Frequently Asked Questions

Collective Sense is a platform where you can get advice or opinions from multiple people, synthesised into collective wisdom. Instead of seeing individual responses, you receive a thoughtful synthesis that combines everyone's input into themes, common perspectives, and divergent views.

You submit a question seeking either advice (for complex life situations) or opinions (for comparisons and everyday choices). Other community members contribute their thoughts anonymously. Once enough people have contributed, AI synthesises all the responses into a comprehensive summary that captures the collective wisdom.

Advice is for complex situations where you need thoughtful guidance - things like career decisions, relationship challenges, or life dilemmas. You provide detailed context about your situation. Opinions are for simpler comparisons or preferences - like 'Is X better than Y?' or 'Is it worth getting Z?' - where you want to know what people generally think.

This is by design. When people know their individual response won't be displayed, they write more honestly and thoughtfully - less performatively. The synthesis captures what matters: common themes, where people agreed, where they disagreed, and important considerations. This gives you more useful insight than scrolling through dozens of individual opinions.

Currently, 5 contributions are needed before a synthesis is generated. This ensures there's enough diverse input to create meaningful collective wisdom while not making you wait too long.

Once enough contributions are gathered, AI (Claude) reads all the anonymous responses and synthesises them into a structured summary. It identifies common themes, highlights where contributors agreed and disagreed, notes important considerations, and flags any cautions that were raised. The AI doesn't add its own advice - it only synthesises what the community contributed.

Your submissions and contributions are stored securely. When you contribute to someone else's question, your response is anonymous - they'll never see that it came from you. Your own submissions are visible only to you (and to others as anonymous questions to contribute to).

Collective Sense is intentionally designed to avoid the engagement patterns of social media. There are no likes because we don't want people writing for approval. There are no followers because this isn't about building an audience. There are no comment threads because we want synthesis, not debate. The focus is entirely on helping and being helped.

Yes! After a synthesis is complete, you can visit 'My Contributions' to see the problems you contributed to. For completed ones, you can expand to see the collective wisdom alongside your original contribution, so you can reflect on how your thoughts aligned with or differed from the crowd.

Currently, you cannot delete submissions once they've received contributions, as this would affect the synthesis. If you have concerns about a specific submission, please contact us.

Yes, Collective Sense is free to use. The platform runs on community goodwill and contributions. If you'd like to support the running costs, you can visit our Support page.

All contributions are checked for harmful content before being included in a synthesis. We want this to be a safe, helpful space for everyone. If you encounter anything concerning, please let us know.