User talk:MyWikiBiz

Past discussions are archived here:

• Archive 1 (Oct 2006 - Mar 2007)
• Archive 2 (Mar 2007 - May 2007)
• Archive 3 (June 2007 - June 2008)
• Archive 4 (July 2008 - January 2009)

On Interpretation

Adding chapter 10 to the Wikipedia version.

Currently Google search only returns the MWB version. I am not sure what happens here. Normally Google gives precedence to the original version.

Ockham 11:17, 18 January 2009 (PST)

Google is very strange. Just by rearranging the quotation marks, I can make the MyWikiBiz page disappear. Best to let the Google spiders do their work for at least 14 days before you draw any firm conclusion. (In the meantime, though, we already knew that MWB is better than Wikipedia in so many ways!) -- MyWikiBiz 12:15, 18 January 2009 (PST)

Yes - the current cached version is Dec 11 so the spiders still have to do their work. Then I will experiment with changing first on the MWB version, then propagate to the WP version, so it is clear what the proper source is. Ockham 02:30, 19 January 2009 (PST)

Google likes Nicholas of Paris

Reaches #2 Ockham 04:12, 25 January 2009 (PST)

But unfairly ignores the addition to Wikipedia 'On Interpretation'

As reported above, I added some material to the Wikipedia version of On Interpretation, which before was only in MWB version. At that point, a search on a key phrase only returned the MWB version. But now (as of new cache, 20 Jan) you see it is attributed to Wikipedia, and the MWB version is hidden. That is outrageous. Previous experiments with other sites suggested that Google always respects the provenance of material. Here it is the other way round. Google is a thief!

Next experiment. Perhaps either remove the paragraph from Wikipedia version. Or change the MWB version. Or put in another para into Wikipedia so Google gets the hint? Ockham 04:19, 25 January 2009 (PST)

JA: Google's ranking algorithm, apart from transient recency effects that disappear after a few weeks, is exclusively biased toward graph-theoretic connectivity over any other factor. That is why Google ranks Wikipedia high on any given search cue even when the original articles that snagged those cues have been reduced to stubs or even redirects — so long as all the links from other Wikipedia pages are still there — Google is clueless about the contents of the garbage bin at the other end of the links. Google's algorithm is blind to provenance when it does not issue in connectivity, it is blind to both content quality and logical quality (in the Kantian sense). "There's is no such thing as a negative link" is its sole maxim. Jon Awbrey 05:54, 25 January 2009 (PST)

I am tickled pink that you guys are curious about this Google phenomenon, as am I. It is rather offensive that the "original source" would be deprecated by Google in favor of the "borrowing site", no matter how much of a gorilla it is in PageRank. But, them's the breaks, I'm afraid. It all comes down to: In order to show you the most relevant results. Google has determined that popularity equals relevance, not originality nor quality. The only real solution to prevent this offense is to copyright your work here (in a Directory network, since the Main Space is governed by GFDL) and see to it that it doesn't find its way to Wikipedia.

If you don't mind, I'd like to toy around a little with these articles you've mentioned, to pump in a few semantic tags, so that maybe — maybe — it might out-compete Wikipedia once again. I doubt it, but it would be an achievement worthy of note. -- MyWikiBiz 09:36, 25 January 2009 (PST)

Yay that's the spirit. Ockham 11:38, 25 January 2009 (PST)

Bad weather incidents

This is an example of a Google search for bad weather incidents, where the MyWikiBiz page came up # 1 result out of 920,000, while Wikipedia's much more detailed page came in only at # 5. Notice the link for MyWikiBiz? Google seems to have selected out the Special:URIResolver page, which redirects the visitor into the real Category page. URI means 'uniform resource identifier', and that means XML relations and semantic web. So the semantic web characteristics of MyWikiBiz are without question being "boosted" by Google. Good thing the Wikipediots declared that Semantic Mediawiki was "too hard to use" for the average editor. -- MyWikiBiz 13:48, 27 January 2009 (PST)

Future SEO Battle

JA: Storing this here for future reference:

• Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page : The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

2.1.2. Intuitive Justification PageRank can be thought of as a model of user behavior. We assume there is a "random surfer" who is given a web page at random and keeps clicking on links, never hitting "back" but eventually gets bored and starts on another random page. The probability that the random surfer visits a page is its PageRank. And, the d damping factor is the probability at each page the "random surfer" will get bored and request another random page. One important variation is to only add the damping factor d to a single page, or a group of pages. This allows for personalization and can make it nearly impossible to deliberately mislead the system in order to get a higher ranking. We have several other extensions to PageRank, again see [Page 98]. Another intuitive justification is that a page can have a high PageRank if there are many pages that point to it, or if there are some pages that point to it and have a high PageRank. Intuitively, pages that are well cited from many places around the web are worth looking at. Also, pages that have perhaps only one citation from something like the Yahoo! homepage are also generally worth looking at. If a page was not high quality, or was a broken link, it is quite likely that Yahoo's homepage would not link to it. PageRank handles both these cases and everything in between by recursively propagating weights through the link structure of the web.

Images aren't working?!

I am uploading a series of photos as a part of my travelog, but I cannot get them to display in my browser - my readers are also having trouble. The files in question are...

Sahara image 1

Sahara image 2

Sahara image 3

I want to upload three more as well, but not until I find out what the problem with these images is. Could it be because of their very high resolution? I did not reduce their dimensions from the camera's 5.0 MP - if need be, I can do this and try to upload them again. Thanks as always, AndrewM 12:34, 1 February 2009 (PST)

Actually, it looks like the images are working. They are HUGE, so I am modifying them here to thumbnails. I also replied here. -- MyWikiBiz 14:59, 1 February 2009 (PST)

I think I'll just delete these images then upload resampled versions once I'm done with classes. I can't say I've ever used a wiki this extensively before, so thanks for bearing with me in this! AndrewM 00:39, 2 February 2009 (PST)

More experiments

New article here on Andrew of Cornwall which contains less information than the MWB version. Andrew of Cornwall. Also contains a link to the MWB article (the first such in article space I believe - there are many in talk space, mostly on Jimbo's page). Let's see what Google makes of that. Ockham 05:19, 7 February 2009 (PST)

Should be interesting. It's not the first external link to MWB from Wikipedia article space, though. Such links exist for MyWikiBiz article, Liz Cohen article, and Peirce's Law article. List of all external links from Wikipedia, currently 47. Twelve months ago, it was about 35. -- MyWikiBiz 06:41, 7 February 2009 (PST)

You are right. In any case, let's see. The community here seems to be growing, by the way. Ockham 08:49, 7 February 2009 (PST)

[update] The Wikipedia version of the article now appears #3 in Google - that was quick. It is the first major appearance of Andrew in a Google search, which ignores the scholarly articles about Andrew in the first 10 hits. But Google sadly ignores the MWB article, even though it is more detailed, and even though Wikipedia links to it, but not the other way round. Ockham 08:53, 7 February 2009 (PST)

Sometimes, MyWikiBiz "wins". Here is a search for greater latitude colder, which puts MWB in 3rd place, higher than the Wikipedia page that it was scraped from, in 6th place. I have no explanation, except that "Latitude" is a semantic attribute frequently used on MWB. -- MyWikiBiz 13:19, 10 February 2009 (PST)