User talk:Gil

Slightly belated welcome
Welcome to the Central Wikia!

We are a friendly community here, most of us active on an individual Wikia or more than one. Use the Community portal to ask for help.

Please keep an eye on the Special:Recentchanges to see what the community is up to and to help reverse spam and vandalism. And look at the overall organisation starting at Category:Browse.

If you have ideas for a new Wikia, please add a paragraph under an appropriate heading on Proposed wikis.

Enjoy!

Hey, you crept in quietly so nobody noticed at first!

Thanks for the note on my talk page (which I didn't see at first because it was at the top; I may move it down to fit the chronological order of the others). As for a Wikia of websites, I think someone proposed and started one. Have a look at Proposed_wikis. I'm now doing a little on IllumiRate, which is a small-scale Zeal.

Robin Patterson 20:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!
Best of luck in your new position! I wish you the best of luck. - Nhprman 00:56, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Question re: Travel and Scotland Wikia(s)
Gil, I like your Europe travel page a lot. But WOW, talk about synchonicity! I came upon the Scotland Wikia just the other day and after thinking it through a bit, I put together a main page for it and began planning the next step.

However, I wonder if you would weigh in on this question I have before I move forward: After doing this, I came upon the travel Wikia, which I'd heard about but never visited. The Scotland Wikia was approved back in August, but is it duplication to have this and a Travel wikia? Where does something like this properly belong, or can both co-exist? Note that I kind of envision this as an interactive guide, not just a strictly touristy guide, but perhaps that's what the Travel wikia is, too. I'll be looking forward to your opinion on this. - Nhprman 04:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There might be some duplication at first. The travel wiki is an experiment at the moment, and we're going to look at what sort of content we could merge from the place wikis, but what I'm expecting we'll find is that there is a lot of information in those that doesn't fit a tourist-focused wiki. One solution might be to have a "locals" wiki to accompany travel, where everything else could go, but we'd love to know the opinions of users of those place wikis on whether that seems a good solution or not. Please don't be concerned about the place wikis disappearing. We're not intending to "lose" any content regardless of which wiki that might end up on. Angela (talk) 06:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks to both of you for responding. The travel wiki seems like a good idea, since it's a central location for travel info. Of course there seems to be a "city" wiki as well to which some of those place wikis have migrated, so there seems to be a good deal of duplication, but I'm sure it will sort itself out. The one thing I would urge Gil to do is develop a policy in which "Rapid Consensus" can be reached here both on the executive and "community" level, so you can avoid facing a Wikia in which, a year from now, a Travel wiki is competing with the City wiki and individual Place wikis, all with very strong supporters stubbornly holding onto "their" versions and refusing to adopt a standard Wikia guideline on place/travel wikis. (Of course a large, passionate group of supporters for ANY of them would be seen as a blessing, I'm sure!)
 * Without such a well-defined process of consensus, you may end up going through ENDLESS votes and revotes trying to seek consensus among users (many of them, it must be remembered, are brand new to Wikia and some will be voting/weighing in anonymously. The experience on Wikipedia has shown that all decision-making can easily be crippled by 1) an extremely high standard for what "consensus" means and 2) a failure to make decisions, for fear they will not be well received. As a business person, Gil, I think you bring a unique understanding as to what is required to diplomatically and promptly break impasses like this, when they arise, and that's yet another reason I'm delighted you are aboard! Sorry for the long post, I usually try to keep them to 200 words or less. - Nhprman 15:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Homestar Runner Wiki offer
I just wanted to let you know I've replied to your offer at HRWiki:User talk:JoeyDay. Thanks for making it, and please don't just make a donation to our wiki because I've posted this message here. Thanks again. -- Tom 22:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Emailing you
Hi,

Matthew Somerville of mySociety here. My emails to you and John (both @wikia.com) are bouncing as undeliverable - do you have an alternative address I could contact you on? Thanks.

Thanks!
Thanks, Gil! I'll let you know when the FEP is ready!!'

Churches of Rome
Gil, thanks for the note at the Churches of Rome Wiki. If you're interested in helping out, there's a lot of information that's ready to be move from my old website at http://roma.katolsk.no. Although that site says it's copyrighted, all the text has been written by me and I release it under GFDL as it's moved to the Wiki (the photos are another matter, only my photos can be moved directly; I'm waiting for an answer from some other photographers). I also see that you're active on the Travel Wikia; perhaps some sort of cooperation between the two wikis will be in order in the not so distant future; I'm sure the travel wiki would like to cover Rome eventually, in which case I can help out, and the Churches wiki would benefit from being able to link somewhere for more general tourist information. Cnyborg 15:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for stopping by the Psychology Wiki
We are very interested in your ideas for building the profile of the site.


 * We could do with a bit of showcasing!!! Whats the mechanism for this?


 * How do we get Mr Wales to endorse us?


 * We have done a press release to the academic press in UK without an luck. We have made some links with bloggers and have a page ourselves where bloggers get linked to in return. Our google ranking is one of our main concerns at the moment.


 * I am building a list of all the psychology journals{with their web addresses) on the site with a view to emailing them. It would be great to have the PR firm back us up. Who are they? how do we get access to them to discuss a campaign?

We would be really grateful if you could help us out further. Cheers Lifeartist 18:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Gil, we do need some more contributors. I think the main thing is raising awareness at present.  I'll ask Jim Wales to have a look at our Wiki and see what he thinks, as this is exactly the sort of project that I think he had in mind with Wikia and Wikipedia in general. Mostly Zen 20:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds good - I also saw lifeartist's note on my talk page. Let me try to cover all the ideas here:
 * Come up with a few ideas for quotes or endorsements and I will ask jimmy to wordsmith
 * When you have a list of journals, we'll work with the PR agency to have them do the contacts for you
 * We will put a note on our home page in conjunction with a "release" on the site talking about the mission of your project and how excited we are to help
 * These are ideas, feel free to improve them or suggest others Gil


 * Well I left a message on Jim's talk page here: Psychology Wiki mention
 * You are right that we need some quotes etc. Me and Lifeartist are working hard to get the goals of the Psychology Wiki sorted out and clearly explained, but I think that message on Jim's page does it fairly well.  We will try to sort things out and grow a bit more organically over the next 3 weeks, and then perhaps in August we can have some PR stuff done?  I'll keep thinking as marketing is not my strong point. Mostly Zen 23:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * CEO then is it, now we can get some action!!

Put me down for the $500 and I'll look into travel arrangements etc and get back to you.
 * I wrote to Angela yesterday about setting up an academic division of Wikia to try and improve the image and branding so its more acceptable to academia. I think this would be relatively easy to do and would give us more credibility. I would look forward to discussing this further with you.
 * As to your ideas we will work on the manifesto statement and I will get the list of journals finalised and put up on our journals page.
 * We are working on the blogger links.
 * Ill get back to you with contact details for journalists nearer the time.
 * Thanks for your supportLifeartist 08:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've booked my tickets for wikimania, flights and so on. So looking forward to seeing you all there.How do you want to get the money to me? I'm happy to sort it when there. I'm off to study the program - I really enjoy the anticipation of these meetingsLifeartist 19:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Im arriving on the Wednesday afternoon, giving me a day to settle, Fri-Sun at the conference and then leaving on the Monday afternoon. It would be good to have dinner with you all. I'd like to also book some quality time with you to discuss the way forward. I've a lot of ideas I would like us to consider.
 * Rather than send my bank details over email I'll bring the necessary information with me.Really looking forard to meeting you allLifeartist 18:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Psychology Wiki Update
Hey Gil,

Just to let you know how things are going since you last heard from us. We've put together a list of Psychology related sites, which include:


 * Blogs
 * Forums
 * Newsgroups
 * w:c:psychology:Psychologist's home pages
 * w:c:psychology:Psychology RSS Feeds
 * Podcasts

I am going to contact these people individually over the next 2 weeks, as I always think that personal communication works better than a mass-marketing-spamfest. In the 'real world', Lifeartist has a list of:


 * w:c:psychology:Journals
 * Psychiatry Journals

He has already contacted academic heads of department, but that was much earlier on in the project, before I was involved. These people and the Journals are perhaps where your marketing minions can help us out best. I'm letting Joe(Lifeartist) handle the 'real life' and academic/journal side of things as he's more advanced and distinguished in his career as a clinical psychologist, than I am as a Psych student.

We're working on the Manifesto too, and aim to get that mostly finished before Wikimania. We've also redesigned our Comm Portal and Tasks to Do as a portal. Here they are:


 * Our Vision
 * Community Portal
 * Tasks To Do

Have a look at the last 3 and let me know what you think :)

Cheers

Mostly Zen 10:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC) Psychology Wiki Talk: Mostly Zen Talk
 * Just finished writing the Manifesto, see the Our Vision link. Show it to Jimbo as well because I think he'll like it. Mostly Zen 17:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * PS Lifeartist hasn't been able to look at my version of Our Vision yet, so it may change, but I thought you'd want to have a look at it too. I've told him to criticise it too, until we get it just right.

Attracting Contributors
Hi Gil,

Its great that Lifeartist is going to be able to meet you all. Your suggestions for marketing made me start to think about what sort of people we needed to target (other than the fact that they must be interested in Psychology) I got thinking about it (for a long time actually) and came up with the following model of Skill/Confidence, Interest and Awareness.

Let me know what you think of this because I'm pretty sure this model describes how successful Wikia as a whole is going to be. Its not a finished model though so please improve it with your marketing brain. My brain is tired now. Mostly Zen 16:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I tidied up the idea a little after another user suggested confidence is more important than skill when it comes to editing.  I agreed with him. Mostly Zen 05:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree in general - and it's why I believe easier editing tools are important because they increase "skill". I also think "passion" is important, so I would encourage you to have a manifesto that inspires people to help...  --Gil 17:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Coordinating Wikia about Places
Gil - I like the idea of combining the travel, cities & local Wikia into one (world?). It seems to me that any solution where they are separate will have too much redundancy or missing holes. For instance, transportation affects both tourists and the people living there. As a visitor to a place, I like to visit sites that the "natives" like, and as a local, it's good to find new "attractions" to see. I suggest we explore the idea further on Talk:World with other people who are currently contributing to the existing Wikia. Having already moved the Tuscon Wikia to Cities manually, I would like to find a way to automate most of the process. Some of the key contributors won't be there, but maybe we can talk some in Boston? Unfortunately, while I really like dancing and sailing, I haven't done much of either in the past few years. :-( So, I don't think I can add much about it to travel. --CocoaZen 02:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for getting it started! --CocoaZen 22:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Some of the users from Cities seem to think it has a different flavor from Local (Cities' Community Portal). I've tried to encourage them to comment in the forum (next note).  I had totally missed the notes about Travel & Scotland (above) earlier, so it was interesting reading them today.
 * I have already been adding information about Cities (and original pictures) for quite awhile to the Cities Wikia. Having participated in the manual merge-in of all the Tuscon content earlier, if we're going to merge the Wikia, I'd rather do it this time with a large file move, if possible rather than manually.  I know some links would probably need fixing afterwards.
 * --CocoaZen 23:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Forum:Discussion on working together
Hello. I've moved your post from Talk:World to forum, since there's a better change to get the large audience for it. Szoferka 05:04, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Using Blogs to raise awareness
Hey Gil,

You were right about the blogs. Its taken me the best part of a month to get the Psy Wiki up to a standard where I'd want to promote it. Yesterday I started to email blog writers, and one link from http://www.mindhacks.com increased our traffic by over 5%. This combined with the 50+ wikipedia psychologists I contacted has tripled our daily visitors and doubled our pageviews :)

I shall get on with contacting the other blogs... Shame I can't make it to Wikimania, but I'm sure Joe will have a million things to talk to you about.

Tom Michael Mostly Zen (talk ) 12:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania Conversations
Gil - Thanks to you (and other Wikia folks) for taking the time to have the meeting and share ideas. Thanks also for taking and posting the notes! --CocoaZen 13:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Ad Brite Ads
Hi Gil,

Just saw the new Adbrite ads, and have found that they dont seem to be working from Keywords, like the Google ads are. As a result they are for things like mobile phones, rather than appropriate advertising, like the google ads are. Not sure what the best thing to do about this is, but I just thought I'd let you know :)

Tom Michael Mostly Zen (talk ) 14:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

The TV IV
Thanks for your note. An alliance of some kind sounds good. What did you have in mind? --CygnusTM 13:41, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I Am A Stupid, Silly Thing
Hi Gil. As you can see from the heading there, I am honestly ashamed of my words over at Uncyclopedia about that press release. I jumped to a rather ridiculous conclusion, especially considering that I knew long before Dawg mentioned it that newpapers get things wrong, whether it is accidental or on porpoise. To place the blame on you for the whole "spawned" dealie was just plain idiocy on my part and for that I apologize to you. I am glad that you support the idea of an Uncyclopedia PR team, and the offer that Sannse mentioned, in my humble opinion (well, maybe not always so humble) is really cool of Wikia. Anyway, I'm sure you are quite busy, but I did want to extend an invite to you to join the fun over at Uncyclopedia if you ever feel the urge to exorcise any comedic demons, or even just have a laugh, especially at my expense. I owe you that much, at least. -- Imrealized / Imrealized 23:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Chicago Co-op wiki and WikIndex
Hi Gil, I've been neglecting the Chicago Co-op wiki so just now got your message from the end of July. I've never worked on a Wikia wiki, but am of course familiar with Wikia because of my work at WikiIndex. I was also disappointed at WikiSym to have Angela give a talk about Wikipedia instead of about the community aspects of Wikia. Anyway, hope you're well and thanks for checking in. peace, TedErnst
 * By the way, one concerns I have and I've heard expressed by others, about the new travel wikia is that it seems to be a direct competitor to WikiTravel. Have there been any discussions about the community aspects of having two main travel wikis? peace, TedErnst
 * Great answer, Gil. Of course I jumped in without knowing everything, just with a vague sense of what was going on and half-heard concerns.  I have no idea what went on behind the scenes or what conversations happened with whom.  The fact is, Wikipedia and thus mediawiki and wikimedia are the 800 pound gorillas in the wiki space.  As a result of that and wikia's history, the concern would be that other wiki communities could be put out of business by the "might" of wikia, which would result in less diversity, not more.  I would've preferred to see energy going into wikitravel to morph it into something deeper, rather than start a whole new effort, but that's just me.  I don't have the profit motive that wikia has.  I'm not at all saying that the profit motive is bad.  It can be, but Open company test is a great page that shows me that as coroprations go, wikia is freaking awesome!  So all of this is only to say that I think wikia is awesome.  And I believe it needs to be careful where it puts it's feet down, as it might crush whole communities that it doesn't even see.  Thanks so much for being open to conversation! peace, TedErnst 15:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

One other thought, reading Open company test. I'm actually a partner in BeyondYes, a new venture that's about large-group decision-making. I'm specifically thinking about #6 on that page, but maybe there are other places as well where you want people not just to have brainstorming input, but you also want broad buy-in for decisions that are made. Our process is about unlocking the collective intelligence creativity that we see all the time in wikis, and measuring how much support there is for the plan at hand. This is not a voting process, but an on-going tempurature taking as the decision evolves. Let me know if you have interest in a phone call or further wiki discussion about this. peace, TedErnst

Hi This is Nadyes
I think that this is wonderful that wikia would like to host my wiki. I know of wikia as a wealth of information and it would be an honour and a priviledge to join them. I would be happy to help. Let me know what you would like me to do and we'll take if from there. Nadyes