Biographicon Wants To Be Wikipedia For The Non-Notable - TechCrunch Options

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Biographicon Wants To Be Wikipedia For The Non-Notable
TechCrunch, CA -2 minutes ago
Having a page put up about you in Wikipedia is difficult, mostly because of the Notability requirement for inclusion - and you aren’t “notable” unless ...

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Wikipedia for Non-'Notables'
Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) -24 minutes ago
Give them your tired, your poor, your unknown masses yearning to be famous. Biographicon, a new start-up based out of San Jose, is a sort of Wikipedia for ...

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[Jonny Cache]

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Ωð! It's like some kinda Brain Damage Pandemic!

April Fools Everywhere You Look

It has become a cliché observation at The Wikipedia Review that if these BioData sites ended with “.gov” instead of “.com”, “.net”, or “.org” that we’d all be up in arms and out in the streets to shut them down.

Do you really think a little ole thing like a 3-byte suffix will make all that much difference in the end?

— Jon Awbrey, Apr 1, 01:26 PM

[thekohser]

I don't see what could possibly go wrong with Biographicon.com!

And, no, I didn't do it.

[Jonny Cache]

Tears In My Eyes (TIME)!

Jonny

P.S. If you click on that "Textile Help" button, it tells you how to make a live link on that site.

CODE

"Link Label (NTBCW Libel)":http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=17094

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Not "notable" enough for Wikipedia? Biographicon wants you
Ars Technica, MA -25 minutes ago
By Nate Anderson | Published: April 02, 2008 - 11:35AM CT Go on, admit it: you have at least toyed with the thought of creating your own Wikipedia entry. ...[/size][/font]

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[ThurstonHowell3rd]

On this website you can read the following biography of Guy Chapman:

"Guy Chapman is a highly important, dedicated, consistently vigilant administrator on Wikipedia who also gives the full measure of his time to his employer and his family, despite the considerable amount of time he spends improving Wikipedia."

Guy Chapman

... written by Guy Chapman

[Random832]

[post was a request to merge threads]

This post has been edited by Random832: Thu 3rd April 2008, 3:02am

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Biographicon Is OK With Us, Wikipedia Still Scorns Our Existence
Cinema Blend -12 minutes ago
By Steve West: 2008-04-02 21:19:26 How about a little self aggrandizing behavior around these parts? If Will Smith can launch a movie career by shouting to ...[/size][/font]

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[Amarkov]

I would like to echo Greg's assertion here. I fail to see how an encyclopedia with no inclusion standard could possibly go wrong. After all, it's inconcievable that people will abuse this to make articles on their non-notable enemies...

[dtobias]

On this website you can read the following biography of Guy Chapman:

"Guy Chapman is a highly important, dedicated, consistently vigilant administrator on Wikipedia who also gives the full measure of his time to his employer and his family, despite the considerable amount of time he spends improving Wikipedia."

Guy Chapman

... written by Guy Chapman

I tried to make it more fair and balanced, but got reverted.

[dogbiscuit]

On this website you can read the following biography of Guy Chapman:

"Guy Chapman is a highly important, dedicated, consistently vigilant administrator on Wikipedia who also gives the full measure of his time to his employer and his family, despite the considerable amount of time he spends improving Wikipedia."

Guy Chapman

... written by Guy Chapman

I tried to make it more fair and balanced, but got reverted.

Are there are guidelines though. You are only allowed to lie if it is nice and be honest if it is nice. No nastiness allowed regardless. I like it as it stands now "This biography is empty." Kinda reminds me of comments here.

It seems that Terhorst is going to be a busy little admin.

This post has been edited by dogbiscuit: Thu 3rd April 2008, 12:39pm

[thekohser]

Why do we need an encyclopaedia? If people want to write autobiographies, there are loads of sites like Facebook, Faceparty and Myspace. Or I expect you could do a full-length one on Wikibooks, which seems to have loads of original research.

Facebook and MySpace (I don't have experience with Faceparty) are "busy", contain rather obtrusive advertising hosted by the site owner, and they focus on social interaction, so one's "autobiography" is likely to be peppered with comments from other users, unless you disable comments. In all, these sites are not deemed as "serious", and indeed many professional workplaces block access to these sites altogether.

Sites, on the other hand, like LinkedIn.com, AboutUs.org, and Wikipedia Review.com have a more professional atmosphere, and (in the case of at least LinkedIn.com and Wikipedia Review.com) the page owner has complete control over its content. Not to mention, the aggregated "directory links" that accrue on these sites do wonders for increasing search engine optimization. So, in that sense, if you're looking for exposure, building your own page at www.myuniquenameanddomain.com may be more fruitless than riding the coattails of an established site with thousands of interlinked pages and better root PageRank.

Greg

[dogbiscuit]

Sites, on the other hand, like LinkedIn.com, AboutUs.org, and Wikipedia Review.com have a more professional atmosphere, and (in the case of at least LinkedIn.com and Wikipedia Review.com) the page owner has complete control over its content. Not to mention, the aggregated "directory links" that accrue on these sites do wonders for increasing search engine optimization. So, in that sense, if you're looking for exposure, building your own page at www.myuniquenameanddomain.com may be more fruitless than riding the coattails of an established site with thousands of interlinked pages and better root PageRank.

The main way to rise in rankings does seem to be latching onto one of the big sites. On a site I've done for the local community, I've linked in with the BBC (Action network), Wikipedia and a couple of other large set ups. That was a couple of years ago. I've done nothing else and I am still have the first two spots for my local town name, one for wikipedia, which I mainly authored, and then for my community site, even though the traffic is fairly modest (25,000 hits over 3 years).

I wonder if Google will alter their algorithms to account for this, to split sites up better. It does seem to be a false market where you can bump up the ratings because of someone else's unrelated efforts.

[dtobias]

Well, two can play at that game.

[dogbiscuit]

Actually, the great thing about Guy's current biography is that it is just so silly (and he has missed something).

"highly important"

[Somey]

This is from Biographicon's Terms of Service:

14. You must not add any Content, or otherwise transmit any message, that is false, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, sexually explicit, pornographic, obscene, libelous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable.

Well then, I guess that explains why they only "seeded" the site with 100,000 Wikipedia articles, instead of the whole 250,000!

Also, if this thing takes off, they're going to want to do something about their Recent Edits page - right now it appears to show every edit ever made on the site, since Day One. That's a good way to bring your database server to its knees...

Also, there don't appear to be any user pages... if anything, this site is even more anonymous than Wikipedia is. And with the bar for inclusion set to pretty much zero, it's probably a disaster waiting to happen.