Talk:Interwiki map/Wikinvest

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Wikinvest is an investing wiki, with articles about companies and "concepts" -- issues and trends that impact companies, such as "rising oil prices" or "the success of Apple's iphone". It also has a neat feature we're calling a "wikichart" that allows users to annotate a stock chart with wiki snippets to explain why the company's stock price moved up or down. I think this could be a useful complement to some of the articles about companies on Wikipedia, given the different focus. Wikipedia articles tend to focus on a company from a cultural, anthrolopological, or histical perspective; discussing some of strategic and commercial issues facing companies today is outside the scope of being an encyclopedia. However, it's a topic that a great many readers of Wikipedia's company articles might be interested in. As a comparison, check out Wikipedia's article on Monsanto and compare it to Wikinvest's. Hopefully, you'll agree that the two article are complementary, but not duplicative, and therefore an interwiki link could be useful to Wikipedia editors and readers. I would like to propose adding Wikinvest to the interwiki map with the prefix [[wikinvest:]] Full disclosure -- I am a full-time wikinvestor...

According to the recently proposed framework for evaluating new interwiki members, Wikinvest:

(1) Provides clear and relevant usefulness to the Wikimedia projects, specifically articles about companies or issues that impact the global economy.
(2) Although we don't have a long history, we can be trusted not to spam Wikipedia projects. I respect that as someone involved in the project, I shouldn't create links to wikinvest from Wikipedia articles, instead proposing them on the discussion page for other editors to consider.
(3) Wikinvest is not GFDL content.
(4) Wikinvest is a wiki.
(5) I think we have a pretty decent amount of content -- come check it out.

Parkerconrad 00:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Nice analysis of the 5 axes of suitability. I went and checked it out (to the extent of registering an ID... grr, it wouldn't let me have "lar", too short, IDs have to be 6 chars long!) and the technology used here on top of MW is quite remarkable. This site pushes MediaWiki quite far, at least from the user experience viewpoint. The charts are very (astoundingly) neat. The concept of reputation management is also novel to me and is worth investigating further, I'd love to see some studies on how well it works. A very nifty site technically. However I am not prepared to add this myself without some feedback from others leading to a consensus that adding it is appropriate, because I have pretty serious reservations about the licensing and some other things. The content is very much not free, contributors give up their rights to whatever they write, and unlike, say w:LUGNET which did this (back in 1997 or so) as a way to make compilation feasible, it's for profit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with profit, but I had a hard time wading through the licensing terms. Also in the userpreferences, the defaults are set to allow spamming the user's email with stuff (news and special offers etc), you have to know to turn that off. Given these reservations I want to hear from other people before I myself would add this. Other admins may of course view things differently, but that's how things work here, any admin can add. But it's a very neat site. Disclaimer, Parkerconrad contacted me directly to ask me to take a look, so I did. I also went and looked at ValueWiki, which was recently added, for contrast. That site has ads, but uses the GFDL for content licensing. It also doesn't push the tech envelope nearly as far as wikinvest does, although it does a nice job of integrating blogs and chats and suchlike. ++Lar: t/c 00:48, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Lar - glad you liked the site. Don't want to insert myself into the discussion too much, but as other folks haven't chimed in yet I thought I'd try to explain some of our thinking around the license. Is there any good way to get some attention from other admins to kick-start the discussion? Anyway, if language in Wikinvest's terms of use seems Orwellian, I apologize -- unfortunately, that's a straight copy of what our lawyer gave us, and we don't have $$$ to pay for revisions / additional drafts so we kind of just took the stock stuff he gave us... More specifically in regards to GFDL - we struggled with this one. In talking to a couple of the folks we were hoping to get to contribute, they were opposed to GFDL. Basically, the thinking was that our reputation system (which gives "credit" to top contributors) combined with GFDL would be particularly pernicious. While they felt they might be willing to have content directly associate with their name on our site (where they can check out the look and feel, etc.) they didn't like the idea that they were giving anyone, anywhere, license to republish work associated with their name. So, while contributors still maintain copyright on their work (they do not give up those rights), they grant us a non-exclusive license to use their work - contributors are free to grant others the same license to their contributions but it does not happen automatically as a consequence of contributing to Wikinvest. Parkerconrad 21:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the site is really impressive, and I'll send more comments about it to you by email. However, as far as listing it in the Interwiki map, I think having a free content license -- or at least making an effort to convince contributors to release their work under such a license -- would go a long way toward convincing people here on Meta that the project should be listed on the Interwiki map. I also agree with Xaosflux that your project should grow a little more before being added. It looks great though, and I wish you luck. Andre (talk) 22:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you like the site. In Wikinvest's defense, I should point out that many interwiki members are not free content and yet are listed on the interwiki despite this fact. Additionally, from a depth of content perspective, ValueWiki might be a useful comparison -- ValueWiki is another wiki in the finance space which was added to the interwiki map about a month or two ago:
      • ValueWiki has (by my count) about a dozen articles (compared to Wikinvest's over 500). Valuewiki claims ~76K articles, but these article merely contain auto-generated links to Yahoo Finance and other sites.
      • Value wiki has had fewer than 100 edits in the last 30 days. Wikinvest has averaged over 200 edits PER DAY in that same time periodParkerconrad 22:31, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Convincing arguments. I'll add it to the map, but first you need to explain to me what the syntax should be. That is to say, what format are URLs in: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/$1 or what? There seem to be other pages in other virtual directories. Andre (talk) 00:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Not so fast please, I'm still concerned about the mail settings. The default behaviour seems to be that it will send marketingish mails unless you remember to uncheck that. I'd like to see a broader consensus before I'd support adding this. ++Lar: t/c 03:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • How do we drive this to closure? Were the changes that were suggested made? If so, is that sufficient? I'm of two minds... Also, Andrevan asks a good question about format... ++Lar: t/c 12:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate all the feedback everyone has given on Wikinvest. We at Wikinvest have no intention of selling or otherwise allowing third parties to access our list, so we've actually gone ahead and completely removed the third party emails bucket being discussed. These changes have gone live on the site already. As for your question on the best interwiki link structure, the syntax I'd like to propose is:
  • Hey guys! (Lar, Andre in particular) -- any love for us out there? :) I know a bunch of folks have been discussing citizendium... We've made the change you guys requested to our email policy; can someone add us? Syntax would be: http://www.wikinvest.com/$1. Thanks!

Parkerconrad 15:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • I ADAMANTLY OPPOSE adding you unless I can have userid Lar, down with 6 char userid restrictions!. OK, more seriously, the mail change is a big help. I still have concerns about the license but per your original analysis of fit along the various axes, licensing is the only major one and we do have shortcuts to other wikis that are non free. Based on that I'd be inclined to add this prefix using your suggestion of Wikinvest: ... but I'd like to hear more comments from others to make sure there are no issues I missed. Sorry this is a slow process. I'll add in a week or so (next time I take a pass) if there are no objections and if no one else beats me to it. ++Lar: t/c 13:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • DONE! In honor of his assistance checking out our site, Lar now has a special, one-of-a-kind three letter wikinvest username "lar". I've emailed him the password. Better hold on to that one, Lar -- someday it will be worth quite a lot of money as a collector's item. :) Parkerconrad 07:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why special pages on this wiki are limited to bureaucrats only? I can't even look at your Special:Statistics. MaxSem 16:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have no "edit" button and recentchanges. There is no information how the user can edit it. I failed to recognize it as wiki and hence oppose to add it to our interwiki map. --Aphaia 06:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hmmm... I think you should check again. Not sure what you're doing wrong. You can definitely edit pretty much everything on the site with the exception of the home page -- try looking again for the edit button? Just like on Wikipedia, it's right there at the top of every article, and also every major section break. Recent changes are there also -- you'll see them flash up on the blue bar at the top of the page, and clicking on "more" will take you to the full list of recent changes that you should be familiar with from Wikipedia.

Parkerconrad 16:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to see this dragged out. It's clear to me that this is an addition that is a bit more controversial than most. I had every intention of adding this during the course of this weekend but it seems we still have some more issues to work through. So I'm advocating holding off, and would not support an add in yet. Most addins are not this controversial and I do apologise that this is taking some time but I really do think we need to work through all of these issues first. Hope you understand, Parker... part of the issue is that your team has pushed wiki technology and configuration far away from how most run of the mill wikis are configured, which is neat, (and absolutely not a bad thing!) but which also means more concerns raised as it's not as cut and dried to check things... Note also that just because something is not exactly a run of the mill wiki should not be a block in and of itself, we have things like Google in there which are in no way wikis at all. But the community has concerns which we need to work through. Sorry for being long winded but hey... :) ++Lar: t/c 12:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hey Lar -- so what's next? How do we move toward conclusion / consensus? Is it just a matter of waiting a bit longer? Is there information that I can provide to move this along? My frustration on this is that these latest objections don't seem to make a lot of sense, and they reflect, perhaps, only a few seconds spent on the site. No offense to Aphaia, but Wikinvest is very clearly a wiki, and editable on basically every page... must just have been something he somehow missed in a very brief look at the site. Parkerconrad 05:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think waiting. I'm definitely in the "we should add this" camp at this point. Sure, I'd like to see statistics be accessible to all (it's one of the things I evaluate candidate wikis with) but I don't see it as a showstopper. That it isn't recognisable as a wiki is, to me, part of the neatness. I hope Max and Aphaia (who is a she) will visit in more depth and change their minds. But I'm not going to add it, myself, without clear consensus. Consider that we have several other wikis that have been waiting far longer with far less discussion. That's just how this process works, the volunteer admins who turn up on this list comment and then things happen. I counsel patience. Sorry. ++Lar: t/c 18:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies to Aphaia! Hope you guys can check out the site in a bit more depth soon. Parkerconrad 18:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • As discussed on the MediaWiki mailing list, I oppose this due to legal concerns with your use of the software. The software is MediaWiki, yet you have made no point at that (a must when you use the software) and you have a bunch of pages that are copied directly from Wikipedia, but do not work under the GFDL. See the mailing list for the full discussion. (I also echo most of the other objections). Cbrown1023 talk 12:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I don't think I'm on the mailing list that you reference. Can you direct me to it? I wasn't aware that using the mediawiki software requires attribution, but either way it would seem to be good form to do so -- I'll add an attribution. Is anyone aware if there are policies about what this attribution must look like? Where it should be positioned, etc?
In regard to the pages copied from Wikipedia -- I assume you mean our help pages? There has always been attribution to Wikipedia for this material, I have added a line specifying that this material is GFDL. It reads: Thanks to Wikipedia for sharing their help section and policies with us. This help content is licensed under the GNU GFDL. I hope this answers your objections... Parkerconrad 16:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No offense at all, but this is further proof that you do not understand our licensing. The GFDL requires attribution to the authors, and the author is not "Wikipedia" but the individual users listed in the history. You must link to the history page. The beginning of the thread I was referring to is here, a post made by someone asking if anyone wanted to be a Wikinvest developer. This objection was made about the software, among others further down in the thread. Cbrown1023 talk 23:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, as you point out I guess I didn't understand the licensing requirements. I've corrected on our site for the contents page, and will add in for the other pages (a little trickier, as I don't know exactly which pages stuff came from, but I will do my best!). I hadn't been aware of that thread on the list. To summarize, the objections were: 1) MediaWiki software not properly attributed on the site (which has now been corrected -- big button giving proper credit on every page of the site). and 2) No proper attribution for help page content from Wikipedia, which has been corrected as above. You can see my post back to the wikitech list here. Hopefully this takes care of everything... Parkerconrad 00:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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