After nearly twelve years of questions, answers and discussions on Facebook, San Marino Risponde is becoming a platform as well. The project, born at the end of 2014, is taking a new step forward, aiming to turn the wealth of information produced by its community into an organized, permanent and searchable tool, one in which answers can be cross-checked against official documents, reliable sources and experts.
The announcement comes from Diego Fernando Balducci, the group’s administrator, who starts precisely from what he calls the “problem” facing San Marino Risponde: “it works too well to remain just a Facebook group“.
The starting point is the experience built up since 2014. “Since then it has been a continuous growth of collaboration between people asking questions and people willing to help: sometimes with a written answer, other times with a concrete gesture, in person, away from the chaos of screens“, Balducci explains.
A community that, he points out, has inevitably also shown its limits and contradictions. “Not everyone is willing to help. Not all the answers are correct. Every community has its own contradictions, its own mistakes, and even its own jesters.” But, he continues, “one thing has remained surprisingly constant: when the goal is clear and shared, the community manages to move in the same direction“.
The philosophy remains the one that has appeared for years in the group’s description: “The purpose of the group is to exchange and grow individual knowledge through the community“. A mechanism that, according to Balducci, has over the years led people to the information they were looking for “thousands, indeed, tens of thousands of times”.
The limitation, however, is the typical one of social media: information quickly gets buried under the flow of new content, making it difficult to retrieve over time what has already been discussed and clarified. Hence the idea of pairing the group with a new tool.
“Now the time has come to build a new tool. A tool capable of taking in what we learn, organizing it, verifying it, updating it and making it searchable even after a Facebook post has vanished into the flow“, announces Balducci.
Thus was born “San Marino Risponde – The Platform”. The project will not mean the closure of the Facebook group, which will continue to be the place where users can ask questions, share experiences and exchange views. “The Facebook group is not disappearing and is not being replaced — it remains the original core of San Marino Risponde: the place for the community, for questions, for experiences and for dialogue between people“.
The platform, instead, is being given a different task: organizing and consolidating the information that emerges from the community, making it easier to use in the future as well. “The platform is being created to do a different job: turning that knowledge into a more organized, verifiable and lasting resource.”
The ambition goes beyond simply collecting questions and answers. Balducci is in fact aiming to create guides, instructions and practical tools, with particular attention paid to fact-checking.
“I’d like it to become the place where you can find simple — not simplistic — answers even to complex questions, along with clear instructions and guides, as well as tools that actually help you get something done,” he explains. He adds: “I’d like it to become a place where answers are built by comparing what emerges from the community with reliable sources, official documents and, when needed, competent bodies and industry experts“.
The stated goal is therefore to draw a clearer distinction between verified information and information still to be verified, while at the same time preserving the community contribution that has defined San Marino Risponde since its very beginning.
“This is a project much bigger than a new web page, and there will be a great deal to build, but you have to start somewhere“, Balducci concludes. As of today, the first step is online with the new San Marino Risponde platform.
