User:Ivo Bartecek/What is Wikilook

Note: This text is first draft on various topics what Wikilook can be used for or what Wikilook can become. The draft is meant to be improved in order to become clear, understandable and covering all aspects Wikilook purposes. The draft is should be a guidepost to further writings on each topic, but in its one article state should partially cover all aspects of Wikilook objectives.

What is Wikilook? Is it an idea? Is it only software? Is it just a website? Wikilook is collaborative semantic wiki for everyone which might be a little bit of everything.

Imagine

 * Imagine world where you can freely share any ideas.
 * Imagine network which is owned by you.
 * Imagine system which will change according to your needs.
 * Imagine universe where an idea counts and its realization doesn't depend on your budget, connections or hardware.
 * Imagine creating your own social network, search engine, blog, website, metaweb, database or whatever else in collaborative way.
 * Imagine easily creating new business opportunities with others or on your own.
 * Imagine application environment which is customizable in any way.
 * Imagine program which can be used by unlimited number of people.
 * Imagine rights customizations from large groups to friends or individuals.
 * Imagine that you can input and query information in human as well as computer readable way.
 * Imagine that you can ask the system any question and get computed any answer.
 * Imagine application which has almost no limits and you can use it virtually for almost everything.
 * Imagine software which emphasizes your uniqueness.
 * Imagine being a developer without knowledge of programming.
 * Imagine software used by complete beginners and detailed professionals.
 * Imagine system that can offer what others can't.
 * Imagine being paid for your contribution.
 * Imagine re-evolution from corporations to communities.
 * Imagine system so complicated that needs thousands of developers and yet so simple that can be used by everybody.
 * Imagine space you will be remembered forever if you wish.
 * Imagine almost no borders.
 * Imagine new business model which is not just based on how much profit it can make but how much money it can save you.
 * Imagine direct contact with your customers and eliminate expensive mediators.
 * Imagine fair world based on honesty and trust.
 * Imagine thousands other things you would like the system to be.

'''The question is not "Is this possible?", but it's "Why is it not already here?". '''

A semantic wiki called Wikilook is here for everyone.

At the beginning...
...there was an idea to write a text. What to do with the text? Where to publish it? Using a simple web? Simple HTML died with management systems (CMS). For nice looking website a CMS is the way to go, if you don't want to spend weeks on developing your own application. But is it also really necessary to install megabytes of compiled CMS for just simple web? Especially when simple CMS websites are loosing to big corporate solutions and social networks? CMS are dying out too. Social networks... didn't die yet. How to make simple website with images, guestbook, chat, videos, JavaScript, Flash applications, embeddable maps, social network integration, embeddable video integration, meta information and more? Thousands cool features can be implemented to each website so your text will not be just static. You develop it and then you need to start new project from the beginning. The old project dies without updating. So how to develop website which will survive forever? Your project, where you don’t need to give up your rights to some corporative “terms of service”? You can switch to gradually developed open source which is universal and backwards compatible. Like MediaWiki. Also why to keep the website only for yourself? Isn't it better to make available your work to others? How? Everybody will install its own wiki and copy freely available content? How to communicate with other webs? Just through email or social network? Why not to create multiple websites through one system and share contents through license policy on each page? Why don’t create a collaborative web? MediaWiki is interesting peace of open source and almost nobody is using it for a website production. Why? Missing access rights? They are available. Missing semantics? Oh, actually every other solution is missing complex semantics, Semantic MediaWiki is not. Missing skins and templates? It seems so compared to CMS. But, everybody is using simple skin anyway. Look at social networks. They are all the same. There are billions of pages without much invention. Visitors and users want simplicity and standard way of communication. MySpace is dead. But you want to be heard as a part of a community, as yourself, unique. Everybody who joins some social network wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be unique. Everybody wants to be member of community. Be like others and yet different. Simple website is not an option. Websites doesn't talk to each other. Not yet. Search engine makes them talk. But search engine is not under your control. You need to change to fit his needs. Update. If you don't, somebody else will be before you in rankings. You want to retain control over search engine, over your visitors, over browsers. But you want to also give freedom to your visitors. Many other ideas can be written. Let’s rather start with making them real. It is so simple through semantic wiki.

Write an article. Create template. Use forms. Let websites communicate. Semantic wiki is a solution for websites and communities.

Registration process
Wikilook is intended to be open for everybody. At the beginning there is need to maintain stability of the website and therefore we are sorry to inform that Wikilook user accounts will be served based on invitation process. Only real persons with some internet history and good intentions will be granted a user account. Please request a user account by email at wikilook@wikilook.org (managed by User:Ivo Bartecek). The verification process can be various, for example based on your public email address used at your internet presence at blog, company or social network account. The purpose is just to make sure that you are the real person you want to represent at Wikilook and will comply with Wikilook policies. Registration process might be faster for people well known in some online community and slower for unknown people. Once again please receive our apologies for this inconvenience.

First-come, first-served
User name aka personal page address as User:Victoria Look is awarded to a person on first-come, first-served basis. Each personal page is required to have first name and last name descriptor (property). If your name is already taken by somebody else you can use some attribute to your name in a username which creates you unique user space (e.g.: prof. Victoria Look, Victoria Look from New York, Victoria Look “The Cat”) but note that the main part of the user is a real name.

An idea
What will happen if we try to use wiki as a superior versatile content management system? Of course there are already working solutions on the web. But what if we will use this system for everything? There are not many solutions like that. Combine CMS, social network, wiki, application development environment, encyclopedia, blog or whatever else. There are specialized solutions which already allow you to do everything mentioned separately. But what if there is software which can do it at one place and even better? Universal solution might be not the best option for everything, but when Semantic MediaWiki offers universal space and features to develop specialized solutions, isn’t it interesting the way to go?

In any kind of application you need data input, script to process data, query to get answers, and output style. Basically you write a form for inputting data, set up database, write query and display a result. Again and again for each set of data. You need to always deal with SQL database and updating the structure is time consuming. And you need probably to have knowledge of database systems. But if there is Semantic MediaWiki as a layer between you and a database, you just need to know how to think about your data structure and leave technical background to a Semantic MediaWiki.

A technical solution
Wikilook is a bundle of open source software. The core is MediaWiki. The Semantic MediaWiki brings computing possibilities. The Extension:Access Control List manages the rights. The compilation of other extensions opens wider possibilities. Wikilook is not the only solution. You can build it by yourself too. But until there is standard way to easily share data between many wikis, might be good start to do it within one wiki, within Wikilook. You can export your project later if Wikilook is missing some features and continue development at your wiki.

Copyrights and legal matters
Please bear in mind that Wikilook is meant to as legal as possible.

Wikilook respects copyright and laws
Wikilook is partially public space and partially private spaces of its users. But every user should mind policies not to violate copyright rights of others or respect laws. Wikilook is at its beginning fragile and therefore use it carefully in order not to harm anybody. Wikilook basically follows rules established at Wikipedia (see English Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines or briefly Simple Wikipedia:Rules). There are some exceptions as Wikilook aspires to become more than collaborative wiki, but this exceptions will be documented and published step by step. Please follow English Wikipedia policies if you are not sure that your intentions are allowed at Wikilook.

Do not in any case break laws
Wikilook is not space for posting any material as porn, sex, violence photos and videos, direct links to illegal software and movies etc. Use search engines or other services to play with controversial material. Any materials of this kind will be promptly removed from public and private spaces (protected user spaces) and user account banned. Wikilook administrators have rights to check private spaces for possible abusive materials, rights to its removal and user account banning. Protect your Wikilook as you would do with some public place in your city. If you must deal with some controversial issue, you might consider publishing it somewhere else. In any case there is no harm in doing proper research and use citation of laws and rules why your contents is undoubtedly legal and unharmful.

Wikilook is here to make better world, not worse
Wikilook exists to share ideas which promote peaceful life and harmony. Wikilook exists to educate all of us in various matters. Respect this wish and help create environment where everybody can feel safe to read and publish.

Wikilook doesn’t have its propaganda, nor political or religion opinion
Wikilook exists for sharing ideas. People might have different opinions, but Wikilook doesn’t. Wikilook is a technical solution for publishing and developing new interesting applications.

Security
Wikilook is bundle of open source software and is as secure as each part of this software. Note, that MediaWiki was developed as opened as possible and Extension:Access Control List deals with its security probably good way, but it might not be perfect. Therefore inputting private information is only on your own risk and Wikilook is not responsible for loss or breach to your data. At this stage you shouldn’t input any data you wouldn’t expose to the public, if security descriptors are breached. In any case do not write Credit Card information anywhere inside Wikilook. It’s wiki after all. For transferring funds there are gates like PayPal, which assures safety of your transactions.

Community watches you
Wikilook is public space in which private spaces can be created. In public articles other members can quickly spot the vandals, spammers etc. and help maintain secure environment. In private spaces created by you, you are on your own. Do not give rights to people you do not trust.

Real name is mandatory
For registration the real name is mandatory. Wikilook is for people who want to be credited for their work. Therefore makes no sense to credit your work to a nickname. To maintain trust between members, people should communicate as real beings. This policy is working well in social networks. If one billion people already agreed to expose own name somewhere that there is no fear that the same policy would make big barrier for registration in Wikilook.

Until this policy is changed, there are only 2 artificial names: Victoria Look and Victor Look. All other nicknames or artificial names will be banned.

Thoughts on certification
There might be useful to setup some certification process. You want to be assured that your activity or your name is your one and nobody is doing something on your behalf. By stating your connection to some other internet platform you can certificate yourself. You can also ask other users to issue certificates of trust so when you deal with communities and people you do not know, number of certificates and statements proving you are a “good” person can you help with safe communication and establishing new communication channels.

Publishing
Wikilook tends to be as open as possible and therefore authors and editors are free to choose any copyright license they want. Note, that for all articles where is not stated its own copyright license applies the general Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported for simplicity of sharing information. This simple solution avoids copyright issues with uncredited text which is according to various laws copyrighted by default. Laziness of authors would produce growth of copyrighted articles without proper sharing conditions.

System foundation
The system itself was assembled and tested by Ivo Bartecek during 2010-2011. The domain was registered to Aendi International s.r.o. and Ivo Bartecek. As Wikilook is at its beginning self-made project, unfortunately all rights and decisions are granted to its founder. There have to be some control at decision hierarchy until qualified group of main maintainers is created. I, Ivo Bartecek, apologize for this inconvenience and will try to make the system as possible democratic, open and fair for use for everyone consequently leaving contents decision only to community.

Credit to software developers
Various parts of MediaWiki were developed by various people. As Wikilook was assembled from various open source software, everybody should be properly credited for their work. Wikilook is still under development and some required notices about authors might be missing. It is not our intention to steal somebody’s work, but we might oversee some copyright attributions. Please inform us, if you find some not properly credited work, so we can properly attribute each work.

Victoria & Victor Look
Artificial virtual being Victoria Look and Victor Look are meant to representative voice of Wikilook community. As taking credit for community work by some person can create bias towards person itself, it is possible to transfer credit for your work to a virtual entity, yet being identifiable by a virtual name and virtual visual appearance. All actions of these virtual entities should be fully under democratic control of community.

The free cat
The cat logo was chosen as simple as possible, but still easily identifiable. The cat has in basic state opened mouth symbolizing hunger for knowledge. English word cat can be starting of word catalog. Also cats are known to be independent beings for which freedom is important. Therefore cat represents freedom which Wikilook tries to limit as less as possible.

Wikilook is yours idea
As Wikilook might become project which will be big and generating some profit, it might be good idea to share profits between users. It might be possible to develop system which will credit Wikilook savings back to everybody using it. There is no need for one person or company to be insanely rich. Therefore every user of Wikilook can be considered its virtual owner with same rights as every other user. Every user should be granted the rights for democratically changing the objective of Wikilook as well as rights to share its profits.

Sustainability
How to manage the Wikilook project budget and sustainability? Wikilook should be somehow project between private ownership, public ownership, its users and its founders. These are several thoughts how Wikilook can generate enough income to sustain and reward its founders and its users.

10 dollar server for thousand users
If there are websites serving gigabytes of data for advertisements, wouldn't be server offering interesting text so much more sustainable? Wikilook is hosted at its beginning at server with cost about 10 USD per month. It is possible that at this cost, even through complexity and high load of executing complex scripts which takes a lot of processor time, the system might be able to manage 1000 unique visitors per day. Imagine what would be possible with own server without limitations.

Multiplication effect
Imagine that you create database of restaurants. You spend 6 minutes on copying information about each restaurant, place, opening time, contact information. 10 restaurants means one hour work. 100 restaurants makes 6 hours work And you have up to date restaurant catalog of your small city. Worth may be 100 USD a month if 100 people check your website daily and you get some clicks through an advertisement system. One page has price 1 USD. You can ask some incentive from your local restaurants. But imagine that another 1000 people will do it too. You have a database of 100 000 restaurants. Is your database worth 100 000 USD? Probably more, because you are now one of the biggest catalogs of restaurants on the internet. The restaurants will come to you to give you incentives. Traffic is multiplied. But you can't do it alone. For you it is 3 years of work alone. For thousand people it is one day work. Incoming check is 200 000 USD. Half goes to system resources. Half is divided to 1000 users. Is that so simple? Of course not. But in social networking time your free activity is the most valuable asset. You write a free review to some restaurant database. And the database will make double profit from that. Corporation owning the database makes the profit. The corporation will hire you to write 100 reviews per day to database for 3 years and how much will give you in your salary back? Similar amount minus corporation expenses, let's say 10%. That is what you lost. You loose 10% to somebody else. Why not to write the review into system you share the profits? You can keep the 10%.

Each user is an owner policy
How about a system where users own the system they use? Users who will participate more are rewarded more and users participating less are rewarded less? But everybody will get something back for using it.

Theory of shared profit
If the system will make some profit in general, isn't it good idea to return it to users? Based on some analysis it can go directly to users who participated the most or used the system the most.

Social network effect
Each user of social network is worth 50 USD. That is a price tag of each user. How about social network you own? You just saved 50 USD which you unknowingly paid to some corporation. Why not rather give it to your project.

Own advertisement
Some advertisement system takes several percent of advertising cost for each successful click. Like a casino. People buys, companies advertise, people clicks and the products are more expensive exactly just the few percent which is turned again and again in the advertisement system. The buyer is the one who actually pays for the advertisement. Not the advertiser.

Financing
All the best things should be free and objective of Wikilook is the same. Until Wikilook achieves financial independence needs support from its users.

Donations
Anybody can donate any amount for running the project Wikilook. As Wikilook is still not a foundation, the donations are not tax deductible. Think about Wikilook as a donate-ware at this moment.

Subscriptions
There might be some services for which will be voluntary subscription fee charged. These services can take lot of processor time and Wikilook might be unable to manage them without additional financial help for buying processor time.

Paid services
Some services will require payment. Special feature requests requiring developer time can be handled through paid service tickets. Own domain or subdomain as a gate to Wikilook page might be bought as a paid service.

Sponsors
Development of Wikilook is sponsored by Ivo Bartecek and Aendi International s.r.o.. Anybody can be sponsor of Wikilook and mentioned alphabetically in a sponsor list.

Fair salary idea and profit for Wikilook founders
In future it might be useful to establish Fair salary policy for paid Wikilook developers and publishers. If there will be some users working on Wikilook full time they should receive Fair salary (for example average salary in authors country) in order to maintain normal life in country of living.

As Wikilook is one-man show at its beginning, but depends on user activity, it is good to introduce some interesting way of rewards to its founders that it will not produce bias against them. Until the Fair salary policy can be fully established and adequate profit reached, the main developer Ivo Bartecek can receive amount equivalent to server costs from Wikilook budget. This can ensure Wikilook’s users, that all additional profit of Wikilook will not be confiscated by Wikilook but used for Wikilook users and purposes.

Case studies
Wikilook is meant to be used for anything. Here are some ideas what can be done through Wikilook. Please feel free to improve or ad some ideas.

Student magazine
Create magazine template (visual representation and data structure), assign rights to editors, ad own targeted advertisement, retrieve articles from friend’s magazines, create printable version template, ad user comments, and publish.

Product comparison
Create product template, ad comparison query. Done.

Restaurant catalog
Create restaurant template, fill in some restaurant info, ad search and comparison query. Finished.

Blog
Create blog template, think about collaboration with other bloggers and create exchange platform, connect with social networks and feeders.

Social profile
Create simple social profile; assign rights to your friends.

Company website
Just make the whole company presentation within set of pages. Big corporation might use Wikilook for just representative page, as (unresolved) security issues or complete rewrite of the code for big corporation use might be technically difficult. Small company can use own domain and own design while avoiding necessity of hiring developer and maintainer of own CMS and server.

City portal
Create city portal, feed data from other publishers.

Pages for everything
Through Wikilook you can create any kind of page. Similar pages can share template to make the process easier. Let’s look for example at representative page of some university. There will be general page used by all universities in order to compare their properties. But there can be also university press space, board, magazine… If it is in public space, but the university claims its management, some parts can be managed by designated users and rights restricted. And some parts can be editable by everybody. Public space is meant to be editable by everybody, so rights restriction should be limited to only necessary parts. But as university is legal entity itself it should have right to control some parts of their representation. Managing a university page within Wikilook can have advantage to having only university website. Using standard representation users can easily find what they are looking for. Better than going to every university website and having understand where the menu is, where the contact hours for some office is. But you can also duplicate your university website visual structure and let user choose which visual representation they want to visit - standard one or customized one. It is up to visitors and therefore visitor have a choice and also more participation options. Your visitors will appreciate that.

Metaweb
Wikilook can be used as a meta space for commenting other websites. Use Widget to embed for example video from embeddable service and build around it its own commenting, rating, or analyzing system. Ad just any kind of customization you miss in its original place.

Encyclopedia
Create you own encyclopedia within Wikilook space. The main advantage is that within one system users can switch from one project to another. Compared to other wikis the main approach is to use the same system for everything within one space. That allows transcluding between languages and projects. That allows integration which goes beyond setting up independent wikis. One user base and one publishing space allows you more interaction that independent projects.

Social network
Setup your own social network with own rules or collaborate on building universal one.

Derivations
Is there an article which you would rewrite with your own words? Create a derivative work or develop different branch.

Bots
As MediaWiki is a kind of universal system, many tasks can be maintained by bots. The gradual improvement of all inputted data can be maintained by bots and everybody’s work can be linguistically corrected, catalogued, or improved by automatic scripts.

Internationalization and localization
MediaWiki software is the most complex internationalized CMS. Articles can also be easily translated to different languages. Semantic MediaWiki changes article translation to managing system in one database without needs to install wiki for each language. Translations status can be described at each page and each page can have its own attitude to translation (word by word, automatic, manual, exact etc.).

Thoughts on specialized jobs
Besides standard administrator groups there is possibility to create groups specialized on some aspect of editing. For example group of translators. These specialized members can go through articles assigned for translation. But also there might be market for commercial translations which are needed to be done immediately. Translators can offer their services for financial reward. You can assign rights to some translators to go through your private space too and watch the process of translating your pages. Any kind of specialized job can be managed through Wikilook.

Other thoughts
There might be many other questions for the future of this project. Please fill free to ask and answer them.

Can Wikilook handle millions of pages and users?
Probably yes. Wikipedia is 5th most visited website on the internet. With fewer resources than others MediaWiki can sustain the highest traffic.

Wikilook stands and falls with number of users
Not necessarily. It can be just advanced tools to manage several websites. But collaborative power of many websites can lead to greater usability.