Help:Water Cooler (miscellaneous)

Water Cooler

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Water Cooler Miscellaneous   post
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Linking

If there is room for my 2 cents in this discussion, here goes: I disagree with encouraging an Internal links sections in main space articles. It is just duplicating what Wikipedia does and is, non semantic. The ASK query function promotes users to tag there own articles appropriately to automatically get displayed on main space (a thing of beauty). This should also motivate users to create main space articles and add an ASK query. See Cigarette with the Attribute:Keyword query. The search engines are working in some way that is not completly understandable to us. The engines will catch up or they already have. The more comfortable users become with semantic tagging and start imagining all the endless possibilities:

• more page creation
• longer visitor lengths
• more traffic
• higher page rank
• higher site rank
• a successful semantic mediawiki

If all of this happens then one backlink at Centiare is golden.--OmniMediaGroup 07:39, 16 January 2007 (PST)

SATIRE ALERT!!

Nobody asked you your opinion, Omni. If you continue to butt in on our Talk page discussions, we will ban your account. We are trying to build a directory, here. ...Oh. Wait. Sorry. This isn't Wikipedia, is it? ;-) --MyWikiBiz 09:59, 16 January 2007 (PST)

Marketing & Promotion

Background

With continuing reports of dissatisfaction amongst wikipedians, it's becoming more evident that Wikipedia's business model is fundamentally flawed. Without the ability to protect one's contributions, and/or debate in a fair and rational manner without undo favoritism given towards certain (cabals of) editors, the incentives to create original content becomes somewhat muted.

We feel Centiare addresses these main points by providing both protected Directory space for advocacy and traditional main space NPOV. Even better, via the Aficionados mechanism, we provide a legitimate means of allowing users to cross-reference interests/contributions from main space articles to directory listings. In this way, Aficionados eliminate the temptation for main space link spam and/or other commercial activities, and helps keeps main space articles clean and on-point.

Given Centiare's technical (semantic tags, protected space) & policy advantages, we feel it's the proper time to discuss what marketing & promotional efforts might be undertaken to increase overall awareness. The remainder of this section is an open forum to discuss ideas, initiatives and other activities. Snerfling 13:25, 3 March 2007 (PST)

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Spring 2007 - Organization/Association marketing

It is my goal to contact at least 500 different organizations and associations that aggregate the types of entities who would be welcome at Centiare (e.g., Little League Baseball, the American Dental Association, League of Women Voters, etc.) I want my message to be clear and three-fold:

1. The organization should have its own article within the Centiare Directory Space (e.g., Directory:American Dental Association)
2. The organization should contribute to relevant articles within the Centiare Main Space (e.g., Dentistry, Bruxism, Gingivitis)
3. The organization, once it sees the benefits of Centiare and its inherent advantages over Wikipedia, should encourage its members to create their own Directory articles (e.g., Directory:Delores M. Dains, DDS, Directory:Monarch Dental Associates)

For each of the recipients, it is my intent to customize the letter so that:

• The recipient is already identified as the Communication, Marketing, Electronic Media, or Public Relations contact at the organization.
• Each letter will be customized very deliberately, as in the American Dental Association example immediately above.

I will post the text of my planned letter very shortly, and then the Centiare community can help improve it for the next day or two. At the same time, I'm going to create a link where Centiare "worker bees" might recommend future organizations and (especially) the contact info of the appropriate person at the association. That's going to be the most tedious part of this campaign. As we get underway with the mailings, I will also plan to follow up with each recipient with a telephone call, approximately 2-3 days after they should have received the letter. --MyWikiBiz 21:20, 4 March 2007 (PST)

Since you're the expert on military history, you well understand the importance of momentum. Wikipedia seems to be garnering more criticism each day; check out this article from the New York Times. Now is the time to make people aware of the numerous advantages Centiare provides. Snerfling 07:46, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Form letter to organizations

Please take the liberty of wiki-editing this proposed form letter that would go to organizations and associations who would benefit from involvement in Centiare space.

+CONTACT+
+TITLE+
+ORGANIZATION+
+ADDRESS+

Dear +CONTACT+,

According to comScore, nearly 165 million unique visitors made use of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in the final month of 2006. As the +ORGANIZATION+’s +TITLE+, I’m sure you’re well aware of your group’s own article on Wikipedia, but did you know that:

(a) You are not allowed to edit the article itself?

(b) You can’t respond in the article space to other editors who might push an opposing agenda or a critical point of view about your organization?

These seemingly necessary abilities are strictly forbidden by the Wikipedia management and community. My partners and I feel that Wikipedia is, therefore, flawed in that it has an inherent (if not pernicious) bias against businesses and organizations. That’s why we’re constructing -- with our own out-of-pocket resources -- an alternative wiki directory called Centiare.com. Centiare welcomes and encourages organizations like your own to come and tell your story the way you want it told. Without sounding too much like a sales pitch, I want to make 3 things perfectly clear:

1. The +ORGANIZATION+ should have its own article within the Centiare Directory Space (e.g., Directory:+ORGANIZATION+). You can start that article today.
2. Your organization is welcome to contribute to relevant articles within the Centiare Main Space (e.g., +EXAMPLE1+, +EXAMPLE2+, +EXAMPLE3+).
3. Once +ORGANIZATION+ sees the benefits of Centiare and its inherent advantages over Wikipedia, you should encourage your members to create their own Directory articles (e.g., Directory:+EXAMPLE4+, Directory:+EXAMPLE5+) to support their own agendas.

While Centiare is not as mammoth as Wikipedia, we are growing by leaps and bounds because we offer many more technological advantages than Wikipedia, including Semantic Web architecture (which makes Google search results prioritize Centiare listings), user-protected space commingled with community-edited space, and the ability to embed videos, document downloads, and even advertising on our pages.

I hope you’ll join this new wiki revolution by registering an account for your organization -- for FREE -- at Centiare.com. I will be giving you a brief call in the next few days, to answer any questions you may have about our new directory.

Sincerely,

Gregory Kohs
Co-Developer of Centiare.com
greg@centiare.com
Cell: 302.463.1354

I doubt this letter will get results

Who is the target audience? Specifically, who is the contact within each organization?

What will motivate THAT PERSON to participate in, and even promote an online directory?

Your criticisms of Wikipedia resonate with people who have had run-ins there, but they are meaningless to the vast majority of people.

Your discussion of the advantages of your semantic tagging approach will again be meaningless to most people, other than hard-core techies.

I realize that you feel strongly about these things, and they are important in the long run... but they do not make an effective marketing pitch.

Wygk 11:51, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Thank you for this feedback, Wygk. Not having much experience at all in direct marketing, I have similar doubts as you. The target audience is any trade association or structured interest group that has a wide swath of members, and which has a "message" that it wishes to communicate to the world about its membership. I did give a few examples above.

The contact within each organization will be very important. I feel that each letter must go to someone who is named as the Director or Manager of Communications, Marketing, Electronic Media, or Public Relations for the entity.

You were a bit short on alternative solutions, Wygk. Do you think it would be better if I called people FIRST, then used a letter as a follow-up? Better to get a more famous "spokesperson" than myself? Better to give a "case study" example?

More help is welcome! And, of course, there's always the "trial balloon". We can mail this letter + phone call option on about 20 recipients, and see what kind of response we get. --MyWikiBiz 11:54, 5 March 2007 (PST)