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

Wikicompany: a global business platform

Author(s): Jama Poulsen
License: GFDL v1.2
Language: English
Slides: {{{slides}}}
Video: {{{video}}}
Note: presentation CANCELLED (since the author is unable to attend Wikimania)

About the author(s): Jama Poulsen is an Urban Planner by education, but should probably be considered more of a free software hacker. He is passionate about flamenco music, and likes to play a bit of flamenco guitar himself. At first he did not see the revolutionary relevance of Wiki's, but is now a true believer of the two-way web.

Abstract: {{{abstract}}}

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

What is the purpose of Wikicompany?
1. Vision
2. Potential users
3. Information features
4. Wikipedia symbiosis and differences
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)
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
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
What are the editing guidelines on Wikicompany?
1. Wikicompany:Policy
2. Images: logo image constraints, remote image extension
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?
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.
Open issues
1. Sector category labelling for: manufacturers of X, retailers for X, etc.
2. Non-english site creations (category structure synchronization)
3. Commercialization
Missing functionality
1. Advanced category browsing
2. Advanced searching (beyond full-text)
3. Topic-based map searching (eg. "show me the airlines of Germany")
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
Conclusion and questions