Off-topic thought:

Hi,

I had a thought right now that I want to mention to the people behind tinWiki as just a suggestion or brainstorming: a page directory (like Yahoo) listing web pages that deal with tinWiki types of topics.

If this sounds like a project that could be interesting at some point, here is such a directory that might serve as a model, perhaps.

Optimist

Doesn't the category page sort of cover that already? Or are you thinking of something different. Sorry, my brain is not working at full capacity/.

William One Sac,

Thank you for replying. Yes, inside tinWiki, the category page is basically exactly the same as such a page directory, I guess one could put it like that; however, what I was thinking about is something like Yahoo (or Open Directory Project), a page directory for the entire web. So, it's the same thing as the category page then, but not for tinWiki internally, but rather a general page directory for web pages on the WWW.

Some years ago it was more obvious in Yahoo (I'm pretty sure it's Yahoo I'm thinking of) that they listed web pages by category. This other page looks more like an immediately recognizable page directory, I think one can say, than what Yahoo does nowadays since Yahoo now looks like a kind of web portal, slash search engine, slash all-sorts-of-things, so to speak. Anyway, to sum up, this page directory type of thing can maybe be called an encyclopedia that lists web pages on the WWW instead of listing topics.

Optimist

[edit on 29-6-2007 by Optimist]

(I tried editing my previous post but it seems it failed)

Here is Yahoo's directory page as it is now it seems, and here Google has one as well (...of course)

Right now I saw this article. It made me remember the topic here that I had posted about before, and so I thought I would mention that article in the thread here.

The article there talks about the big search engine Google making it difficult for "alternative knowledge" and conspiracy theory related websites to be found in searches.

Same as when I first posted about a "tinDirectory", I still think that, in the long term, it seems like an obvious project to index tin type websites. A webdirectory is not the exact same thing as a search engine, as I understand it, since webdirectories are created manually by selecting and categorizing and possibly "ranking" websites that are listed in the directory. (At least I for some reason have the impression that directories are done manually, whereas search engines get their information through automatic web crawling spiders, or what it is they are called, those programs that find websites for the search engines.) Web directories are of course still searchable (or, again, that would be my general impression).

Anyway, just thought I would add a mention of that article to the thread here.

Optimist

I saw the improvements you made recently to the category listing page, and it reminded me immediately of your suggestion for a page directory. I think this is something we should focus on. If for no other reason than perhaps to help improve our rankings with the search engines.

William One Sac,

Thanks. I'm glad you like what I did there. :-) I think it's a quite helpful idea, what someone mentioned here a while back, to sort categories so it's visible what relation they have with other categories (main category, sub-category, sub-sub-category..) There weren't a lot of categories that belonged to other categories, really, but after I read that post (not sure who wrote it) I tried to look for categories that seemed should really be sorted under other categories, and so be sub-categories.

I also have created a couple of new categories, since I think eventually the category structure in tinWiki will have to develop in a somewhat different direction from how the category structure is here in ATS. For example I have tried to create separate categories for UFOs and Aliens, respectively, since I believe that in an encyclopedia the two are very different subjects. I mean, almost never is an Alien an unidentified flying object, and vice versa (at least that isn't the most common way those subjects are talked about, unless for example a craft of some kind is in reality a kind of living being, like in the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica, or if an Alien is flying around in the air, like those "witches" in Mexico or where it was).

But about what you mention, regarding what I have talked about in this thread, do you picture setting up a page directory for external sites (sites all over the web, really) and doing that within tinWiki, or do you picture creating a separate website like dmoz.org? The latter is really what I myself was thinking about. Or were you even not thinking of external sites, but of listing tinWiki pages (I mean since you mention search engine rankings and so on)? Sorry that I didn't quite catch your meaning, I do get fairly easily confused and it's not always clear to me what all these Internet and web terms refer to...

Optimist

I was thinking along the terms of making a complete site map for the site, using the structure that you suggested. Right now we have a "list all pages" page and then a seperate page for the categories. I do not mean to make a page for external websites. I think that with a site map it will help search engines like Google index our site. I have done Google searches on a number of our pages and I find that we are getting very poor rankings. It is known that site maps with pages listed can help in that regard. We can even refine it further afterwards, by creating a page called "UFO's" and then listing the pages that are categorized under ufo's and linking to them on that page. Then with each link we can create a short blurb or description of the page.

I realize I am getting ahead of myself, this is a monumental task to undertake, but in my experience these steps are very helpful to getting high search engine rankings.

William One Sac,

I think I understand somewhat what you are saying, and I definitely agree that more visibility in the search engines is important. What a site map actually is, I don't really know, but I have seen that term several times, maybe one of the places I have seen it mentioned is in the Google Administrator Tools service (I think it's called something like that) where one can upload a site map, and some other stuff also. It's worth looking into, what you have mentioned now, and I will try and see if I can understand more about this type of topic, I mean maybe read some articles and so on.

I don't really know too much about rankings and so on, but my impression is that one important thing is whether other websites link to the site (to tinWiki, in this case). In addition to other websites, ATS is of course a big site on the web that would be important to have link to tinWiki, and so that thing about trying to pull tinWiki a bit more into the posting activity in the ATS forums, and that way getting people to link from posts and to tinWiki articles, would absolutely help tinWiki's position is web search hits and so on (as I imagine it, anyway). But there may be quite a lot of topics that come into how high a website is listed in web searches. Maybe a thread should be started for the topic of tinWiki and page rankings, since the topic certainly deserves it, and there's possibly a few people here who have valuable input who'd notice the thread.

By the way, I have to mention that I'm quite having a bit of fun in tinWiki lately, coming up with tiny little ideas for improvement and trying them out. Let's face it, tinWiki is pretty fun. :-)

Optimist


edit: corrected misspellingn the first paragraph..

[edit on 4-3-2008 by Optimist]