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)

Geo Location

Karl, as I was driving to work today, I stopped into a car wash. It then hit me that we really, really should include the latitude/longitude coordinates field in our Infoboxes, even for Persons, I suppose. The main reason is that I truly envision that eventually Centiare will fully encorporate a "Google Maps" type of application, and this will be the best way to pinpoint businesses, and of course, all of their branch/store/franchise locations. Do you agree? If so, I would like to leave it to you to modify the templates to include the "correct" lat/long labels. --MyWikiBiz 07:40, 7 December 2006 (PST)

Done. Simply add Template:Mapit-US-cityscale to any page, along with the specified coordinates. Then, add the semantically tagged coordinates to the reference element in any infobox. See Centiare for example.

Questions:

For the lat/long semantic attributes, do we want decimal coordinates (as used in the template), or traditional? Right now I'm using traditional.
What level of granularity do we need? I used Huntington Beach for Centiare, but it only provides a general view. Centiare 09:29, 7 December 2006 (PST)

Personally, I prefer the decimal method of coordinates. I'll bet that they would work better in the triple-search tool (as one could just enter the coordinate detail as deep as they care to go -- no decimal, a tenth, a hundredth, etc.). I imagine that writing an ASK query for degrees, minutes, and seconds might be a pain in the butt, but writing ASKs for linear, numeric decimals would be a relative cinch. Positive and negative numbers are also more easy to build a query around than N, S, E, and W. Also, decimal just seems so much more "machine-friendly", and that's the whole point of semantic tagging -- get human labor out of the equation.

Done. Note the human readable form used for display. This technique is similar to using shorter product/service descriptions while utilizing full NAICS descriptions for semantic tags. Centiare 11:36, 7 December 2006 (PST)

Granularity, I'm not sure what you mean? I think each user/editor can be encouraged to get as specific as they are comfortable with. If a person doesn't want to show which house they live in, they can probably plot the specific coordinates for the center of their neighborhood, or the city hall of their postal address city. Me, I don't seem to mind pinpointing my house, and it's kind of fun drawing out those decimal coordinates to the fifth or sixth place, to try to nail it. Once you get the Centiare page changed to decimal coordinates, I will try the Template:Mapit myself on various pages. Looking at the Template now, it seemed a bit intimidating and maybe overkill with all the external mapping options. --MyWikiBiz 11:17, 7 December 2006 (PST)

I wouldn't concern myself with the template itself. Just referencethe template from within an article with the decimal coordinates - as shown at the bottom of the Centiare page.

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 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

Infobox

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)

Actually, a lot more fundamental than that: while the existing infobox_person had a reference to 'residence' in the definition list, it didn't have a 'residence' variable within the actual template itself - simply an oversight from the original author. I just had to add a residence variable, along with contact/reference variables for the semantic tags. The template itself is the first place one should look if Directory pages aren't rendering properly. Centiare 07:16, 4 December 2006 (PST)

This is a reflection on my continued inadequate understanding of the details of constructing and checking on Infoboxes in their original code. I'm going to really have to spend some time learning more. Either that, or just give up the technical stuff to the experts and start working on promotion/marketing . . . more in my skill set. --MyWikiBiz 08:32, 4 December 2006 (PST)

I'm a big believer in specialization. I think you now have a good understanding of how things work. Rather than take the extra step & become proficient at development, it might be a better use of your time to focus on marketing/sales.

I was reviewing your Tutorial entries and they look very informative. This is the type of walk-through guideline style we will need to (verbally) explain the working mechanics of the site. Combined with the ability to articulate the business rationale & (world-wide) info distribution opportunities, you'll be a great evangelist. Centiare 08:53, 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)

My mistake. I commented to your gallery experiment, and then kept posting there instead of to your user a/c. Centiare 07:16, 4 December 2006 (PST)

ASK

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)

It might be helpful to take an extra moment to see if you can resolve some of these questions first eg template-residence, ASK-person, et al. ASK was searching on company_name instead of person_*_name, as well as city instead of birth_city, etc. The key to most problems is in the details - this is true not only of semantic tags, but templating. Centiare 07:46, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Again, my ignorance of the detailed architecture gives way to "run crying to Karl" when confused. I will try to get more accustomed to these devilish details. My query, though, does bring us to an interesting point -- do you think that our NAICS Portal ASK framework should be expanded to include things like People? And (ignorance again), is such multi-referencing possible within ASK? (I'll predict that the answer is "yes".) --MyWikiBiz 08:32, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Hehe. Of course - if we use NAICS as occupational categories, then resumes, artist/actor listings, etc all become suitable search criteria within the Portals. There's a reason Tim Berners-Lee & other top thinkers know that semantic tagging is the future. Once a piece of data is captured and is machine readable to a specified level of granularity, you can do anything you want with the info.

Btw, remember that ASK can be run from anywhere, so users aren't limited to searching on NAICS categories. (Though that is the preference with Portals.) For example, someone could easily run an ASK query for all deaths on December 20. Centiare 08:59, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Take a look at the bottom of Portal:List. Is there a way to build this ASK query, so that it's not just showing "Companies" that have tagged NAICS_Code1, but any page that has done so? --MyWikiBiz 10:23, 11 December 2006 (PST)

Special Pages

Longpages

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)

Allpages. Just select Directory from the list. This is also a good place to search for images, templates, etc. Centiare 07:16, 4 December 2006 (PST)

I think here you may have misunderstood me, Karl. Allpages isn't what I desire. What I'd like to do (as an example) is look at Special:Longpages, but be able to see lengthy Directory pages in the results. If you look at Special:Newpages, you see that when you get the mainspace results, you have the option of then looking at different spaces, including Directory. Would be still even better if you could search ALL space for long pages. --MyWikiBiz 08:32, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Got it. Both newpages & longpages are standalone .php modules. I can create a new extension by adding the optional search component in newpages to a Centiare version of longpages and then tie it back into the Special pages summary view. Another thing for my todo list. Centiare 09:21, 4 December 2006 (PST)

Update Took the lazy approach - just hacked Special:Longpages so that it reports Directory listings as well. If the list ever gets unwieldy, I can add the newpages selection box. Centiare 12:24, 4 December 2006 (PST)

LinkSearch

Another great module that Wikipedia has that Centiare apparently has not yet loaded is "Search web links", which allows you to do a global search of the Wikipedia architecture for ALL outbound hyperlinks, based on a domain-level query. That's how we discover that Wikipedia has about 3,000 outbound links to Wikia.com. --MyWikiBiz 09:59, 4 December 2006 (PST)

It appears Special:Linksearch is not part of the most recent MW distribution. I could whip up something similar if you really need it, or we could wait until it shows up in the next release. Centiare 11:29, 4 December 2006 (PST)

List of preferred/approved semantic tags

Once we have finalized the four or five "root" infoboxes, would it make some sense to have a Tutorial page for users to see a master list of all the "Centiare-approved" semantic labels? I want to make sure that users are not confused and quickly realize the big mistake it would be to erroneously tag their infobox with "Key People1:=", when it should be "Key_Person1:=". Users are, of course, free to make up their own tags, but they should be aware of the correct spelling and typographical construct of the best tags. --MyWikiBiz 10:52, 6 December 2006 (PST)

Good idea. Both Tutorial & Help pages will expand as we add more information. Feel free to set up the initial infobox overview/list/policy. We can build from there. Centiare 10:57, 6 December 2006 (PST)

Clarifying

For starters, I've been so busy as an advertising copywriter since my internship there, that I hadn't bothered to change the bio.

What I was contacting you about, which you seem to have ignored in your message, is that you cannot copy Wikipedia articles, even just passages of Wikipedia articles, without acknowledging them as being under the GFDL-license.

Wikipedia articles are of course collaborated on by multiple, often hundreds of people each. Each person owns the copyright to whatever new content they add, whether it's a new paragraph, or just a punctuation mark. It's odd, but that's how it works. But anyway, it's all released under a free license, but one that needs to be acknowledged.

Articles on your site like Latitude, Longitude. Portable Document Format, Directory:Wikimedia Foundation, Directory:The Walt Disney Company/Mickey Mouse, Directory:Carl Sagan, etc are all under this license.

You can use the map images, as they were created by the CIA, and thus are public domain. You should also credit the creators of images like this, which are under copyright by multi-national corporations. -- Zanimum 07:09, 8 December 2006 (PST)

Nicholas, thank you for the follow-up. Two issues: (a) copyright, and (b) fair use. Right now, we're just cleaning up demonstration entries - including the copyright notice itself. (It's from another commercial information site we control.)

We may decide to allow GFDL for non-Directory listings. (However, our goal is to not compete with Wikipedia as an excellent NPOV resource, so we don't anticipate a lot of energy being expended on the Main pages.) As to the Directory entries you noted above, these will either be modified/edited to such an extent to stand-alone as new material or qualify under fair-use provisions.

Either way, the handful of demonstration entries are merely that: placeholders to demonstrate the (1) user-owned Directory features; and (2) semantic tagging capabilities. All new material will be unique to Centiare.

By the way, congrats on your internship. If you haven't already seen it, we have a welcome message to Wikipedians explaining our background and objectives. For all I know, you may be working for one of our media clients up in the Toronto area. Centiare 07:47, 8 December 2006 (PST)

Extensions Wanted

General

It sure would be nice to know if Centiare could accomodate the following extensions, which would be amazingly useful for the right kinds of Centiare users:

The Google Analytics embedder, so users could keep track of traffic statistics to their favorite articles. I'm curious if multiple users can code the same article, and also how it "appears" on the page (if at all).
The YouTube video embedder. Video would really make Centiare pop. (Don't know if this kills the server space, or not, though.)

These are two that my sister and I thought would be really interesting to offer, but I'm sure there are a half-dozen more that would be just as neat. --MyWikiBiz 15:20, 10 December 2006 (PST)

These types of simple extensions are very easy to add. Go ahead and put together a list of others that you would like to see. As for the two above, youTube is ok, but analytics doesn't appear to be working - you can check the author's own site as well. Do you have an example where it's working? Centiare 07:38, 11 December 2006 (PST)

No, I don't have any example of the Google Analytics for MediaWiki working anywhere. Just saw it on their list, and went ga-ga, thinking of the opportunity of its use. It looks like this post suggests that you'd have to add it to one of the MediaWiki "skins" to get it to work, but presumably, only within that skin. --MyWikiBiz 08:13, 11 December 2006 (PST)

That's a modification to the core extension that requires a hack to the underlying MediaWiki code. You never, ever want to do that. Well, maybe in extreme circumstances where one knows exactly what's happening and controls the output. I've done a few to suit very specific purposes, but they're tested extensively and well documented. You definitely don't want to do something like that for some generic hook extension.

I'm going to go ahead and remove the extension+call. If you see it working anywhere, we can go ahead an add it at a later date. In the future, we should probably verify an extension is working before adding to a wish list or installing it (my fault - I assumed you had been using it.) Centiare 08:33, 11 December 2006 (PST)

Maps

Speaking of extensions, which Google maps did you want to include to pinpoint your address from lat/long? The Yahoo map link from MWB looks like it's correctly identifying your address. (The Yahoo map ID is '4', whereas Google is just reading the coords - can you find their option code?) Btw, your pop-up ad appears to interfering with the page rendering. Centiare 08:08, 11 December 2006 (PST)

Google Zoom Level is discussed as a "trial and error" right here. Was your question meant to say, which (of Map, Satellite, or Hybrid) form of Google Maps did I want to include? Actually, what do you mean "include" -- as in, an actual map rendering in the Infobox? I don't know if we need to go there yet. --MyWikiBiz 08:26, 11 December 2006 (PST)

Any of them. The link to the Yahoo map shows your location. Of course, we can get the same thing from Google from your address, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the coordinates. As to placement, we can provide links or we can embed (like the youTube extension). Centiare 08:37, 11 December 2006 (PST)

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