Hello,

I was watching some Suzanne Vega videos on YouTube and decided to look up more information about her. The Wikipedia article looks pretty complete - but kind of boring.

This caused me to think that it would be nice if there was a Wiki where artists, business owners and others could control their own page.

For obtaining information, a wiki is sometimes more convenient than a dedicated website (such as ww.suzannevega.com) because the information is usually on one page without a flash intro screen or other monkey business.

So Greg - could you do more with the whole Wikipedia Review thing - maybe with a better name (Centiare wasn't a better name) and more pages and convince more clients to use your site?


Thanks!

Let me get right on that.

And what was your name, again, so that I have someone to personally thank when Amazon buys me out for $6 million?

No need to thank me - I'm sure I'll go around telling everyone I know: "It was me who prodded that Wikipedia Review guy to finally get his site ready for the buyout by Amazon" and I'll point them to this link.

I'm not making fun - I was thinking about what I wanted in a look-up-information website and it reminded me of Wikipedia Review with a better name and more information.

I have looked up Suzanne Vega on Wikipedia Review and she's not there.

Suzanne Somers is though - and something doesn't seem right about the article

Something seems off - I don't think that Suzanne Somers wrote the page - it looks to be put together by a machine.
http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:Suzanne_Somers

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Versa, I know you're trying to be nice and helpful, but there are about 4 reasons why a "Wiki where artists, business owners, and others could control their own page" is not likely to be a wild success.

(1) Mediawiki mark-up isn't fun or easy.

(2) MySpace already tried this for bands. Now that Facebook is doing a better job than MySpace ever did, I think the "control your own page" feature has been won by Zuckerberg.

(3) If someone wants to control a wiki page about themselves, they can already do that, either themselves, by leaning on friends, or paying someone to do it. And by doing it on Wikipedia, they're picking up traffic on the #5 global website.

(4) If you think the name "Wikipedia Review" needs to be changed, what would you suggest? Surely some highly successful name like "Twitter" or "Bing" or "Google"? Maybe Wikker, or Ping, or Celeboogle is more your line of thinking?

There's a reason most of the pages on Wikipedia Review are "automated". Celebrities weren't coming to claim their pages, so someone figured out how to make a couple hundred dollars a month by automating text onto the pages and lacing them with ads. If Wikipedia Review had been on a different trajectory in its 24th month of operation, I would have objected to this automation. However, given that growth seemed to have plateaued, I figured "why not".

Hey, Greg, business opportunity. If you make me an admin there, I can collect fees for allowing that crap to stand, and give you a cut. What do you say?

I agree with most of what you said above, but disagree with two things.

1) Wikipedia Review is an ok name. Not great, not awful. It's a .com, which is good, but has a spammy ring to it. On the other hand, "My" and "Biz" emphasize the business listings aspect of it.

2) I think letting Wikipedia Review fill up with spam was a mistake. It's making the internet suck, and for what? Money?

So, you'd collect fees from my sister, and you'll pocket some middle-man fee? Why would that be better than me just charging her myself?


The alternative was letting the site fill up (about 13x more slowly) with "non-spam" like this. You see, it became clear to me that without an automated form system (such as they've got at AboutUs.org), about 98% of marketing professionals don't know crap about making a decent-looking wiki page. I tried to set this page about Liz Cohen as an example of what artists and other professionals could do with Wikipedia Review, but only a few others ever took up the lead.

I gave a good college try for 12 months with Centiare, then another 24 months with Wikipedia Review. Spam or no spam, it wasn't on a world-beating trajectory. Neither was Akahele.org.

When it gets right down to it, I've never launched or co-launched a highly-successful enterprise. But, through it all, I have found my one-to-one relationship work with the "paid editing" clients on Wikipedia to be the more fascinating practice, and Wikipedia Review sort of acts as a place-holder for that meme.

Well, could you enforce this with your sister? If you make an arrangement with me, you can just say, "Sorry, I farmed the antispam job out to Abd, but, hey, tell him I'm offering you a discount, I'm sure he'll treat you fairly."
I've done weird stuff that benefited a few people, some greatly, such as setting up the Arizona School of Midwifery, which trained a number of midwives, continued with me having left Arizona, got them licensed, and then went out of business, having saturated the market for "lay midwives." (Read: inexpensive but safe home birth.)

As to large numbers, sometimes it's hard to tell, and the jury is out.

Sorry, I didn't know you had mostly given up. I suppose as long as the Google checks are bigger than the web hosting payments it's worth keeping going. And like you said it is a nice home base for your paid editing business.

MediaWiki seems to be getting worse and worse to use. I remember at the beginning all you really needed to understand was [[ and ]] and ==. The nerds have mucked it up so much it's like its own programming language at this point.

Greg is really just some average-Joe guy like me (and like you, if you're a guy). His site is his hobby, and his hobby site is surprisingly successful.

If you want to start a new site and have $9.95 to spare for a year's worth of hosting with fairly decent tech support, PM me... I get "awesome free shit!!!" if I refer people, or so I'm led to believe.

IOW: Put your $9.95 where your mouth is, start your own friggin site rather than asking strangers to support you (they're not mom and dad), and stop bugging Greg.

Hello,

I am nice - and I suppose I was trying to be helpful in the "Hey - I would have liked to use something like Wikipedia Review today - so it's not a useless idea - keep it up and good luck" encouragement type of help.

I didn't intend to be helpful in the "Hey - do this and you'll be more successful" type of help - except about the name.

I didn't know that Wikipedia Review is currently on autopilot.

I don't understand if your statement: " there are about 4 reasons why a "Wiki where artists, business owners, and others could control their own page" is not likely to be a wild success." is referring to the actual Wikipedia Review or my description of Wikipedia Review.

Did you do an analysis of the Wikipedia Review business plan and come up with those risks?
Or do those risks apply to my description of Wikipedia Review?

I doubt that I could come up with a good name - but here are a few I thought of while running:
1) MyWikiFace.com: "Your Face on the Internet: The best features of Wikipedia and Facebook - made even better" - although you'd probably get sued.
2) MyWikiPortal.com
3) WikiPresence.com
4) Bomis.com

I understand that term Wikipedia Review explains what the site is, but the Biz part bothers me - it reminds me of those white page and yellow page listing that come up if you search for a phone number on Google.


Side Note:
I don't like the sound of Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, or Steely Dan but it wouldn't make sense for me to make suggestions to them on how to play better. Although - for quite some time I've had a plan that if I ever win the lottery I will use some of the money to purchase the rights to the entire Steely Dan catalog, destroy the master disks, and never sell another copy of any of the songs. The rest of the money I'd squander on useless things.

Now you're just being stupid. Steely Dan rules. In fact, Donald Fagen's The Nightfly album is one of the Top 20, all time, as far as I'm concerned.

I can sort of see how it might make for a nice lottery-win fantasy, but why Steely Dan when Jimmy Buffett and Celine Dion are both still out there? Heck, even I like a few of their songs, like "Haitian Divorce" and "Kid Charlemagne."

We'd have to get some of idea of what Mr. Versa actually likes, before we simply assume he lacks musical taste, but I'd have to agree - Steely Dan is rarely seen as seriously objectionable, even by shoegazers, hardcore punks and metalheads.

This.

You don't need millions of dollars to create a basic MediaWiki site. Start simple and expand as necessary. It takes about half an hour to get a site up and running (I've done it a few times).

Anyone ever added automated page creation templates (fill in the blanks and hit submit) and a WYSIWYG editor like FKE to a MediaWiki install for authorized users?

Yes, if you've done it a few times. If it's your first MediaWiki installation, expect hours.