Wikimania05/Paper-JP1

This page is part of the Proceedings of Wikimania 2005, Frankfurt, Germany.

Wikicompany: a global business platform

• Author(s):'' {{{...}}}
• License: Jama Poulsen
• Slides: Jama Poulsen
• Video: {{{radio}}}
• 'Note:' {{{slides}}}

About the slides: {{{agenda}}}

About license

GFDL v1.2

<include>[[Category:Wikimani templates{{#blocked:}}]]</include>

Abstract

Wikicompany is a MediaWiki based, worldwide business directory, licensed under the GNU FDL.

The presentation will explain the basic ideas behind Wikicompany, and show how these ideas are implemented in practice.

Presentation outline

1. What is the purpose of Wikicompany?
   1. Vision
   2. Potential users
   3. Information features
   4. Wikipedia symbiosis and differences
2. How can new company profiles be created?
   1. Free text input (using a substitution template)
   2. Form-based input (with automatic category creation)
   3. The different use of the categorization system (compared to Wikipedia)
3. What is done to improve readability and usability?
   1. Some forced structuring of articles and categories is good for consistency
   2. Consistent information box templates are used everywhere
   3. A clean extension of the monobook CSS style
   4. No over-linking in articles
   5. Years in the "history" section are bolded
   6. Mozilla firefox search-toolbar plugin
4. What is being done to prevent bot-spam?
   1. No anonymous editing allowed
   2. Captcha (image verification) for account creations
   3. Mediawiki anti-spam features
5. What are the editing guidelines on Wikicompany?
   1. Wikicompany:Policy
   2. Images: logo image constraints, remote image extension
6. Blog feed integration in MediaWiki.
   1. What software is used for this?
   2. How can new Planets be created?
   3. How can the Planet feed subscriptions be changed?
7. Geo mapping
   1. Geo extension to geo-code company locations, and to refer to street maps and nearby companies.
   2. Google map extension to render country, city and street maps.
8. Open issues
   1. Sector category labelling for: manufacturers of X, retailers for X, etc.
   2. Non-english site creations (category structure synchronization)
   3. Commercialization
9. Missing functionality
   1. Advanced category browsing
   2. Advanced searching (beyond full-text)
   3. Topic-based map searching (eg. "show me the airlines of Germany")
10. Future functionality
    1. Financial extension (for tracking key company figures per year)
    2. REST web services API
    3. JavaScript / AJAX interface improvements (eg. autocomplete-suggests for the go/search input field)
    4. S5 presentation tool intergration
11. Conclusion and questions