Directory talk:Gregory J. Kohs

Fundamental Questions/Anecdotes/Critiques

(This is also posted on the proposals page)

I like this whole centaire thing. The general idea is solid. The businesses, personal pages, and places (BPP) to some extent are all tailor made for "the free directory" I personally beleive in the hive mentality to an extent but realize serious restrictions need to be placed so the hive doesn't implode.

• Everything besides BPP is found on wikipedia with a 5 year headstart and tens of millions of edits. I think a good policy for non-BPP is a brief two/three paragraph summary lifted from the opening section of a wikipedia article and cleaned up/sourced. (i.e. I am a boxer, In the future there will hopefully be thousands of other boxers, there should be a central page)

• Can you legally display copyrighted images without a fairuse tag?

• this site promotes the POV so here I go. You're business model is flawed. The Ads on centiare weaken the overall feel immensely putting the site danerously close to a geocite/xanga. Instead, go on attack of the show a few more times, get interviewed my a magazine. Once a base of 50,000 (just throwing out a number) members join charge 4.99 for a personal page and 19.99 for a business. You're selling this site, make it cool to have a page. Ipods are no better than roxio players but which one is cool? Exactly. Down the road I see Centiare:The free Directory

• (Again no offense) The internet is littered with the bodies of dead or mentally retarded wikis. The winner (only wikipedia so far) and losers are seperated by a very fine line. Centaire is at a point were it will either exponentially increase or falter and become a blip on archive.org. I don't want to see blipage.

• On to the fun stuff - Hard hitting financial questions (not to pry, just help) - Is this for-profit or non-profit? With the ads I'm assuming for profit. Servers are expensive. Hell, one image server can be 20K. Do you have venture capital supporting you? Angel investor or firm? When cash flow dries up everything dries up. At this stage centiare is still so small the servers are probably not too much of a problem but expand a few terabytes and it's a different story.

To conclude. I envision a facebook, wikipedia, business profile hybrid becoming a dominant force of the internet. Dominant = putting the kids through college, and of course a porsche 911 turbo with chrono package. I am an experienced wiki editor with 4 years investment experience ranging from unit investment trusts to exchange traded funds (and an IQ of 139). Getting in on the ground floor of something big would be beneficial for my dream of a house in the hills and a trophy wife. I'm here to help. Garrett 15:45, 1 February 2007 (PST)

See my response at the water cooler. Snerfling 17:58, 1 February 2007 (PST)

My suggestions and critiques

I had a great phone chat with Gregory a few days back and want to share a few of my own ideas here, and expand on the things about which we spoke.

• This cannot be a clone of Wikipedia, nor should it try to be. Pages other than People, Place or Business name pages should not exist here. (more on that below) Three distinct namespaces: People, Place (BRIEF descriptions of cities, states/provinces/regions and nations) and Business namespaces should be sufficient. The generic use of “Directory:” for everything was a mistake, and is not easily linkable.

• Creating business pages here is not intuitive. I know how to create wiki pages because I’ve done it many times before. Cutting and pasting the “fake” name and business pages was easy for me, but will not be for a majority of people. Other sites are far easier, and faster. See LinkedIN and Naymz.com. I created pages on each within minutes. Gregory said he’s looked into something like this.

• Apparently, the creation of pages like Directory:Ask the Doctors/alpha-Mannosidosis are meant to generate hits and a higher ranking from sites like Google and Yahoo. Two points here: 1) I hope you know that Google and other search engines are wise to this strategy and take steps to de-list sites that deliberately try this to increase hits and rankings in this way. And 2) Adding fluff and chaff like this to a so-called business site degrades it. When someone takes a look at the “recent” entries and sees a bunch of nonsense like this (and Hollywood actors, and watermelon, and recipes) they will leave and not return. I would recommend that the pointless daily creation of fluff articles end, and that all People, Place and Business name articles be saved and the rest junked. Having 65,000 pages of crap is not a benefit. Having 65,000 pages about separate businesses IS something to brag about. (I say this, knowing that apparently a family member of Gregory’s is well-meaningly creating these pages. Oops. Sorry! No personal offense intended.)

• I second the idea above that eventually it cost a minimal amount to create business-related pages here. I think most would pay a one-time fee. Other sites charge recurring fees which discourage their use. This would be a draw for this site.

• It is nearly impossible to network here. I hunted for 10 minutes for others in my profession who have signed up here. I finally searched by my profession’s NUMBER I.D. and found similar businesses. That is not reasonable. Categories should have been employed (such as [[Category:Attorneys]]; [[Category:Marketing]]; [[Category:Website designers]]) rather than this rather odd categorization/numbering system that’s been used (or use both.) Without an easy categorization system, the usefulness of this site is far, far diminished. If this site is for only I.T. nerds, then I retract this idea. If the site is for real businesspeople, then this system needs to be rethought.

• The huge problem with Wikipedia is that it was created by an anarchist who believed in starting up “The Machine” and walking away, “hoping” that people of good sense would prevail and ONE DAY create a clutter-free, conflict-free Website. As I told Gregory, businesses don’t work that way, nor does real life. Real, solid rules need to be created - by the site owner(s), not rules arising from hundreds of 450,000-word, pointless “policy debates” led by power-mad, increasingly dictatorial “admins”.) These rules should state clearly that conflict, vandalism, libel, and spam will not be tolerated. The only way to do this is to have strict rules, and enforce them. Anarchy leads to tin pot dictators, not to paradise. At least not in the business world or in the rest of the real (non-Internet) world. Sorry if that’s a shock to some. I won’t join a wiki in which we’re going to get into extended peeing contests about content and style and whatever else. Been there - on Wikipedia. Done with that.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but that’s it for now. Nhprman 22:06, 24 January 2008 (PST)