User talk:Jonathan Stokes
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General Inquiry
Heya, Very nice site you got here. I'm curious when did you guys start making? I haven't heard of it till just today. Rovo 06:45, 7 December 2006 (PST)
- Thanks! I responded on your Talk Page. Jonathan Stokes 15:02, 7 December 2006 (PST)
Question
I notice from the Recent Changes that you are a regular contributor to this wiki. I am looking for an investing wiki somewhere. Is this the best one or are there other larger ones? It just doesn't seem that big? Also I am in Australia. Is there any reason why this wiki should not be international?--Moonlight Mile 19:34, 11 January 2007 (PST)
- Moonlight Mile, thank you for your message. I am aware of three related investment Wikis. I think the oldest is actually Australia-based: http://www.stockepedia.com . Unfortunately that wiki has been inactive for some time (I'm not sure the site loads anymore). I've also become aware of http://www.wikistock.com which I understand aims to provide information about investing, but not necessarily stock coverage. The last is http://www.wikicompany.com which provides general information about companies, but nothing investment specific.
- On the question of size, as far as I am aware, ValueWiki - even in its humble newborn state - is technically the largest and most active investment wiki out there. In fact, if you discount Wikipedia and Wiktionary, ValueWiki is the 8th largest mediawiki in the world, with 54,000 articles.
- As for Australia, if you know of a data feed for ASX quotes, we can begin listing the ASX immediately. You are absolutely correct that this wiki should be international! We do currently list all Canadian stocks, and are working to include them in our browsing directory. Since you are Australia-savvy, maybe you know how to get the ASX data feed?
- Thanks again for your input. As you have noted, this wiki is very young. Please continue to share any ideas or suggestions as they are greatly valued. Jonathan Stokes 23:30, 11 January 2007 (PST)
- Update: Zach has added the ASX to ValueWiki. Thank you for your input! Jonathan Stokes 19:53, 21 January 2007 (PST)
Hi Johathan
Cracking idea for a site. I have put one of the price icons on my site (www.winterman-am.com) but thought that they updated dynamically (hence the spot under the price for the movement of the price). Only problem is that is isn't updating. Does it update or have I got the wrong idea?
CBS redirects
Jon, I tried to create some redirects for CBS, CBS Corp, CBS Corporation, but got confused. Can you help me? Thank you.--Wikister 10:34, 21 February 2007 (PST)
NWS News Corp.
Jon, I cannot find what went wrong after I created a Header for NWS. Let me know, when you can. Thanks.--Wikister 18:32, 21 February 2007 (PST)
Not clumsy; just honest
Jonathan I think your point about investment analysts is right on and you have no need to apologize imo. As you know from being on the hot seat, financial analysts are paid to 'make a call.' The stock you've recommended is tanking, your trading desk is screaming at you, calling you an 'effing a-hole' and you have to explain: 1) why you should hold; 2) why you should buy more or 3) why you should sell. What matters is you have a firm opinion, a cogent argument and that you're right 51% of the time. What I'm not getting on your site is where does someone like me add value beyond what your robot can do? Where do I put my informed, cogent, well-researched and hopefully hard-hitting opinions? Twostardav
- Jonathan, Twostardav, This is a really important discussion that can help shape a direction for Valuewiki and I want to see it continue. One of the reason I got involved in Valuewiki is like Jonathan mentioned, Valuewiki can be empowering especially for the average individual investors. I think Valuewiki can transform the way investors collaborate, share and gather information. I agree with twostardav, that bots and sites like Google, Yahoo, Reuters and Bloomberg do a pretty good job with factual information. I think Valuewiki can add value by helping organize and pool independent analysis and opinions. It is certainly more collaborative and more efficient in pooling information/opinion than blogs. And I believe the peer-moderated nature of wiki can overcome some of the problems with inaccuracy and incivility of message board. Certainly wikipedia is a good example of that. However unlike Wikipedia subjects, market/investing information is much more dynamic. It is interesting how Wikipedia editors can spend months arguing about the neutrality and accuracy of an article. A lot of investing information certainly has shorter life cycle. So it will be interesting to see how peer-moderator system works for valuewiki, especially once it gets bigger. I myself, hope to see valuewiki become a more organized but yet more democratic version of aggregator sites like seeking alpha. But in the short term, Valuewiki needs to attract (and motivate) well informed, high caliber contributors. Hey, maybe we should bring this discussion into a more public forum within Valuewiki. --K Hartandi 00:42, 22 February 2007 (PST)
- I agree with K Hartandi, this is a very important discussion. One possible answer to Twostardav is that the Talk pages in a wiki offer a healthy, peer-reviewed, discussion and a gate-keeper to the more-consensual main article. Points-of-view can (and should) make their way from the discussion pages into the main articles as on-one-hand/on-the-other-hand summaries, as clearer explanations of the 'state-of-the-debate' about the relative-value of a stock. That forces the debate to be more rigorous and reference-based. The whole range, from gut-feeling hunches about a stock to very highly-informed views by a seasoned observer can always be referred to hard-facts or third-party info or other basic info and that all complements the argument and make their transtioning into the main pages more valuable to readers that come-in for the 'gist' about a stock. It is no easy to be encyclopedic about a fast moving target, but any advances in that road should result in a lot of 'linklove' and high-value traffic to both the main pages and their message boards.--Wikister 09:48, 22 February 2007 (PST)
Great discussion here! Per Wikister's suggestion for a more public forum, I have moved this discussion to ValueWiki:Boardroom/Policy. Jonathan Stokes 10:23, 22 February 2007 (PST)
RIMM headings
Thank you for the suggestion. It DOES makes it easy to wrap text around the charts. It is a pity that it stops listing the subheadings in the contents box at the top, though.--Wikister 20:47, 23 February 2007 (PST)
- I agree. It does look cleaner without all those blue [edit]s. Thanks.--Wikister 20:54, 23 February 2007 (PST)
IE7 suspects VW is a phishing site !!
You might be aware of that. I got a warning pop-up while editing RIMM and followed their the pop-up link. I answered by clicking 'I don't think this is a phishing website,' obviously, but one can also click 'I am the owner or representative of this website and I want to report an incorrect warning about this website.' The site is: https://phishingfilter.microsoft.com/feedback.aspx?result=warn&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.valuewiki.com%2findex.php%3ftitle%3dResearch_in_Motion_Limited_%2528RIMM%2529%26action%3dsubmit.--Wikister 17:50, 24 February 2007 (PST)
- This is disturbing! I've asked Zach to take a look at it. Thanks for the heads up! Jonathan Stokes 10:48, 25 February 2007 (PST)
- I've completed the form on the Microsoft site. Let's see how long it takes MS to respond. They state that they'll send me an email when they've processed my request. I have seen this anti-phishing warning on a number of legitimate sites, so I think we're in good company. Zach 14:06, 25 February 2007 (PST)
- I received a reply from MS saying this page will be updated in their system within 24 hours. Hopefully this also decreases the chance other pages will get flagged. Zach 12:25, 26 February 2007 (PST)
- This is disturbing! I've asked Zach to take a look at it. Thanks for the heads up! Jonathan Stokes 10:48, 25 February 2007 (PST)
Brazil's Bovespa
Jon, I going to start bringing in a bunch of names listed at the Bovespa, the exchange in my original hometown, Sao Paulo, Brazil. I started with NYSE:GOL and will intend to follow-up with, among others, CVRD (NYSE:RIO), Petrobras (NYSE:PBR); the big banks UBB, BBD, ITU; Embraer (ERJ); Gerdau (GGB); the telecoms, TNE, TSP, VIV; steelmakers CSN (SID) and locally-traded Usiminas and Arcelor Brasil; GOL's competitor TAM. I'd want to know where on your and Zach's list would the Bovespa be?--Wikister 14:11, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- Wikister, Zach will be working on creating templates for London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Then next on our wishlist is Tokyo, the second largest exchange in the world by Marketcap. I think we can get the feeds in English. Looks like Sao Paulo is the largest exchange on the continent of South America, so it's definitely important on our list. We will get to it as soon as we can. Jonathan Stokes 15:04, 28 February 2007 (PST)
Possible to upload an xls spreadsheet?
Jon, thanks for the update on the exchanges. I did a chart in excel for the Revenues and EPS for RIMM. Is it possible to place the underlying spreadsheet somewhere in VW for the community to look/update. If that is not possible, is there a third-party place we can link to?--Wikister 17:17, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- Wikister, the best thing is to copy/paste the chart from Excel into Adobe Photoshop, and click "save for web." To conserve space and fast load times, Zach and I always upload images as ".png". If you don't have photoshop, feel free to email the excel to me and I am happy to upload it to ValueWiki. Jonathan Stokes 17:40, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- I meant the actual spreadsheet, for people to update the chart in the future. Is that possible?--Wikister 17:51, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- Hm. Doesn't exist yet as far as I know, but it's a pretty cool idea. Google Spreadsheets can be updated by multiple users, but the program is still extremely slow. I think Zolo has shared spreadsheets as well. But ValueWiki definitely doesn't have this yet, although it would be extremely neat. I'll add it to our wishlist! Jonathan Stokes 19:10, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- One solution might even be for VW to have in the future, say, a public Yahoo Briefcase folder...--Wikister 19:14, 28 February 2007 (PST)
Got a typo feedback from a Yahoo posting!!
Re: RBC comments (Not rated) 28-Feb-07 01:44 am
I am just starting to follow RIMM. Goldman Sachs is very bullish too. They target is $185!
I put together a Wikipedia-like article on RIMM at ValueWiki. Any feedback would be welcomed.
It is at: http://www.valuewiki.com/w/RIMM
Thank you
Sentiment : Buy
Re: RBC comments (Not rated) 28-Feb-07 01:51 am
Great job...thats a lot of work! Correct the spelling of "toronto stock exchange" you have Thorton ( at top of pg)
Cheers john_hodgins2000
--Wikister 19:29, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- That's great! If you're curious, I will update you tomorrow on yahoo traffic to the RIMM page, so you can see who is viewing your article. Jonathan Stokes 19:44, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- That would be very nice. Thanks.--Wikister 19:46, 28 February 2007 (PST)
- Hm. Only 10 visitors from that Yahoo Finance message board. This is difficult to predict. Sometimes we've received 100's of visitors from a yahoo finance message board. Certainly their RIMM board is very active. Odd. Jonathan Stokes 22:13, 1 March 2007 (PST)
Procedure to add categories
Jon, what is the VW procedure to add categories? I suggest the following: Smartphones; Toronto Stock Exchange; Canadian Stocks; Media Conglomerates; those for now. I understand VW is not using subcategories, like WP.--Wikister 20:13, 1 March 2007 (PST)
- Wikister, We do have Toronto Stock Exchange and Toronto Venture Exchange. These are categories.
- Currently all stocks are categorized into Industry and Sector. For instance, at the top and bottom of the AAPL page you can see that Apple is in this sector - Category:Personal_Computers in this industry - Category:Technology in this exchange - Category:NASD. As you can see, I started writing Category:Personal_Computers and Category:NASD, but have not written anything for Category:Technology because the category is too broad and spans several exchanges.
- As I understand it, Zach had to rewrite the mediawiki software to allow for this much sub-categorization. I will ask Zach about creating subcat's like Smartphones and Media Conglomerates. It could be an interesting idea, but my guess is it will create a variety of technical/organizational conflicts. Plus, we already have 1,000's of categories in the wiki, like the examples above, that no one is writing yet. I will discuss it with Zach.
- Portals
- A "Portal" may be a better way to present (for example) Media Conglomerates. Portals are used on Wikipedia to help navigation. For instance, you can visit the Portal:History and then see all the topics grouped there. Or the Portal:Archaeology, etc. We could create a similar system for navigating ValueWiki. Arriving at the Media Conglomerates Page could allow you to view an overview of the sector and comparison of companies. Again, I'll want to talk to Zach because this would be a major undertaking and could be somewhat redundant with the 1,000's of category pages that already exist on ValueWiki.
- Projects
- WikiProjects are user collaborations to create and improve a group of articles. For instance, WikiProject Macintosh works on improving all of the Macintosh articles on Wikipeda. I experimented with this idea at Project List, and had Zach build me a page called Fortune_500_Project. The idea is to create a system of tracking which articles have been started on ValueWiki, and how complete the articles are. I'm going to start cleaning up this system when I have a chance.
- Jonathan Stokes 22:10, 1 March 2007 (PST)
Collaboration?
Hi Jonathan. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm one of the founders of the Wikibon Project. We're a research and advisory site specializing in the technology industry. Our founding members are former executives from IDC, Meta Group and IBM. While at IDC I launched a set of research services for Wall Street where we partnered with both buy and sell side firms.
The technology research and advisory business has always had a strong relationship with investment research houses. For example, at IDC we had a multi-year exclusive partnership with Goldman. Meta Group always had a tight partnership with First Albany and Gartner had a strategic partnership with Soundview Investments.
These relationships nearly always succeeded because the missions of these two worlds is highly complimentary. Technology research and advisory firms provide solid fundamental analysis emphasizing the practical application of technology in business. Wall Street researchers focus on company trends and insightful analysis that is often transaction-oriented. I've always found the combination of tech researchers and wall st. analysts to be extremely effective.
I'm writing to see if you're interested in learning more about how we might help each other. Like you, we are new (we launched in January) and are growing rapidly. As you add company coverage, we're adding industry coverage. We're both open sources of information using an emerging mediawiki-based collaborative model for information sharing and we're both offering an alternative to established and entrenched franchises.
If you're interested in contacting me, please see my user page on the ValueWiki site and shoot me an email with your thoughts. I look forward to your reply. --Dvellante 21:39, 7 March 2007 (PST)
Transclusion
To transclude an article in the main namespace, simply prefix the article title with a colon (:).
Zach 21:05, 9 March 2007 (PST)
Thanks
Yes, I am from Wikipedia Weekly, I found ValueWiki in my incoming technoranti and to say the least, I'm impressed. I would have to say, the biggest problem will be obtaining critical mass, getting the eyeballs and contributors. Once you have traction, things become a nice wild ride.
I like the voting feature, do you have any way to prevent the "stock spammers" from hijacking things? That is the one big threat I see with the popular lists.
In any case, I'm impressed. Keep up the good work :) -- Tawker 10:42, 20 March 2007 (PDT)
Quote Media Chart
We need to stop using all the quote media charts by 4/15. Can you update your portfolio tag to use the new module? <chart symbol="EEM" time="5d"></chart> Let me know if you can't make this larger chart work. We can use smaller ones, but those are only 1-day charts.
NoodleScar link
Hi Jon,
Thanks for letting Bonny interview you at Barcamp LA 3. We just linked to your profile here on ValueWiki.
-Lan www.LanBui.com Lan@LanBui.com
Snap
I talked to the Snap guy at barcamp again this year. He wants a mediawiki extension to make it real easy to install snap image previews on wikii. The problem is that installing an extension and getting users to use it on specific articles is way more difficult than installing their basic script tag on the entire wiki.
To illustrate this, I've installed their basic script tag on our entire wiki.
I also disabled the style sheet icon that labels a link as external. Snap automatically adds their own icons to these links. I think theirs is nicer.
- Zach, you are fast! I can see new snap icons in addition to the pre-existing wiki icons...but I don't see snap previews yet? Firefox/Mac?
- Btw, sign your posts so I can see what time you wrote...If you want to be anonymous, just use 5 tildas instead of 4. Jonathan Stokes 23:11, 27 March 2007 (PDT)
Re: MER Scoop
Yeah, it’s interesting how the big research houses are trying to fight ValueWiki’s mission to free the market.
Congratulations on the Digg and Slashdot feature. For some reason, it seems that the articles attracting traffic in the blog are not too relevant to ValueWiki itself (like the Political ranking and PayPerPost. Maybe you should kind of tie those in with ValueWiki someway somehow as shameless marketing plug. Besides posts with strong opinion on something, it seems that people loves ranking type post too, like your myspace politic ranking and finance blog ranking. Well, maybe you noticed it in your Google Analytics already, I just eyeballed the Diggs it gets.
Yeah I think good niche articles like BETM and IDWD attracts good traffic and contribution. I can imagine that ValueWiki is the best source for those securities in the web. Maybe you can screen message boards for microcap/OTC’s with high activity and start “seed post” to attract people and contributor and maybe to get the search engines’ attention.
On an unrelated topic, yes, searing the steak before cooking gives you that nice black crispy crust. --khartand 10:42, 28 March 2007 (PDT)
- Nice article on Merrill on your blog. Thanks for linking to my blog, even though I am sure there are better coverage in other places than my blog. :)
- BTW I peeked at Alexa and see a nice spike. Congrats! but I am not sure if it's for www.valuewiki.com or the blog.valuewiki.com. The statistics are the same for both pages.
--76.21.111.185 16:36, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
- Hi Khartand. Yep, the spike is for the blog. However, ValueWiki itself has also gotten record traffic this week, largely from Google. It could be that VW's page rank is slowly creeping up, because for the past two weeks, Google's been sending us higher traffic. Zach and I are scratching our heads, but we're not complaining! Jonathan Stokes 16:48, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
Your recent comments regarding WikiFur
In your recent blog article, Time to Overhaul or Abolish the InterWiki Map, you represented WikiFur as "a site dedicated to people who have sex in animal costumes." This is untrue.
I like to think you were picking on us just because you were angry at what you saw as discrimination by Wikimedia's interwiki process. Even if that were the case, though, it is no excuse to deliberately mischaracterize a community website. Imagine if I said this site was dedicated to "money-grubbing fat-cats who would short their own mother if it made a profit." Such a statement might help me make my point, but it would also cheapen the work of the many volunteers who have spent long hours trying to build it into a worthwhile resource for a community they care about, at no financial gain to themselves (well . . . almost).
It is also possible that you were just misinformed. If so, I would suggest reading over Wikipedia's articles on the furry fandom and furry conventions. Maybe you could even drop by Califur 3 this coming weekend in Costa Mesa. I'm sure one of the organizers would be glad to show you around. GreenReaper 10:54, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
- I agree that I made a generalization, and a generalization that the Furry community is particularly sensitive about. For this I do apologize.
- As you must be aware, Furry Fandom is extremely difficult for outsiders to understand. I did spend time reading Wikifur a few months ago, trying to educate myself. It does seem clear to me that an interest in Furry Fandom is inherently wrapped up in some sort of fetish, but it is none of my business to generalize or belittle its members. As you said, I was really just clumsily trying to force my point about the InterWiki Map.
- I consider myself a fairly tolerant person - what another person does is their business. But the issue of tolerance is a sensitive one. Personally, I have a difficult time understanding the mindset of someone who's fetish is to dress up as a Nazi, whether furry or not. And it is difficult for me to understand why the furry community tolerates such aberrant behavior. The Nazi Furs on your website say they are not a hate group per se, but meanwhile they engage in disturbing antisemitic behavior. Clearly this is a minority of furs. But you cannot be surprised when outsiders like myself have a difficult time understanding furry culture or treating it with complete equanimity when disturbing behavior is openly tolerated.
- I imagine part of the mission of WikiFurs is to educate the non-Furry community about your culture, in a way that will promote acceptance and understanding. I respect you for reaching out to a snarky blogger like myself. Perhaps there is an opportunity for your site to do more to explain Furry culture in terms that outsiders like me can understand. Jonathan Stokes 13:27, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
- Probably the best reason is given by a very prescient comment on that post: "much like anything related to furry, it's mostly for the attention." If we felt they were actually serious about it, you can be sure it would not get any support whatsoever. What happens is that a lot of the fandom consists of young people without well-developed social skills, and a minority of them do things because they outrage others, or make their friends laugh. These are the same sort of people who participate in sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica.
- Another minority (probably larger than the previous one) are interested in things that some other people just find weird and/or disturbing - regardless of whether they're actually doing anything "wrong" from a moral standpoint - and given that furry fandom has a culture of openness about such things you get problems related to that as well. Unfortunately the first type often pose as the second type to claim that they're being persecuted - for further amusement, of course. Given that people really do have weird fetishes both inside and outside the fandom, it's sometimes hard to be sure who's telling the truth.
- I can give you an example of what happens when people really do care. The Funday PawPet Show is a group that puts on a four-hour live webcast puppetry show most Sunday nights. When they're off eating dinner they show amusing film clips or flash shows sent in by the audience. One of the cartoons they were sent last night was a member of the Censored Eleven - that sort of "banned show" is something they might show on a regular basis, as they're usually quite amusing in some way or another. One of the people in the associated channel happened to be black, and said that he would stop watching the show as a result. When they realized that someone had actually been offended by the cartoon, they stopped the playback, deleted the file, apologized profusely while still on air, and promised to not play such things in future.
- Ultimately "furry" is a label that people slap onto a lot of things. Unfortunately it's so wide that all people can say when this sort of thing comes up is "yes, I'm furry, but I'm not that kind of person," which isn't very credible at first glance, especially when they try and deny more than they should. The fact is that those "kind of people" do really exist, and they have a right to claim the name "furry", but it's dangerous to generalize the actions of such people to the entire fandom. It's like saying all gun owners are no better than violent criminals.
- I should mention that the good Rabbi gets worked up over a lot of things (some of which make good fodder for his comic). He is known for having definite views and expressing them strongly online. Most people in the fandom probably do not care quite as much about the issue as he does - or at least do not state their views publicly. He did get a lot of comments.
- We do need to do better at explaining things to people who don't know what the heck a furry fan is. Alas, our main internal audience demands most of our time, so the "by furries, for furries, about furries" mantra gets stuck three-quarters of the way there. Personally I've tried to help make Wikipedia's articles on furry topics be the best they can be, as I know Google ranks them highly and people are likely to read them first, rather than a fandom-specific resource. I also tried writing a news article that went some way towards explaining our interests, and eventually set up our own news site (still in development) to further explain and inform people both inside and outside the fandom. I'm also working on more visual communication of that stuff. I guess all I can say is "we're working on it, and it's getting better." We've certainly had our fair share of bad press and we're trying to avoid that in the future without curtailing the freedom of expression that makes the fandom great in the first place. GreenReaper 14:18, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
- You are certainly at the heart of one of the most fascinating subcultures on the internet. Your ability to articulate honestly and credibly will do much to further the understanding of Furry culture.
- By its very nature, I predict Furry Fandom will continue to be the butt of internet jokes and offhand comments like mine for the foreseeable future. However, your articulate candidness is particularly disarming, and you have certainly done a tremendous amount to make Furry Fandom more accessible and understandable to general public, via your tireless work on Wikipedia and WikiFur. Your work is impressive. Jonathan Stokes 15:06, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
- "Fascinating" is certainly one word for it. :-) I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Its faults are also the root of its strengths. And thank you for your apology - it's something that few bother to do after such comments. The chance to talk to people who are willing to change their mind is why I bother writing for the public at all. GreenReaper 18:45, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
Valuecruncher
Thanks for clarifying the neutrality point. We appreciate you allowing us to post our valuation reports, we would like to think thay are not biased, we do not hold any investments in U.S companies. We are developing a product that we think allows SME's cost effective access to the valuation methodologies used by large investment banks and global accounting firms, as the development has progressed the blog has evolved as a validation tool for the model and our analytical ability. We do not sell research and have no intention to so in the future. We do think that there has historically been a lack of quality research available in the public domain and would like to see more of the discussion focus on what fundamental assumptions people are making when they form their opinions on stock prices. Thanks again for allowing us to post our valuation reports.
Sam (Valuecruncher)
Thanks
Well, we sort of got kicked out by the ducks, a lack of scoring tends to do that to you (esp on a 5 on 3) :o Oh well, the Stars have Turco who was #$(#*(ing amazing and the Canucks have Luongo who is $)#*)#($)(#$*)(ing amazing. Next year will be very fun, I hope.
We now return to regularly scheduled programming. No more NHL - it's podcast time now. -- Tawker 21:26, 5 May 2007 (PDT)
How are you guys doing?
Jon and Zach, you guys seems to have been relatively silent the past few weeks (both here and the blog). Just wondering how things are going. Let me know if I can help with anything. --khartand 20:53, 20 June 2007 (PDT)
- Thanks Kresna. Zach and I have both been pretty swamped in our non-ValueWiki lives. Zach is planning on getting back to programming some new features soon.
- As for me and the blog, it's partly that I've been extremely busy. But it's partly that I stopped seeing the blog as a way to drive traffic to ValueWiki. Maintaining blog traffic requires daily posting which is actually very time consuming. For every 1,000 blog visitors, about 17 click through to ValueWiki! I promised Zach I would blog through May 31st, but after that, I've sort of soured on the blogging experiment. There was one day the blog got 17,000 visitors, and only 43 clicked through to ValueWiki. From hereon, I think the ValueWiki blog will function more like a regular company blog; we will use it as a place to make announcements about the website.
- Zach and I still very much believe in ValueWiki and I am very pleased with the quality of contributions lately. Zach is planning a redesign of the site, as well as some new features. Our userbase is growing and I feel pretty confident that ValueWiki is providing a neat service :) . In the meantime, there's not a whole lot for me to do right now on marketing or writing, at least until Zach builds new features. ValueWiki seems to be self-sufficient for the time being, so I am grateful to have this time to focus more on my real life job!
- Our unofficial plan is for Zach to do a redesign and have an offical site launch in the fall (we've never reeeally officially launched, strangely enough!). For that launch date, I will probably swing back into marketing mode, and return to spending zillions of hours on ValueWiki!
- Thank you for checking in Kresna. All the best,
- Jonathan Stokes 01:57, 22 June 2007 (PDT)
Glad to hear that you guys are keeping busy and ValueWiki's chugging along nicely.
Yeah, I think the blog can be a good marketing tool, but I feel it got out of focus lately. I think you're right to make it more like a compnay blog and keep it focused on financial and web 2.0 topics. I really leaned a lot from your blog, especially from posts about of web (2.0) and wiki. I see that you guys are trying to learn a lot from wikipedia, wikia and the likes on how to build ValueWiki, and share your notes through the blog. But maybe the blog was just not attracting the right demography for ValueWiki. From marketing standpoint I think it is probably best for you guys to attract people from the finance blog crowd. Well, it's just my 2 cents.
I still believe in ValueWiki and its value proposition. Good luck with everything and keep me updated.
By the way, I am sure you guys are aware of SocialPicks. I think one interesting marketing thing they do is that they post some of theirr "featured" picks on Google's message board (SocialPicks did this, not the individual poster). I think wikister proposed this idea before. I don't know how much much this helps with their traffic, but something to consider.
--khartand 15:06, 25 June 2007 (PDT)
Boardcentral.com - financial message board search engine
Jon,
Excellent site! I am contacting you from a NY based financial stock message board search company called BoardCentral (www.boardcentral.com). We have been in existence since 1999, providing individual investors and traders with an ability to search through numerous message boards accessible simply by ticker of a company. Our All-In-One Financial Message Board search engine is the largest service of such kind on a market and we would like to partner with you, and in general find ways to work together.
Look forward hearing from you boardcentral@gmail.com
Offering Our Resources to valueWIKI at NO COST
Jonathan,
I am Chris Johns the CEO of SupportSave Solutions, Inc. I was the one pestering you last week to fix our stock badge (SSVE.OB) SSVEdotOB
I believe in what you are doing with this project and really think its going to take off, with that said, how can SupportSave help? We are a US company that provides offshore support services from our American managed facilites in the Philippines. I want to dedicate some of my staff to helping support you in this project. We can provide user support, help, or whatever it takes to make the user experience even better and take up less of your valueable time.
Why would we do this free? first, I love this concept and the community nature, second, I would hope for possible exposure for our companies services, (not promoting SSVE stock). We provide small businesses with a Full-time employee for $699 a month that can do just about anything on the phone or PC.
We currently have have nearly 100 employees and you can view them live online from at least 4 cameras from our website, we are not just another penny stock.
Anyways, if you can think of anyway we can work together for the benefit of you, SupportSave or the community, let me know. Even if it was something as simple as "Free Support Provided By" and the link to our website
Www.SupportSave.com
Regards, Chris Johns SupportSave Solutions, Inc President & CEO 248-230-4101 chris(at)SupportSave dott com
What's Up Jonathan?
Hey there...checking in to see what's what' w/VW. Still plugging away at Wikibon.org. Would love to catch up, share some thoughts...trade mediawiki notes, etc.
email me at david DOT vellante AT wikibon DOT org when you get some time. -dave--Twostardav 07:41, 1 November 2007 (PDT)
Wikinvest
How are you guys doing? I just stumbled upon this site: wikinvest when browsing through TechCrunch. --khartand 23:13, 9 February 2008 (PST)
I am doing fine. Like you guys, I have been swamped in my day job lately... and on personal front, I got married a while ago. That's why I haven't been checking in to the site for a while. It kinda s*ks, I thought you guys were the first guys trying to put real serious effort in building an investment wiki. At a glance, Wikinvest is not that much more ahead compared to you guys. Looking at Alexa, their traffic seems to be comparable to yours at the peak (even though it might have been skewed by the blog). They got a bit more coverage on "major popular stocks" and more developed site and a bit better pagerank than Valuewiki, but nothing really special. I guess the funding and TechCrunch coverage helps too. Glad to hear that you guys are gaining solid traffic and revenue stream. Hopefully it's something you can build from. I really don't want to see all your efforts last year go to waste. --khartand 13:27, 10 February 2008 (PST)
