[rdfweb-dev] open, collaborative, people encyclopedia

[Adam Atlas]

A while ago, I was thinking of starting "Vanitypedia" -- like 
Wikipedia, except it would be specifically for "vanity pages," i.e. 
people talking about their non-notable selves, relatives, and 
acquaintances. Basically as a joke site. I guess it turns out there are 
some actual uses for something like this... it could be like those 
social networking sites, but more flexible and collaborative.

I say "good thing," but there might be privacy/liability issues if 
people can post detailed information about other people.


On Apr 8, 2005, at 5:47 PM, thus spake Hendy Irawan:

> Is there already an open, collaborative, people encyclopedia in the 
> Internet?
>
> User Stories
> 	• 	Rudy had just read a part of Refactoring, and was liked the way 
> the author wrote this book. So he looked up Martin Fowler in the 
> encyclopedia. It turned out there are three Martin Fowlers. The first 
> is a garbage collector, the second is a circus clown, and the third is 
> chief scientist at ThoughtWorks, who also happened to be the author of 
> Refactoring (BTW, the encyclopedia claims to sort the results based on 
> popularity). A click on the third Martin Fowler lists his friends, 
> enemies, colleagues, along with other books he'd written (with links 
> to Amazon).
> 	• 	Amy had lost David, her child. She posted him on the encyclopedia, 
> with complete details including his eye color, shoe size, and brand of 
> T-shirt he was wearing. She tagged him with "missing person". Several 
> minutes later Mark, found a child having amnesia, so he reported this 
> to the police and, in addition to that, he also posted this child to 
> the encyclopedia, giving a few details. The encyclopedia turned out to 
> already had matches to what he posted (furthermore, David is a 
> "missing person"), so Mark clicked on David, and he thought that David 
> was exactly like the child he found. So he clicked on Amy, David's 
> mother, to contact her and bring the good news. It turned out that Amy 
> was in the same kindergarten as David (at least, the encyclopedia said 
> so).
> 	• 	Ilias wants to meet his long-lost friend, Diana. So he searches 
> for "Diana". The first results give him over a thousand Diana's. The 
> encyclopedia suggests several criteria for narrowing down the results: 
> on gender (there were several male Diana's), on age, on location. So 
> he clicked out the criteria that best matches his Diana. Several 
> seconds later, he found his long-lost friend, Diana, who happens to  
> be his neighbor for the past 18 months (at least, that's what the 
> encyclopedia said).
> 	• 	Microloft wants to hire several new engineers. Instead of posting 
> a vacancy, Bill, who happens to be the recruitment manager, decides to 
> search the encyclopedia for people that matches his criteria, namely 
> skills in software development, and that they should be at most 3 
> "hops" away from him. One candidate had several very nice comments 
> from Steve Jobs (Bill's good friend), and Bill immediately asked him 
> if he'd join the company. The remaining candidates were invited for an 
> interview.
>
>  Good thing, or PSS? (Pure Shit Stuff)
>
> -- 
> Hendy Irawan
> http://www.gauldong.net
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