Compassion Encyclopedia is a resource where the public, students, teachers, researchers, and organizations  can easily find information on the scientific study of compassion, kindness, love, and related beneficial  qualities of mind. It is a continuously updatable website that allows for an expansion of content in scope and  depth, ensuring that new knowledge can be easily added and that the information is always accurate. The resource has multiple audiences and goals: 

1) Be a go-to source for compassion teachers, people who are directly engaged in the cultivation of a  compassionate life through varying practices, and are looking to supplement their teachings with science  based evidence. 

2) Provide current compassion researchers with an online database of reliable information that they can  share amongst themselves and their students. 

3) Assist members of the public in learning about this area of research and bring an awareness that science  can be used to further our understanding of states that lead to flourishing. 

4) Allow researchers with expertise in different fields to quickly familiarize themselves with these topics,  encourage them to transfer and utilize their own skills within this domain, and motivate a greater  allocation of scientific resources to the study of beneficial qualities of mind. 

5) Support organizations and institutions who wish for compassionate actions to be better integrated into  regular work life and who are seeking evidence for those aspirations. 

The encyclopedia will disseminate the various research avenues currently in use—psychology,  sociology, neuroscience, physiology, genetics—provide a foundation for understanding how these findings  can be used in new scientific and technological avenues—artificial intelligence, brain-machine-interfaces,  psychedelics—and be a guide for all learners, containing definitions, summary articles, connected topics, and  more. 

The purpose of the Compassion Encyclopedia is to be a living body of knowledge, where topics can be addressed and revisited on a regular basis, ensuring that our understanding includes the most recent evidence. Although there are already useful resources that provide information on compassion and related states—papers, books, online documents, etc.—in general, they have an end date. Once they are published they may remain relevant but still miss the opportunity to fill in gaps of knowledge and continue their story. 

Over the long term, this entails adding new articles as needed, updating references, increasing the  number of definitions, and creating new sections that are deemed important for the website. Inviting guest  contributors to write articles on their domain of expertise will ensure continued growth and quality. The  ability to modify and change the articles as new evidence comes to light provides authors with the opportunity to have a publicly available document that can provide the highest quality summary of a specific  domain of interest. 

This has the potential to widen the net of awareness around the study, cultivation, and embodiment  of compassion, kindness, love, and other such states. It focuses attention on how essential they are for the  wellbeing of our society and brings more people together in the shared realization that we can use science  to deepen our knowledge of qualities that are integral to a positive lived experience.