Some different/modified software would be needed. The existing threads structure is not at all suitable. Neither are wiki pages, since they're too easily messed-with. Maybe some suitable online-course software already exists. It'd be cool if the courses were internally gamified a bit, maybe with "achievements" and stuff. And it could be integrated with the main forum, eg. giving you badges on your profile if you completed a course.
Have you contacted slickage for ideas on this? Aren't they designing the new forum and they only helped with the merit source issues. They would have better ideas than anyone else because they have more experience on softwares.
A real challenge, which I'm not exactly sure how to solve, would be to keep them up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased. 99.9% of introductory cryptocurrency info on the Internet is basically an advertisement for something, and therefore not very useful. If anyone could create a course and publish it on equal standing with the other courses, then we'd end up with a huge pile of altcoin-pump courses, "how to make money using totally-safe HYIPs", and stuff like that. But if courses are only written by trusted & competent people after significant mod review, then only a limited number of courses could be created, and they'd probably quickly become outdated. Perhaps it'd work to do a github-style pull-request format led by some trustworthy editors. (Github could even be used, though that's pretty difficult to use for people not already familiar with git.)
Simple. Editing privileges should only be given to mods or sepcific
trustworthy people. The people who write the articles/courses can't edit it but can always update the mods with new information which can be cross checked. Or before the content is published, post it before hand, discuss with the community and confirm the changes and then do what'd be the best.
And maybe to make this a little more interesting, maybe the writers of these courses could be paid? They could be given custom titles. And more perks? And how about having a secret board only for content writers, they could discuss among themselves and could help correcting the content,everytime the answers can't be right because the internet is that badly screwed.
theymos, I would love to help people out with the courses. I already have a thread for
self-teaching people about bitcoin, and a few people have learned a lot of new stuff, including me. So, if at all anything is required, I am there to help out.