MyWikiBiz is back from the dead!, ...kinda like Sinbad Options

[thekohser]

Well, what do you know? An article about my ol' company Wikipedia Review has been trotted out for another try at permanence in Wikipedia. I wonder how this one will pan out.

Looks awfully self-referential to me, so far. What's with the "Internal Links" section?

And, what's with the "Open Letter to Jimmy Wales" from Scott Baradell in the "External Links" section? I mean, Scott's a friend of mine, but that blog post doesn't even mention Wikipedia Review.

Greg

[LamontStormstar]

thekohser

How exactly was your plan to work if somebody wanted inclusion but they couldn't pass notability?

I mean if someone could pass it, but they want someone to just write them a nice article that might be one thing.

And how did you expect billing to work when you'd do something and then someone else reverts it or deletes it? Would you keep the customer's money, refund it, or keep trying futily so it turns out not to be worth your time.

[thekohser]

How exactly was your plan to work if somebody wanted inclusion but they couldn't pass notability?

I mean if someone could pass it, but they want someone to just write them a nice article that might be one thing.

And how did you expect billing to work when you'd do something and then someone else reverts it or deletes it? Would you keep the customer's money, refund it, or keep trying futily so it turns out not to be worth your time.

While others have already responded, in a way, for me... My intention was to accept business only from those companies who would pass the Wikipedia notability test.

As for placement and persistence, remember Jimbo created a "Concordat" (that's what I called it) with Wikipedia Review, such that we would be placing the GFDL content on our own website. Then, independently-acting, non-paid, "trusted" Wikipedians could scrape that content into Wikipedia if they felt it was worthwhile. (No comment on the overall wisdom of such a policy.) While it wasn't in my advertising literature, I had an unwritten policy with clients that they would get a refund if their article were to be deleted or severely molested within the first two weeks of its placement on Wikipedia. I'll just say this: we had no dissatisfied paying clients. We had a couple of instances where either no payment was processed, or a refund was issued, and the clients were satisfied with the attempt.

Just so everybody knows where I'm at, currently, I'll copy Wikipedia Review's description from Centiare:

Wikipedia Review (Wikipedia Review) is a U.S. Internet publishing firm, headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Wikipedia Review specializes in helping commercial enterprises optimize their presence in wiki spaces.

Founded in 2006 by Gregory J. Kohs, Wikipedia Review initially set out to create and edit neutral-point-of-view Wikipedia articles for payment. However, key leaders and administrators of Wikipedia expressed concerns about the potential conflict of interest in such practice. Wikipedia Review adapted to these concerns and currently pursues activity in other non-Wikipedia editing spaces that utilize wiki markup languages, including Centiare.

Kohs is available for speaking engagements and press interviews, regarding the promises and perils of community-edited spaces on the Internet. He will be speaking about wiki implementation at the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in July 2007.

Wikipedia Review has a devoted interest in the success of the Semantic Web.

I absolutely agree that the $49, $79, or $99 business model was, eventually, going to take more time and effort than it was worth financially to myself. However, the long-term goal was to have a team of low-paid Eastern European and/or Indian editors doing the lion's share of the work in exchange for a smaller portion of the client's payment. That would leave me free for higher-level consultative work with corporations and organizations about long-term, wider-reaching strategies for community-edited spaces on the Internet (including Wikipedia).

It's funny, but so many of my Cheetos-fingered, teenage critics laughed at how much Wikipedia Review was trying to charge clients for something that "they could do themselves for free". On the other hand, several of my clients and many reputable business people who examined the business model often commented, "You should be charging $499, not $49." It's certainly a telling example of how little the average Wikipedian knows about the business world and the value of intellectual capital.

Greg