level of precision infinitely extendable (creating substeps of any order). A section can be left blank to more appropriately fit the needs of a particular page.

Substepr aims to be as precise, logical and complete as possible. We also aim to use the simplest and most widely used and understood phrasing and word choice available. Also, wherever it clarifies the instructions or makes the problem easier to understand, we will include either an image, equation or section of code. The Substepr pages linked to below offer examples of the Substepr structure:

Substepr breakthroughs

When you work hard enough to solve a problem, sometimes you find the solution you were looking for. Other times you come across something entirely unexpected. To honour the most ambitious contributors to Substepr, the most important or exciting breakthrough solutions will be listed here. Think of it as your own personal trophy for being amazing.

Are you amazing?

Prove it.

Final notes

Would you like some help with solving your problem? You don't have to come up with the solution to your own problem (especially if you're not permitted to release your work online). Instead, you could indulge your curiosity by helping others to solve their problem and they could return the favour by offering a fresh perspective on your problem. If they solve your problem or at least a part of it then great - you can reference that Substepr page (via the permanent page history) and move on to your next challenge. You'll have time to achieve much more thorough, original and high quality work if you allow others to collaborate with you and save you time. Just make yourself an account then start the pages for the problems you're interested in. You could then link to those problems from your own user page, just like this user did, then invite a friend or colleague to do the same. Do you know someone whose work you find particularly interesting or beneficial to you? Would they be interested in some free help?

At the moment we don't have that many active members or visitors, but that means we can really keep the running costs of Substepr very low while we find our first few donors. This also means we'll be able to ensure that Substepr will be sustainable for many years to come and that it's growth can be easily sustained during this early stage without any financial concerns. As we continue to grow, we'll attract more traffic and more donors.

The software similarities between Substepr and Wikipedia make it more user-friendly and familiar. At the same time it's also a very cost-effective solution, which means donated money can find other ways of being useful for now.

Collaboration between a very large group of people using anything other than a wiki can quickly become chaotic and wasteful of communication effort. Wikis allow a very large group of people to collaborate easily and effectively by only making relevant contributions that directly progress the page toward its ideals. The Mediawiki software that this site uses was designed to cope with a very large number of users, just like Wikipedia (for which the software was originally intended), and the Substepr structure was designed to ensure that everyone knows exactly how a new contribution to a page should be written so that everyone can share the same lines of thought or know exactly how to organise new lines of thought. As the problem approaches a solution this would make it much easier for new users to read the page and join in.

If you'd like to give us some encouragement then please make a donation of £1, €1 or $1 or any amount you wish. We'd love to know that you care.

Alternatively, just click 'like' on our Facebook page. You could even link to us on your website or blog about us. Please spread the word about Substepr - you'd be doing others a favour if you did. We want Substepr to help as many people as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Admin 23:01, 17 February 2012 (CST)