User talk:Snerfling

Hello world --Snerfling 14:57, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Dear Snerfling, How would I go about adding "by Category" to the ASK query on Directory:KJ Kitchens? Thanks---OmniMediaGroup 08:23, 19 January 2007 (PST)

Please see water cooler - technical. Snerfling 08:46, 19 January 2007 (PST)

All of this new information is going to take a little while to digest and regurgitate into something of value, luckily I process rather fast. This semantic tag thing especially is a bit of a mental juggernaut to wrap my pea brain around but i'll get there. I'll keep in mind the main space v. directory from now on. Thank you immensely for all of your help.

sidebar - I'd like the riches but fame. Garrett 17:25, 3 February 2007 (PST)

Monetizing Web 3.0

1. I'm still unsure on how to turn directory pages into money besides google ads. It's hard to conseptualize why business's would want to link through me or how replacing recipes with companies yields anything. I'm looking into ripping and modifying wiki travel for some income, but again I can't see how that translates into money besides google ads.

Well, first of all, you can't ripoff copyrighted information. The way to proceed is to convince other subject matter experts to work with you in developing marketable content.

Secondly, IMO Google ads are merely a first step towards full-on Web 3.0 ie transactions. Become an expert on semantic tags and demonstrate how they can be incorporated by businesses. Here's the realkey: which platform(s) is Web 3.0 to be implemented? Apache via raw XML? Or a truly beautiful interface like MediaWiki that is so forgiving with its open-edit capabilities? Have you taken a look at the automatically generated RDFs? I mean, do you have any idea how cool that is? Google absolutely scarfs them up.

I'd bet on a wiki - we like to think Centiare has thought this through and has the platform, tools & resident experts to show others how to pull it off.

2. If I created directory pages on let's say microsoft, dell, halliburton, could I then sell the pages back to them or would they usurp me sans fee? Garrett 15:36, 5 February 2007 (PST)

Directory listings are owned by entities that own the names, so you can't sell them property they already own. The reason we let non-owners create directory listings for entities they don't own is two-fold:

To enable the same type of activity that takes place at Wikipedia ie many people seem to have an interest in creating articles for entities in which they have a personal interest. The problem at WP, of course, is that someone else then comes in and "messes with their stuff".
As the semantic web emerges, to allow those that have developed expertise in this field to offer their services to entities in which they created directory listings.

Keep your eye on the transaction cycle. How will this fit with hotels, restaurants & others in the hospitality industies? MediWiki provides an awesome platform to present summary information, place images, generate SEO semantic tags, link to reviews/recommendations, and enable purchases (reservations). How are they going to do this? By spending huge money on consultants using raw XML, or gain assistance from wikipedians who are already familiar with an incredibly easy to use wiki interface?

Get the picture? Service/product catalog links to order-processing via semantic tags is the key. That's Web 3.0 - and we think it's going to happen here. Snerfling 17:36, 5 February 2007 (PST)

Adsense Regulations

It's against Adsense TOS to run more than one publisher code on a single web page. I am unable to edit this page Centiare:Extensions/Google Adsense. Can you take care of changing the codes? pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX needs to be the same on both ad units.--OmniMediaGroup 09:07, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Oops, sorry about that. I was just trying to demo the different styles (vert & horz). I'll unprotect the page so that you can edit/modify as needed. Snerfling 09:31, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Semantic Centiare

DING DING DING. It's ringing a bell. Once I get this semantic thing down pat I can incorporate it with my existing medawiki skills and become the high priced consultant and create web 3.0 pages for businesses. If I'm still reasonably close to what you're saying then -------- this brings up whole new questions.

~~Do more than a hand full of people know about and implement semantic tags?~~ - read about XML (centiare using metawiki is MUCH easier)
~~What is centiare doing to attract new users?~~ - stupid question - marketing obviously
Are there social networking possibilities for a wiki? Personally I can't see writing on other's talk pages for socialization - Are there private messanging possibilities with a wiki?

I'm not the big Wikipedia guy - Greg is. (I'm a systems guy - my background is in accounting/financial computer systems.) We're using MediaWiki the same way Wikipedia is ie talk pages & water cooler (village pump). If you know of any other methods, I'm all ears.

Will pages like "Directory:Houston", or other cities be profitable in the future?

Depends on what you're selling. What do people want to know about or purchase from Houston?

~~Why is "Japan" a main space article but the United States a directory?~~

~~Japan comes up as a directory entry; am I missing something?~~

I'm reading as much as possible about the future semantic web. This scares the privacy advocate in me.

"Enthusiasm about the Semantic Web could be tempered by concerns regarding censorship and privacy. For instance, text-analyzing techniques can now be easily bypassed by using other words, metaphors for instance, or by using images in place of words. An advanced implementation of the Semantic Web would make it a lot easier for governments to control the viewing and creation of online information as this information would be much easier for an automated content-blocking machine to understand. In addition, the issue has also been raised that with the use of FOAF (software) files and Geolocation meta-data, there would be very little anonymity associated with the authorship of articles on things such as a personal blog." Garrett 19:03, 5 February 2007 (PST)

You're still young, so you're not (yet) a cynic. I'm a published author - the publishing game is all about selling product. The way to sell product is to hype the crap out of it. You're little tidbit above was probably written by a promotions person. If you don't think the banking/credit system doesn't already have every bit of information on you and your family, then you've been hanging out too long at WP.

All you need to know about the world is that the drive for cheaper & better is never ending. Someone comes out with something that works better for less, forget about trying to stop the movement. Web 3.0 is all about optimizing business information while delivering less expensive record keeping/transactional costs. (Do you know what a headache accounting is? Do you know what people will do to avoid managing books?)

Ain't nothing gonna stop Web3.0 if the tech platform comes together. We think an easy to edit system like a wiki is the way to go. Snerfling 22:18, 5 February 2007 (PST)

Japan

I'm just using Japan to get my feet wet in this semantic stuff. Feel free to correct me when I screw up. Garrett 17:15, 6 February 2007 (PST)

Looks good - see my notes in your user_talk pages. If you just follow the Directory:California example (rolling up to US and drilling down to county/city/districts), you should be golden. Snerfling 17:19, 6 February 2007 (PST)

~~Ah!! Why did the semantic box in Directory:Japan disappear? Garrett 17:21, 6 February 2007 (PST)~~ figured it out myself (I should do that more often)

I won't - but I am creating a state template by cannibalizing the overly complicated wiki template. Garrett 18:40, 6 February 2007 (PST)

50 States

I think we should use the 50 states to set an example of how centiare should work and why it is different than wikipedia. Throwing out some ideas - so - to do this we need to

first make the states uniform in approach.
show off the attributes, and relations more
infobox all the states in a simple box. No crazy highest peak, state bird, crap. That belongs in an enclyopedia, not a directory. Centiare is business and people oriented though so things like GDP and governors, should be mentioned.
no long winded paragraphs/sections like texas currently has. Concise - no one wants a history book when they go looking for the yellow pages.
Now there's no problem to have all the cities and counties on each state page but when there are a few hundred it will look horrible. Maybe link off to a "Counties in X State" page and "Cities in X State" page. Or do that and couple it with a "major city" attribute to distinguish pages like houston.
Maybe a "businesses located in x state" with a short blurb about business in the state and a link to a semantic table.

Just some ideas. Feel free to pick them apart. oder stimmen Sie mit einigen uberein. Boeuf, Ce n'est pas un grand chose. (And eventually expand into centiare.fr/centiare.de) Garrett 18:21, 7 February 2007 (PST)

These are all good ideas. However, there's a problem - the states are owned (ie controlled) by OMG until at which time the governors' offices want to take over. (That is, the true owners of the respective states' official web sites.)

Insofar as your specific comments, we have subpages enabled for just these reasons. If you take a look at Directory:Texas, you can see I added a counties link earlier today. Ideally, each state would be organized in a uniform fashion that took full advantage of subpages & ASK queries - including history, etc.

Rather than try & address 50 states, why don't we perfect Texas? If we do a bang up job on Texas, we can take it to the governor + each county + each (major) city + businesses, social orgs (churces, Boy Scouts), sports (Little League, etc), etc. If you browse through Directory:California, you can see I experimented with each different level of government/agencies. To the extent of adding a few more tags, the existing relationships, attributes & categories (don't forget categories - read the ASK primer) are all working very well.

If we get Texas wired, then we can take the same idea to the other states. They ALL have economic development offices. The Net is all about lowering the cost of doing business, including marketing. Semantic tags + user controlled info (Web 3.0) is the secret weapon of small businesses. If we went after women & minorities, there would probably be money available for training them on Web 3.0. Snerfling 20:06, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I will be adding useful content to all the pages I've "parked" on but I'm working out this google adsense thing right now to get some revenue. Garrett 17:49, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Nope, I mainly use my andman8@yahoo.com account. I had to sign up with the rminks1 account bc centiare requires a business email address but I never check it. Could you forward the stuff to my yahoo account. Garrett 12:42, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Google Videos

Is there any way I can add a google video instead of a youtube video as they are better quality?

Like a <google>XXXXXXXX</google> Garrett 13:30, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The generic <embed> should work fine since it works with Google Gadgets. Snerfling 14:09, 13 February 2007 (PST)

It doesn't work because the google gadget doesn't let you pick the individual video. How does the youtube one work? Garrett 14:35, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Huh? Are you saying there isn't a video per page @ Google? If not, how would a parser function pull out the video anyway? That's how <youtube> & <adsense> work - it isn't magic. Snerfling 14:39, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I don't really know. Though you seem way more knowledgable than me. Could you create one embeded video link from google for me so I can use it as a template for all the others? The freaks link is here [1] Garrett 15:38, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Search Triple

I don't quite get what your hinting at with the whole has thing. Garrett 15:25, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Without getting overly technical, semantics are all about subject:relation:value. (Three elements or "search triple".) So, Berlin:is capital of:Germany OR Germany:has capital is:Berlin. I wouldn't get too hung up on it - it's sort of the standard means of identifying relations. If you're interested in reading more, you should check out Semantic MediaWiki site. Take a browse through their relations and you'll see the pattern. The bottom line is to reach some agreement on a set of movie tags. Snerfling 15:51, 14 February 2007 (PST)

ACRs for Ask the Doctors

Would you mind taking a look at the work-up page for one of my future projects and let me know your thoughts on possible ACRs. If you check out some of the working links I think you'll know where I want to go with this. User:OmniMediaGroup/Ask the Doctors TIA--OmniMediaGroup 14:16, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Will do - thanx for the heads up. I'll try & get back with you within the hour. Snerfling 14:18, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Sorry, I should have mentioned, no hurry on this.--OmniMediaGroup 14:24, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Movie Tags

Thanks for creating all the movie sem tags. Do you think you could add Directory:Garrett Minks/Page Creations to the assistance and help parts of centiare? Garrett 18:33, 16 February 2007 (PST)

Done. Snerfling 07:33, 17 February 2007 (PST)

Of course, another the step on the way to being the semantic king. I'm just finishing up with my first client Directory:Nathaniel Lande and will jump in right after. Garrett 08:16, 17 February 2007 (PST)

Book Tags

Thanks for the book tags. There is an issue with Author Of as a relation. It produces a red link as a page relation directing to a "this page does not exist...yada yada yada" I think we need an Attribute:Author --OmniMediaGroup 10:13, 23 February 2007 (PST)

If we use an 'author of' relation, we can also make directory listings (ie property) for their works. If an author has multiple works, then we can run ASK queries to list all books that have the 'author of' tag. Attributes are generally good if you don't want to internally reference links. I think a relation in this case is better. What do you think? Snerfling 17:21, 23 February 2007 (PST)

I think the Author Of and Has Author relations should definitely stay for future instances as you described above. I've created an ASK roll-up in my book area to demonstrate why I created the Author attribute yesterday. User:OmniMediaGroup/Books If you don't think it's appropriate we can discuss. --OmniMediaGroup 06:54, 24 February 2007 (PST)

I really think you should use Relation:Has Author. As you can see, attributes, unlike relations, don't automatically include hyper-links within ASK queries. This, of course, prevents browsing; if you simply added a {{PAGENAME}} as a stub for author listings, it would (a) get rid of the redlinks, and (b) give you another page in which to drop adsense ads. Please reconsider. Snerfling 08:34, 24 February 2007 (PST)

Pulp

I HATE collectivism! They destroyed my pulp fiction article on wikipedia. I'm never making another non paid edit on that stupid ****. Phew - felt good to vent. Garrett 09:30, 25 February 2007 (PST)

I'm adding [[keyword:= to everything

the keyword "a new kind of wiki" comes up 6th out of 55 million! [2] Garrett 14:41, 27 February 2007 (PST)

Hmmm, maybe I should add it to the front page? Snerfling 14:45, 27 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks for the heads up. Garrett 10:01, 4 March 2007 (PST)

The medical tag attribute won't work for personal injury, bankruptcy, and divorce. What kind of universal tag would you suggest? Garrett 17:12, 9 March 2007 (PST)

-nevermind - just too dumb to read the bottom half of your message. Garrett 18:06, 9 March 2007 (PST)

Milson Printing Logo

I re-uploaded the Milson Printing Logo image. I think it serves as a good "prompt" to get new contributors to change the image to their own appropriate one. You had deleted it March 15 as a "duplicate", but I'm not seeing how it was a duplicate image. Let me know if you want to delete it again. --MyWikiBiz 12:06, 27 March 2007 (PDT)

Sorry about that. What happened was someone (I forget who) uploaded a new image by overwriting Milson. I then renamed it & deleted Milson, even though it was the new image. I now this came up before - if it ever turns into a problem, I'll have to extend the protection extension to the Image directory as well. Snerfling 12:09, 27 March 2007 (PDT)

contact

You were probably already aware but I've discovered these feedback boxes and think they are quite cool. what ever you type in and submit gets emailed directly to me. This interweb is quite amazing! Garrett 14:48, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

Hey, those things are pretty cool. I wasn't aware of them specifically, since there's so many of these script widgets floating around. Do you want to add them to list of Centiare:extensions? Snerfling 15:35, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

I think it would be a great addition. I added it to my "ownership" template with really cool results. Garrett 17:52, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

Red Links

Doesn't Google frown upon creating pages with no content like the sailing related stuff? Garrett 15:47, 31 March 2007 (PDT)

I didn't want a bunch of red links on the front page - feel free to add some content if the mood strikes you. Snerfling 18:29, 31 March 2007 (PDT)

Consider it done, thanks to GFDL content from Encyclopedian.com. --MyWikiBiz 19:25, 31 March 2007 (PDT)

Bad account

Looks like a mistaken duplicate account (with a lower-case "l") was made here. Can we delete accounts, as if they never existed, or can you only "block"? Not that it's bugging me... --MyWikiBiz 07:55, 6 April 2007 (PDT)

We don't make distinctions between unactivated user accounts, whether resulting from incorrect/invalid email addresses, etc. It always dangerous to actually "delete" database records; they really don't take up any space, so it's better to leave them alone. Snerfling 08:10, 6 April 2007 (PDT)

Taming the ad beast

Let Garrett and me know what you think of what I told Garrett. I don't want to suppress the spirit, but we also don't want Centiare mucked up with 80% ads, 20% content. --MyWikiBiz 09:02, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

Firefox blocked the pop-up as well. I agree with your observation that users hate pop-up ads. That being said, I think there's a natural counter-acting moderation for those with their own directory listings. That is, potential problems arise in situations where non-owners have developed directory listings. Since these are allowed at our discretion, we can easily create a policy governing this practice. Snerfling 13:41, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

adbrite looks much more on the up and up and doesn't have pop-ups. [3] Why google why! - this looks to be a suitable replacement and better than the last one. Garrett 19:00, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

Social --> Share this page

Karl, could you please change the "Quick Addition" template so that the additional "share" script is headed "Share this page", rather than "Social"? It's the more common terminology, and that's how I've updated the "long form" Add a listing pages. --MyWikiBiz 13:45, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

Karl, hope you don't mind, but I made the "Share this page" change.--OmniMediaGroup 14:21, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

Looks great. Snerfling 14:48, 9 April 2007 (PDT)

My user page.

Aha! Thanks for the fix! Nathan (talk) 11:25, 20 April 2007 (PDT)

featured articles

Is it cool if I make up one or two FA's a week that show off more of what makes centiare cool like ask queries and embedded videos? Garrett 09:44, 22 April 2007 (PDT)

That's great - I've been hoping people would suggest/prepare FAs so we could display articles other than states. Once you have them mocked up, just place them on the FA waiting list. Snerfling 15:01, 22 April 2007 (PDT)

sysop

can you allow me to do thay move=sysop thing so my pages and my clients pages are view source instead of edit? Garrett 15:21, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Sysop edited pages need to be individually protected in order to be read only. It would be easier to just return your account status to regular, that way each of your directory listings would automatically be protected. Snerfling 22:08, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

then could you return me to a regular user and set up an admin account maybe? Garrett 12:50, 26 April 2007 (PDT)

Go ahead and create another account and we'll set it up as vuser. We'll turn your Garrett account into a regular user. Snerfling 19:48, 26 April 2007 (PDT)

New Skin

So how exactly do I make a new skin - the code on the meta wiki page isn't even close. Garrett 15:33, 15 May 2007 (PDT)

The css/js changes are made to your own respective files. I think you're finding out first hand why changing the basic appearance is such a big deal. I find it hard to believe that the look & feel is what is preventing more people from signing up and using the service. Centiare is loaded with all sorts of functions and extensions - it just needs to find its audience. Personally, I would focus on increasing the usability of the pages you've created so far. Snerfling 19:02, 15 May 2007 (PDT)

You're right. Why don't we just put the new layout on hold until 10,000 articles or the top 25,000 on alexa. I think more word of mouth/google results to draw people to centiare then an effortless form filling to create a good looking listing would bring us to that goal by the end of the summer.

Down the road I might be able to actually make associates/ad revenue or even better sell a country for a few grand after showing it gets X thousand hits a day :) Garrett 20:06, 15 May 2007 (PDT)

Forms 2.0

You might want to take a look at this new MW forms package. I'm going to be installing it shortly to see if it will work with Centiare's sem tags and other extensions. Snerfling 08:20, 16 May 2007 (PDT)

Compete rank

My awesome firefox tool bar added the "compete rank" to my browser showing exactly how many unique page views a site gets per day. We're ranked 880,000 thousand and get 986 unique visitors per day. I'm sure google analytics tells you this already but I thought the site as a whole got more like 5,000 hits a day? College doesn't start until the fall which means marketing marketing... eventual riches. We should start thinking viral. [4] Garrett 13:37, 16 May 2007 (PDT)

Interesting - looks like something similar to Alexa. Did you get the email I sent you regarding biz ops? Btw, where are you going to college? Snerfling 15:36, 16 May 2007 (PDT)

widgety

There are million's of scripts/widget's out there but since you've already created a bunch and have them queued up for FA do you mind if I incorporate my sharethis/html/ads/semantic box into your previously created content? And thank you so much for the business advice, it's greatly appreciated :) Garrett 18:24, 17 May 2007 (PDT)

Knock yourself out - I set them up just to get started. Snerfling 20:03, 17 May 2007 (PDT)

RSS - Moved from OMG Talk Page

Extension:SimpleFeed I loaded it and ran a test here, but it doesn't seem to be working; the RSS widget that Garrett suggested renders much better. Let me know if you can get it working properly and/or whether Garrett's works better either way.

I think the SimplePie library needs to be installed to get this RSS feed parser to work.

SimplePie

It will be better than the RSS Include that Garrett and I have been using because the feed content is included in the page source and the search engines see a fresh page of content every time they crawl. It will help populate empty pages with content. IF you can get it working will you set the default number of feeds to 15 instead of 5.--OmniMediaGroup 07:25, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

A few weeks ago I had tried to install/run SimplePie's MW extension from their own web site before you referenced the MW-meta SP extension. In both instances I couldn't get it to work, so I ended up deleting the entire set of files off the server. (That's why it's not rendering at all.)

Are you positive SP will work better than the RSS widget Garrett found? If so, I'll make yet another effort (3rd time's the charm?) to get the SP reader going. Snerfling 07:53, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

Absolutely positive! PHP parsing adds (writes) RSS content to the Centiare page source. The javascript (Garrett's widget) only displays content from another site. I'm confident you can make this happen. Fingers crossed!!--OmniMediaGroup 08:09, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

OK, one more time. If I have any problems again, I'll contact the MW and/or SP developers directly for assistance. Snerfling 09:06, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

Alright, it's finally working! While some others had commented that they also couldn't install the extension, there were some recommendations by another who had slightly tweaked the procedures to get it to work. Have fun with it. Snerfling 09:34, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

Success, thank you!--OmniMediaGroup 09:39, 18 May 2007 (PDT)

templates

I templated every aspect of a widget page minus the unique script and the page size went from ~2000 bytes down to 750. Can google still pick up on the code behind the page to pagerank my listings? Garrett 11:59, 19 May 2007 (PDT)

I have no idea if they're going to work as I just did replace all from wikipedia to centiare and hit save. I kinda sorta kind I might kinda know what I might be doing maybe. Garrett 19:53, 20 May 2007 (PDT)

AdSizes

I noticed some adsense experimentation with the ad sizes. The following are the allowable ad sizes.

The adsense code needs to be modified in four places to change the size of the ad.

google_ad_client = "pub-5512298628457000";
google_ad_width = 120;
google_ad_height = 240;
google_ad_format = "120x240_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel = "";
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "0066CC";
google_color_text = "000000";
google_color_url = "008000";

--OmniMediaGroup 09:59, 21 May 2007 (PDT)

Muchas gracias - you are the maestro. I finally applied for my very own Adsense account today, so I'll be able to swap out your client ID for mine shortly. Snerfling 10:02, 21 May 2007 (PDT)

Wikipedia Review

Is their any alternative to moving the Directory:GlassBeadGame article to Directory:Wikipedia Review? I am not owner or even an admin of WR and do not seek to speak on their behalf. I believe by moving the article I become the only person at WR who can edit the the article. GlassBeadGame 19:56, 21 May 2007 (PDT)

In this case, we have three options:

Centiare allows non-owners to create directory listings with the knowledge that they will be transfered when the real owners appear (eg OMG created content for celebrities). You could create/maintain WR until the owner(s) elected to take control of their Centiare listing.
Create another entity - we allow virtual DBAs (doing business as). See Directory:KJ Kitchens for an example.
Delete the directory listing and use your anonymous user page.

Let me know what you'd like to do. Snerfling 03:32, 22 May 2007 (PDT)