Alternate to alternate to.
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Never enough alternatives
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This used to exist:
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A wiki would be great, since it allows user contributions and a familiar interface.
Not necessarily mediawiki, though. Or maybe something that allows people to submit individual options in a category and vote on them.
Get it running and set it loose!
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God let this become a thing
consumer rights wiki might be a good place to start
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Brands of what?
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how technical are you?
You could probably use Notion as a backend and use Potion.so to make the website. Another route is Webstudio + a CMS like Hygraph or Strapi if you want to self host it.
I think this might even be doable on Ycode or Webflow.
At the end of the day what you want is a database with all the products and a relations between each other based on their features.
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you should allow the tracking of UPC codes as well. this would allow a mobile app to be used in-store far easier than by product name.
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Love this, and I want this.
I'd consider some of the secondary requirements, which might then inform what you use for the primary requirement.
Have you ever moderated a site or forum? With user-submitted content, you absolutely need a moderation mechanism, and moderators. This site would be a prime target for astroturfing, trolls, and people with beef. The latter are useful for sourcing content about alternatives, but relying on each contributer to moderate themselves is not going to work.
You'll also need an effective mechanism for receiving and actioning takedown requests (or telling them to eff off, if that is your wont).
All of that comes down to user metamanagement, and user classes. Simpler wiki software is probably designed for trusted users, or a single user, or might require a plugin to handle these scenarios. Mediawiki is stable and capable, but needs tight site design to avoid it becoming a maze. (Actually, that last bit goes for anything you choose. If you don't impose a structure, you're going to get a structure anyway, it just might not be the one you or your users want.)
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An example site that takes user submissions and is not a wiki:
https://github.com/nerdydaytrips/website
Users submit a form that is turned into a github PR, hosted with cloudflare worker. Site itself is completely static, made with hugo. The data about each map pin is simply key/value in the frontmatter of a markdown file:
https://github.com/NerdyDayTrips/website/blob/main/content/daytrip/eu/gb/1066-battle-of-hastings.md
Simple but effective and can be styled however you need (hugo has themes). Moderation can scale by adding more contributors who can merge PRs.
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