After speaking with Greg I created an account on Centiare. I then created a "Directory" page on the pseudonymous person "GlassBeadGame." The purpose of this page was to have a place to post tables, documents and other material not readily placed on this board but of potential use to this group. I placed the following information on the page:



Shortly later someone named Snerfling moved the page to Directory:Wikipedia Review. I did not intend to speak for WR so I blanked the page and replaced it with a ==Contributors == section and then created the subpage Directory:Wikipedia_Review/GlassBeadGame. I then created the sub/sub page Directory:Wikipedia_Review/GlassBeadGame/Roommates_Table containing the table analyzing Fair Housing Council v. Roommate.com, which was my intention all along.

I don't mind the inconvenience of the page move, and can understand they want "real" people. It does mean if anyone was looking for GBG they would have to go through a basically empty page first. Worse however is I believe that now I am the only persons who can edit Directory:Wikipedia Review page.

The HTML table looked nice though.

I understand why the move was done but as you said, nobody can edit the Wikipedia Review page but you.

I'm about to turn in for the night (so I may have to review the "point" of this tomorrow, because I'm sure it's valid and deserves a clear-headed look), but I'll quickly say that Snerfling is the nickname of the founder of Centiare; he nearly always acts with sysop privileges in what he at least thinks is in the best interest of the user; and I'm wondering if you were just looking for a spot to dump interesting stuff, why you didn't just use a sub-page in your User space?

Greg

Seems like there must be a way to have multiple users permitted to edit a directory page ...

If nothing else, they could put proposed edits in a common space, hash it out, and — THE HORROR ! THE HORROR ! — vote ...

Jonny

BTW, how do you pronounce the name Centiare ?

And is that supposed to be like Billionaire — only more modest — like 1¢ at a time ?

Jonny

I'm not upset with Snerfling. Mostly I was experimenting with Centiare. So I wanted try something in the "Directory" as well as user pages. I just wanted to make clear I did not intend to "own" the WR article. I think it would be good if WR had a nice article there. I opened a second account on Centiare, but when I went to the article no "edit" tab was displayed. I assume this is because people or entities "own" their articles in the "Directory" namespace. If only one person can edit then it should probably be Selina or someone designated by her. Isn't there some way to let multiple users edit the article, other than "share" my password? I might be willing do that, but the accountability problems seem serious.

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Snerfling gave me some options.

You might say one key drawback of Centiare is that Directory space isn't intended to be edited by multiple users. But, that's also why we don't have John Siegenthaler and Fuzzy Zoeller incidents. Really, every page's Discussion space is open to all, so that's where a good deal of "community editing" could take place about a legal entity or person. But, the main concept behind Centiare being a wiki is not the "community-built content" aspect -- it's to take advantage of the awesome power of the Semantic Mediawiki extension, to allow folks who don't know HTML to nonetheless craft a kick-ass web page about themselves or their business, while simultaneously improving Google search results thanks to the RDF tagging that underlies the grain of each semantically-tagged page.

Not to sound snitty, but... frankly, we're not losing sleep that collaborative editing isn't our main function. You show me a small business that would prefer to have random people writing their story, versus them writing (and protecting) their own narrative, and then maybe I'll have some concerns.

Those who wish to go wild with collaborative editing are still free to do so in Main space articles (just not about legal entities). Or, you can share passwords to jointly edit in Directory space (recognizing the possible problems with that).



We pronounce it like "Scenty Air". A centiare is a unit of measure -- one square meter. But, we also like how it evokes an etymological similarity with "center" and "area". We wish to be the central area where all enterprises and individuals can come together to be a part of the world's largest, most inclusive, SEO-enhanced directory.



Looks like Snerfling is coming to the same conclusions as I would. Instead of hijacking Wikipedia Review any further, let's just continue to hash out a solution over on Centiare. Of course, we welcome Selina or Somey (or whomever has legitimate authority over WR) to create a listing for WR on Centiare. The advantage of doing so would be to boost Google search results for people who might be searching on phrases like "criticism of Wikipedia" or "former Wikipedians", but don't want to click on the #1 result (a Wikipedia article). If the Centiare article about Wikipedia Review can get into the Top 2, 3, or 4 Google results, then new visitors/users are just one additional click away from browsing this site. And that's the whole idea.

Greg

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OK, I think we have it worked out for now.

It's been so long, I barely remember writing this press release, but for anyone who is still interested in Centiare and what you can do there, this still holds up as a helpful explanation of "why Centiare?".

Centiare on the heels of Wikipedia

I would only add that you can use a bot to convert private database information into wikified articles that have nifty semantic tags. This is exactly how Karl Nagel managed to import about 25,000 directory articles into Centiare from a Sarbanes-Oxley database that he owns. Open any one of those articles and scroll to the bottom, to the "Facts about" section. Click on the little magnifying glass next to whatever attribute interests you. With just one click, that brings you to a table of ALL the other Centiare articles that share that attribute.

If you think that's cool, then imagine what you can do with the "ASK" query function -- build multi-layered searches. For example, look up all the companies that are incorporated in Kentucky but located in China, that trade on the NASDAQ. You would never, ever be able to do that on Wikipedia using Categories and Lists, but it's actually really simple on Centiare -- if the data you're looking for has been tagged semantically.

Greg