Overall "Standards & Rules"

Karl, I have examined the site pretty carefully today, and I am seeing as a result of that the following "priority" issues that we should address as quickly as possible (before much more content is added):

Income formatting in the Infobox

Karl, please take a look at this question. --MyWikiBiz 13:10, 15 November 2006 (PST)

Info Boxes

We need to devise final Infobox Standards for the following entities:

Public for-profit corporations
Private for-profit firms (which may be satisfied above)
Non-profit entities
Human beings (whether they are business officers, celebrities, artists, or job-seekers)

I think the for-profit infobox_company works equally well for either public or private firms. There's only a few major sections that need data elements - public information is merely a subset within certain sections. All one needs to do for private firm is eliminate unnecessary data references within those respective sections.--Centiare 14:05, 15 November 2006 (PST)

In terms of other info_boxes, the sky really is the limit. As I indicated to you, the Directory potential is much greater than just operating enterprises and/or individuals. For example, with the semantic tagging components, there's nothing stopping anyone from creating a Lexis/Nexis facility, or any other type of database application.

That being said, it would be quite exhausting to try and create every type of infobox one might conceivably need. I'd rather try and harness the wiki open collaboration model to encourage others to help design & publish infoboxes. They should be subject to the same review stds as WP before they are release to the general public. --Centiare 14:18, 15 November 2006 (PST)

I agree with you in principle. I just think to get a really good headstart on populating this database with the information of "interested first adopters", they should have at least the three basic Infoboxes to choose from -- (A) For-profit corporations, (B) Non-profits, and (C) Human beings. If these are pretty well designed from the get-go, then that minimizes the likelihood of massive re-formatting by all our active members at some point down the road. If I knew how to create a Box format from scratch, I would be happy to do it, but currently I don't. Should that be my next self-improvement task?

For example, for "Human beings", I think it would be appropriate to have Birthplace, Birthdate, Marital status, Children, NAICS code of primary occupation, Standard Occupational Code, Employer, Title, Residence location (at least city, maybe street address), Copyrighted works, Skills, and Hobbies. --MyWikiBiz 19:14, 15 November 2006 (PST)

OK, I'll try and finish up NPO & Human infoboxes this week. Armed with 3 basic std infoboxes, we'll at least have infobox style guidelines for others to adapt/expand for different applications. --Centiare 07:30, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Infobox Person

Take a look at Carl Sagan -- there was a pretty comprehensive "Infobox Person" over at WP. I think that will do nicely for any "people" who want to be in Centiare. Another question, though -- when people want to take "ownership" of their article on Centiare, it will be just like the corporate process, right? They'll prove it's themself, and then the main space article gets cut and pasted to "their" Directory space? --MyWikiBiz 20:35, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Yes, the process is the same. In fact, all individuals, living or dead, who have commercial value/rights, should be only be placed in the Directory namespace. That means John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, etc (ie their images are copyrighted and their estates generate income) should be placed under Directory, while Shakespeare, Newton, et al should be placed in the Main page area.

All living people should be under Directory since they have resumes, CVs, etc. I guess it gets tricky for US Presidents, since presumably they're not looking for another job, but OTOH Senators/Reps/Generals almost always join private sector firms in DC.

The basic rule-of-thumb is that the Directory namespace should be used for advocacy, in the strict sense that 'ownership' rights exist for property/name/image, etc., and therefore, owners don't have to be neutral.

There's no reason to place them first in the Main page area and subject them to open editing; again, they own their image. If an editor wants to create an entry on someone's behalf, fine. Turning over exclusive edit, or enabling group edit privileges, for the respective Directory entry, will be no different than any other entity. It's a std Centiare admin function once the ID is validated. --Centiare 07:34, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Rules of Style - Titles

And I think we need to devise Rules of Style for:

Names of human beings (am I Greg Kohs, Gregory Kohs, Gregory J. Kohs, or Gregory James Kohs?)
Names of companies (is it International Business Machines Corporation, International Business Machines Corp., IBM Corporation, IBM Corp., or IBM?)
Occupational titles (the semantic search is really thrown off when someone might be "CEO", "Chairman", and/or "CEO and Chairman" (or, "Chairman and CEO"; or, "CEO & Chairman" with an ampersand))

Without establishing early and firmly some rigid and comprehensive structures that work well, we're going to be facing potentially massive re-formatting in three months' time, updating the work of many, many different visitors/owners. --MyWikiBiz 13:41, 15 November 2006 (PST)

Agreed. With regards to IBM, et al, this is a good example of the need for redirects. (It's also the reason why the info box has a "legal name" element as well eg Karl Nagel & Co. vs Karl Nagel & Co., LLC.)

In reference to names/titles, if they don't have their own page/article or they're not captured as a data element, then I don't see the need for consistency. That is, if foo uses CEO and bar uses Pres & CEO, who cares?

See Directory:IBM key people as an example. Now, if titles were being captured, it would be another story. --Centiare 14:05, 15 November 2006 (PST)

DOH! We are tracking titles. However, since they are subjective, there's no good way of enforcing consistency. From a search & reporting standpoint, one merely has to search on key_person1, 2, etc. regardless of the respective titles to get a listing of who are key people. (That is, click on the mag glass & eliminate the person's name - you'll get all key_people1, 2, etc.) Again, see IBM as an example of this facility. --Centiare 14:12, 15 November 2006 (PST)

A "Style Guide" might merely say that, ideally, a person should be accorded one title, if possible, to optimize semantic searching. The more that users stick to this guideline, the more likely their data will be "found" by people using Centiare's search utility. Furthermore, if in doubt about the "preferred" ranking of assigning titles (and what words and acronyms to use), the following list could/should be used to make uniform the many differences that appear in the working world:

Chair (as opposed to Chairperson, Chairman, Chairwoman, etc.)
CEO (as replacement for Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, President, etc.)
CFO (as opposed to Chief Financial Officer, Controller, etc.)
COO (as replacement for Chief Operations Officer, Senior Operations Manager, etc.)
CIO (as opposed to Chief Information Officer, Senior Technologist, MIS Director, etc.)
SVP (as opposed to Senior Vice President, Executive Vice President, Regional Director, etc.)
VP (as replacement for Vice President, Senior Manager, etc.)
Manager (general middle-management catch-all title)

Adherence to such a "Style Guide" should by no means be considered mandatory, nor a perjorative assessment of any person's "actual" title at their company. It is merely a mechanism to make semantic searching more productive for more Centiare users. If only 3 companies call their CIO the "Data Ninja", that's really cute, but not very useful to Centiare users who are looking for "CIO" types of personnel in the Denver area. --MyWikiBiz 19:33, 15 November 2006 (PST)

Would you like to create the Title style guide? --Centiare 07:30, 16 November 2006 (PST)

It would be my pleasure to do so. --MyWikiBiz 11:02, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Corporate logos

I tried to upload the IBM corporate logo (copied from Wikipedia -- let them sort out the copyright issues), but the Centiare server said that .PNG was an invalid format. Do you have any comments about how/whether/why/what we should do about corporate logos and other images? --MyWikiBiz 13:49, 15 November 2006 (PST)

My hosting guru is working on it as we speak. It should be fixed by tomorrow, then we can start uploading different files (jpg, pdf, doc, xls, ppt). This is one of the open issues I mentioned last week. --Centiare 14:09, 15 November 2006 (PST)

NAICS 2 and 3

Karl, what about Portal:Information and the fact that "IBM" doesn't show up in the Sector Listings, because IBM lists a "51xxx" NAICS code as a secondary code, not primary? Don't you think users will want to be able to see all companies that match to a NAICS, even if secondary or tertiary code? (Personally, I think three NAICS code levels should be enough, but who's to say that we should stop there?) Anyway, I tried to revise the "ASK" code, but failed. --MyWikiBiz 19:47, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Good catch. I tried to run a quickie report including both naics1 & 2, but it only seems to work on naics1 OR 2 OR 3... (I left it at 2). The documentation for ASK is located here. I'll have to read through it again, a little closer this time, but I'm pretty sure it should be able to generate the reports we need. --Centiare 21:11, 16 November 2006 (PST)

Questions & Problems

Take a look at the editing code on Directory:Gregory_J._Kohs. Why is the "residence" field info not rendering in the infobox? --MyWikiBiz 06:29, 3 December 2006 (PST)

Thanks for making the changes to the infobox. I guess it demanded a semantic tag? --MyWikiBiz 04:44, 4 December 2006 (PST)

It's going to be easier to see when you've made a comment to me if you direct them to MyWikiBiz talk page, rather than the one at Directory_talk:Gregory J. Kohs. I'm always signed in under the MyWikiBiz account, so that will signal me when I have new messages. --MyWikiBiz 18:19, 3 December 2006 (PST)

Why doesn't Carl Sagan appear in the ASK Sector Listings part of Portal:Educational_Services? I'm confused. --MyWikiBiz 18:39, 3 December 2006 (PST)

Is there any way to get the links on Special:Specialpages to include Directory space pages in their results? --MyWikiBiz 04:44, 4 December 2006 (PST)

User talk:Centiare

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