http://aboutus.org can be used for whatever people would like. It's a wiki, currently using mediawiki, but developing their own ruby-based wiki. Lots of bells and whistles coming, probably not fast enough for this transition to be based on.

I really like what I've seen and read about AboutUs - a bit like seeing the building in progress of what looks like your ideal home (great location, views etc) but I not too sure what it will be like for living in when it's got to that stage (when will that be? will there be an actual moment when the builders move out or, at least, the non-builders move in with them?)

I don't think I always understand quite what "bells and whistles" are - the context in which the phrase ussually gets used here seems synonymous with gizmos.

Are discussion, groups, PMs, the ability to post images etc "bells and whistles" or what do you mean by the term, ted?

Nice, Ted!

I don't understand legal junk.

If this is important, I hope people can/will explain it (and/or also why I should care about it) in ordinary language.

Thanks for starting this discussion!!

:D nmw

David,

Discussions will mostly likely NOT be supported in any form other than what's there now.

Images and videos can be posted now. PMs are supported now in the sense that you can send someone an email through the system without revealing your own email address or knowing theirs. I honestly don't know how they plan to handle that in the new system. Groups ... well, the exciting part for me when I think of the future (and I'd rather sell you on the present, honestly), is spelled out in more detail here: http://www.aboutus.org/Topsoil. Briefly, anyone with a website will be able to have it "slurped" into AboutUs, keeping it's look and feel, but turning it into a wiki (if desired), with the entire AboutUs page database bolted on the back, in your look and feel! This means multiple ways to get at the same content, to build the Commons without having to join someone else's identity.

I don't know what you mean about the builders moving out. http://www.aboutus.org/BeABuilde r - Everyone can be a builder.

Norbert, the legal stuff means that: # You own the content you create. You may use it however and wherever you want. # By uploading or creating content here, you give AboutUs permission to use the content however and wherever we want as well. # AboutUs in turn shares all content on http://www.aboutus.org with everyone who is collaborating to build the commons. # This ensures that your valuable efforts on AboutUs will continue to benefit the commons long into the future as AboutUs content gets used and reused.

Here are some examples of what's currently happening at AboutUs:

• http://www.aboutus.org/NetworkWe aversNetwork
• http://www.aboutus.org/Consensus Polling
• http://www.aboutus.org/Portal:20 08_Presidential_Election

As far as I know, no group is yet using it as their primary place to do their work.

There are about 25 people on staff, full or part-time, in Portland, OR and Lahore, Pakistan. Some of these are focused on the business side, one on design, some on software development, and some on "content and community" which means both helping individuals and groups learn about wiki, and writing in an attempt to make AboutUs a more interesting place to work for community members.

Thank, Ted. I'll have a look.

The reference to builders was in relation to my new home analogy. As I went on to say, in the case of AboutUs it seems to be more a case of others moving in with the builders.

I can see that you may want to continue indefinitely with the home improvements (site development), but surely not every participant will be expected to be a builder in quite this same sense.

Or will they? How would that work?

I think this is a very central point, David. The future, as AboutUs sees it, is about collaboration. While I'm sure some parts of AboutUs will become "resources" that people view, the point is to help get each of those viewers over the hump to become collaborators. Just like o/net, actually. Do people come to o/net to read? Probably, but those people aren't part of the community. Community members are active, they participate. Contrast with Wikipedia, where the mission is to build an encyclopedia. The community part is incidental, and readers are very much welcomed, as it's a reference work. AboutUs does not see itself as a reference so much as a user-generate place where we're all working together.

25 staff-members including part-time and interns: http://www.aboutus.org/Category: AboutUsStaff

Lars Hasselblad Torres said in "Meta - Board Election Process" on Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:20:10 PDT:

I notice that retrieval is pretty slow, fwiw.

Just an aside: why are outdated pages cached? Why not present "live" results (at least for the "single domain view")?

Sorry, but I don't understand the question. Seems it's technical and beyond what I know about. If you like, I can direct you to others that might know your answers.

well, for example: the screenshot at http://www.aboutus.org/Silo.net is not the same as what is at http://silo.net/ right now -- why not?

I think outdated information is useless -- if not even misinformation (and that's yet another reason why most "one-size-fits-all" search engines suck).

AboutUs gets the thumbnails from DomainTools. Each domain has a page like this: http://whois.domaintools.com/sil o.net where you can manually ask for the thumbnail to be updated. I'm not sure if there's any effort to do this in an automated way. I'm not sure what difference it makes, honestly.

I just think outdated information is useless.

I don't think there's much information in a thumbnail, except to be able to identify that you have the correct site. It's too small to actually read.

If it's outdated, then there is still no assurance that it is the "correct" site.

And if it's too small to read, then it may also hardly be a guarantee of anything.

Norbert, perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing something you DO like about AboutUs, as you were the one that asked me to open this thread. Thanks.

I don't really understand what you mean by "like AboutUS". There are many things that are like other things (some more, some less). I think Ray has great ideas, so I expect that AboutUS will go somewhere, but I really don't know where.

The closest thing I can think of is the http://browse.name project, which I started a couple years ago. However, I have probably spent less than a week on that project, maybe 10 or 20 hours (and that's what it looks like, too).

My primary work is "market research", and this results in lots and lots of numbers, data points and stuff like that. All of these data help me to figure out which names are most useful for information retrieval (and that is the focal point of almost everything I do.

Perhaps a thread I started a little over a year and a half ago called "Let's Make a Market!" most succinctly describes my approach -- and I think both the "Wisdom of the Language" also the "Wisdom of the Tech" also help to describe the theory behind this quite succinctly (though perhaps not very exhaustively). A recent mp3cast ("David Weinberger on Competitive Advantage WRT Social Knowledge") is a "quick and easy" summary of some of the kind of work I do (in the jargon of information science, this is commonly referred to as "indexing").

:) nmw

Norbert, I asked what you like about AboutUs. Maybe nothing?

LOL!!

I like alot about it!

I think it is one of the first websites that describes (and/or "references") other websites as if they were **real*.

Nowadays, in universities and colleges would be terribly surprised at the notion of the "reality" of written texts -- but websites still have a certain "other-worldiness" about them.

All of these words that I am writing here were used in previous texts. Each time I use a word, I am referencing all the previous instances of that word [yes, this is Wittgenstein]. It is not possible to get outside of this system. A language unique to one person (an "idiolect") cannot be used to communicate among people (but rather only with the selfsame person -- I guess across time?). Any language that can be used for communication must be a shared language.

So maybe it's Ray who will "kill the algorithm"? No, I don't think so. I view him more as a digerati who is build a "digerary school" (much like Diderot, too).

But this is also one of the shortcomings of the project. It still uses the "old school" approach of pushing a brand. "Brand mentality" is actually also undergoing radical change. I don't know if eBay managers read my FAQs on "white" vs. "yellow" pages (but of course I didn't invent the term "yellow press") -- but at any rate they acted upon it. How long will it take for eBay to "rebrand" as shopping.com? When will Barnes&Noble become books.com? When will movies.org compete step up to be on par with Disney's movies.com?

As long as there are several hundred TLDs, I do not think there will be any language monopoly. Americans don't seem to "get this" -- at least not yet. One interesting question is: when will the rest of the world actually prefer a .CN address to a .COM address? The IAC got http://hotels.cn/ but they don't appear to have http://hotels.in/ ....

Hey, something just occurred to me.

The only example of a grassroots community network[ing] site that I can think of that is not tring to build an "old-fashioned" brand (but rather is making use of the "Wisdom of the Language" is http://grassroots.org/ -- or can you think of another one?

Isn't it strange that just as companies and businesses are ditching brands, there seem to be something like 100 million brands "in development" by people who have great expectations that their brand might be "meaningful" to you or me?

Norbert, I'm afraid you're completely off-topic. Why did you ask me to start a thread about AboutUs if you don't want to talk about AboutUs?

By the way, here's my personal page at AboutUs: http://www.aboutus.org/User:TedE rnst - just for reference - I love that I can tell you about myself on my page, and also use my page every day for tracking my work

ted ernst said:

Norbert, I'm afraid you're completely off-topic. Why did you ask me to start a thread about AboutUs if you don't want to talk about AboutUs?

I thought the exchange of information would be good -- maybe I'll be able to learn more about it (maybe even from the questions other people ask).

I cannot think of any questions I have.

Oh, here's one: what is the search ranking algorithm?

;D nmw

I have no idea. I'm pretty sure the search module is written by someone else and bolted-on.

help >> bolted.on/means ?