Would any Wiki contributor here be willing to add a piece about Fluther?

There was a fluther page on wikipedia a while back but it was deleted for not being very interesting. I doubt it would last long given the (sadly) reduced activity here now.

But maybe if there’s a page on “Question and answer sites” details about Fluther would last there, @Lightlyseared.

I also found this handy-dandy chart on Wiki:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Q%26A_sites

@jca your link doesn’t work. I fixed it for you

Thank you @Mimishu1995.

Articles on Wikipedia aren’t deleted for being “uninteresting.” They are deleted for being unsupported by fact, bad writing, wrapped in fallacy, poor references with bad citations or no citations at all, or when asked to be deleted by proprietors with good grounds . But even then they can survive as stubs ready and waiting for better informed contributors.

I like the idea. Any promotion for this site might help in keeping it alive.

But who is qualified to speak for the community and treat it fairly? You or me? Janbb? H_C? How many of us know that this started as a grief site (according to Gale in her first Fluther interview conducted by Ben). Should we form a committee and decide the content? Or is this a project best left to the founders?.

Or another option is someone can contact one of the Wiki contributors or editors and tell them about Fluther so they can add the info to the page about q&a sites.

@Espiritus_Corvus We could form a committee, but then we need to work closely with the founders. They have more information about this site than we do.

We should be on Encyclopedia Dramatica.

I heard that Wiki keeps labeling Fluther as a content farm, whatever that means.

^^That’s Google. And it has kept this site in the back of the search engine for years. Maybe Ben doesn’t want it to be popular. Maybe he’s afraid it would become another Sodahead. That wouldn’t be anything to be proud of.

@Mimishu, Well, if you’ll commit to the project like this, so will I. I’d love to work on a project with you if you aren’t too tied up in school. I figure it might take a little PMing back and forth for about a week. I can write pretty good content if I’m given more than ten bloody minutes to edit.

But we do need to contact Ben and whoever else has a vested interest in this site and find out some history and what they had in mind, And I’d like to hear their description of it. I think Mariah would be the right person to go through for that.

Shouldn’t take more than a week to get something ready for approval.

How about you, @LuckyGuy? You asked the question. Would you like to come on in strickly an advisory capacity? Proof the content? You’re more corporate than I am. Might need your level head. Could end up being a first-class piece of work. If we do this right, maybe we can lobby Google to change our blood status.

@jca That’s a good idea. I’ll do that now. LOL. Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales started Wikipedia in my hometown, St. Pete, Florida before he moved the op to San Francisco. Saw him at the yacht club. I wonder…

I’ll get back to you guys here.

@Espiritus_Corvus yeah, we need more people to work on it. You are good at writing. @LuckyGuy can be helpful for tracking down related pepple. I’m good at digging up on Google. But… will a Wikipedia page increase the site’s traffic and lead to that Sodahead consequence?

Not if we frame the article properly. You sound like a great organizer, Mimi. Take charge kinda gurl. I can do research as well. We can compare notes and fact check each other.

How are you with handling hyperlinks in Wiki Syntax? Does this look familiar to you?

I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like the coding thing I did at school, and I was good at it.

I have an idea: you can write an article in a .doc file detailing how you want your formatting to look like, and I will insert them for you. Is it ok?

You are invaluable, Mimi. I think we’re in business. I’ll PM Moriah now and see if we can get some Ben input. Will begin reseaching Fluther over the first cup of coffee tomorrow morning. We can compare notes tomorrow at the time of your choice. Is that good for you?

OK. You go talk to Mariah and let her contact Ben. You just PM me your result and I’ll give you mine.

OK

Aw this is sweet. I love the dedication to the site.

It’s nice to be in at the birth of a great undertaking.

I am more than willing to co-write or edit something, but I am not a Wiki editor.

Jelly is on that list.

^^I saw that. Biz appears to be a really good guy with the highest intentions and not shy at all about promoting the things he beilieves in.

@marinelife Watch for an imcoming PM.

Can I be in the cheering section? It sounds like a great idea, and a worthwhile undertaking. I am anxious to see the project take shape.

OK, I’m back. (Things are a little crazy here.)
@Espiritus_Corvus @Mimishu1995 Sure I’m in!

The description does not have to be that long. Look at some of the other examples. They are a paragraph or two.

@Patty_Melt This is quickly growing into a multifaceted project. There is room for everyone who would like to make any contribution. We even have a Cheerleading Section. No Kidding. The fact is that Wikipedia seems to prefer articles produced by multiple contributors in all disciplines, not just writers, but researchers, fact checkers, editors.

Therefore, the larger our team is, the better our chances of meeting their very strict criteria for articles concerning social media and Q&A. And trust me. We can find something small or large for just about anyone here who would like to join the team.

So, it benefits us to credit EVERYBODY who is even remotely connected with this Project—at any time, no matter how short that time is—for what they contribute.

At the moment we are researchiing the following:
Wikipedia Criteria for Social Media Articles
Founders and Evolution of Fluther Concept
History and Fate of Past Wikipedia Article Projects
Early History and Evolution of Fluther.com
Most Memorable Moments in Fluther History
Moments, Memes & Threads

Anyone here who would like to do a little research on some of the above is welcome. We already have some information and leads, so PM me and I’ll turn the info over to you so we won’t waste energy being redundant.

We could us a person who enjoys beating institutions at their own game with their own rules. In other words, we could use a person with an innate legal mind to study closely the Wikipedia criteria for articles concerning Social and Q&A sites and discuss these things with the team. This is where the two previous efforts to enter a Fluther article failed and other sites such as YahooAnswers and Sodahead succeeded. It is probably the reason why Google has us listed as a “content farm”, because wikipedia articles and similar information sites hold big sway in their information gathering and decisions.

Google, in their cursory search, was unable to find independent information about Fluther.com. The person or persons who would like to take on the above task will the ones who make this article happen.

@LuckyGuy Watch for incoming PM

Okay, I’ll be cheer captain.

Gimme an F
Gimme an L
Gimme a U-T-H-E-R!
What does it spell…goooooo Fluther!

Rah, rah rah, go, go, go,
Look out wiki here comes Mimi & Crow.

Okay, I just hurt myself doing the splits. haha

Don’t forget to mention the lurve system.
Include teasers. Some of the famous threads just include hints like, “Find out why most Fluther members like pancakes.”

I have a feeling that a Wikipedia article will at least motivate people on the internet to seek for more information to add to Google.

And will there be any need for a sub-article about Ben? :p

@Patty_Melt

How about elaborating on that and write up a couple of paragraphs about LURVE. You’ve been here for quite awhile, go for it.

Here’s a bare-bones, one paragraph description from our last Wikipedia article submission (that was refused because we didn’t meet the criteria for hyperlinking and citing independent sources). It’s a head start.

Lurve
“Lurve” (a slang term for the word “love” popularized in the Woody Allen film “Annie Hall”, expressing something stronger than love) is a point system used by Fluther to signify the amount of positive contribution a user has made to the community. Users attain lurve when others feel they have provided a “great answer” or asked a “great question”.

How would somebody like to write up a 2 or 3 paragraph description of what Fluther is today?

Here’s a prompt:

“We are a Community where people help each other by sharing their experiences & opinions.”

Who would like to dig up our current demographics and numbers concerning how many active users there are. More than one source, complete with links?

There are lots of old threads regarding or including discussions about lurve. I have troubles making links work with my phone, but I will give her a go. If not, maybe I can get some dates and other post info which can make it easy for someone else.

All we need are the url’s to the threads. There is no need to form hyperlinks. Research is the biggest part of this right now. We can’t write without well researched subject matter. So, if you can provide us with the url’s under a subject heading, we would have leads for the writers.

Thank you, Patty.

Good morning team!
I am, officially your new morale coach and cheering section. Todays team affirmation presented by Stewart Smalley.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJkJVKpMr2M

Gooooo wiki fluther team!

I like the idea, and the fact that it seems to be happening is great.

Thank you, @longgone

I’ve looked back and I think I’ve found one of the major probems that caused both previous attempts to publish with Wikipedia to fail.

This Conversation took place on 7 January, 2010 on the day of launch during the second attempt to publish. It starts out with the guys celebrating because they thought they were done after 3 months of work, then it quickly gets dark as the Wikipedia moderators immediately begin to ask for editorial changes. Notice Andrew McClain is monitoring the thread as he chimes in just before Mattbrowne asks about the “banners” that suddenly pop up above the article they had just submitted. Even Andrew didn’t see it coming.

Thanks to these guys, we won’t be surprised when this happens to our submission. We will expect it and be ready. Apparently, the real work starts upon submission, and that work is time-sensitive. The article will be archived if the authors don’t adequately provide what the moderators demand. This is cool. It keeps Wikipedia from being inundated with badly referenced work and eliminates spammy corporate- and self-promotion.

In light of this, Mimi and I have decided to do a couple of short, unrelated articles first. This will allow Mimi to sharpen her skills in this particular code and establish us a bit with the Wikipedia moderators, as they will surely ask for editorial changes.

Once we are confident with the process of submission, and hopefully have somewhat of a track record of cooperation with the Wikipedia staff, we will introduce the Fluther.com article as a bare-bones stub. Stubs come under less strict moderation and are expected to be developed further by other contributors over time. In this way, we expect to avoid the trauma those guys experienced by submitting what they thought was a completed article and then were bombarded with multiple requests for changes all at once.

Please don’t think for a minute that I’m dissing the guys on that thread. These were some of the brightest people we’ve ever had in our communtiy and they did us a huge favor by documenting their submission experience. While reading that thread and others, I was astonished at their intelligence. They all will be cited as contributors when the time comes.

@Coloma LOL. Stewart Smalley, Senator from Minnesota. Thanks for the morning boost.

I have sometimes wondered if the guys at work ask him to do some of his SNL stuff to lighten a grim day.

This is a wonderful project. Thank you to everyone putting in the time to get it working, especially Crow & Mimi!

I’m short on predictable/regular free time, but I had some random free time today so I thought I’d spend it looking for some articles we might use as citations in the eventual wikipedia article (in addition to the ones already found). I’m posting them here for storage and easy access. Most of these came out after the Jan 2010 attempt. There was an increase in articles mentioning Fluther around the time Twitter acquired the Fluther team, and then again when Jelly was launched (and since Fluther is Jelly’s older brother, we can probably make the connections there more substantial?). Maybe other jellies have already found these articles, or would have found them when they needed to—but in case this helps or speeds up the process at all—not the cleanest presentation of the sources, and not evenly “annotated” or organized, but here they are!

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fluther#/entity (honestly I’m not sure what this site is for sure, but it has a timeline of different things related to Fluther.)

https://blog.twitter.com/2010/fluther-flocks-to-twitter (blog, but it is from the horse’s mouth so to speak, so would that count as “reliable”?)

http://mashable.com/2014/01/07/biz-stone-jelly/#ox6fmg36Ygqz

https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/biz-stone-introduces-his-jelly-co-founder-and-cto-fluthers-ben-finkel/ (the Wikipedia discussion marked techcrunch as “blog, not RS” so not sure this and following two links helps with making Fluther notable/nontrivial, but they do talk about Fluther—especially the last one which is about the Federated effort a while back)

https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/21/fluther-twitter/

https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/09/federated-fluther-lets-third-parties-integrate-qa-with-a-few-lines-of-code/

https://missionlocal.org/2010/03/fluther-flourishes-on-mission-street/comment-page-1/

https://about.me/finkel (this has a stat of 1.3 million visitors monthly—anyone have a date for that? … ah, farther in Jan 2010 thread, the link to Alexa)

http://vator.tv/news/2010-12-21-twitter-acquires-q-a-site-fluther-for-talent (not sure what this site is either, but it has a brief article about Fluther with some site-traffic/comparison stats.)

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/27/4470958/first-clues-emerge-about-jelly-twitter-co-founders-mysterious-new

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374605,00.asp

https://www.cnet.com/news/fluthers-q-a-service-gets-im-support/ (this and the next two cnet articles are more than just an award mention so shouldn’t be as “trivial”)

https://www.cnet.com/news/fluther-a-fun-jellyfish-themed-q-a-service/

https://www.cnet.com/news/fluther-launches-federated-q-a-for-any-site/

Also, there was talk some time ago about getting the Fluther twitter going again? Not sure if there was anyone who was able to take that over, but renewed Twitter activity may be another way to make Fluther “notable”?

Thank you very much, @Soubresaut. We have a lot of publicity from before the last attempt, but very little after 2009, so thank you again. This is needed. The list you posted above is the first we’ve seen. I haven’t gone through it all yet.

We really need to find some news aritcles independent f the tech industry, e.g. by the New York Times or something like that. Wikipedia would consider that prime coverage toward Notability. And we need a few like that spread over time to avoid being classified as Temporarily Notable, per their Notability Guidelines

One of the good things is that notability doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with popularity. If we were to be judged by our present traffic, this would become an academic exercise. And this is one of the primary reasons we need to get this done and published.

I would also like to add that we may need someone who can act as a “negotiator”, someone who is versed in Wikipedia rules or at least can understand what Wikipedia wants us to edit when we submit the article and inform everyone. The reason why the latest attempt failed was because people were taken aback by Wikipedia’s feedback and because they weren’t able to understand the demand clearly. We really don’t want something like that to happen again.

In short: we welcome help of any kind. This is the community’s project after all.

Ode to Mimi

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpcUxwpOQ_A

Good morning team wiki!

Today I present a short video on the power of teamwork. All for one and one for all!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RnohUnZrqg

Teamwork sounds nice. But there are times when I’ll stick with “holding my own”.

Good morning team…where are your updates?
How do I cheer what I cannot hear? lol
I expect a full report before midnight on 2–3-17. get crackin’!

@Coloma I love how seriously you’re taking this. It made me smile.

<following>

<watching >

^ It is now 5:45 a.m. Sat. Feb. 4 in @Mimishu1995‘s zone and she has missed the progress report deadline, however….. the team leader @Espiritus_Corvus has 5 hours and 12 minutes left before the deadline. Goooo Crow!

@Coloma well we are pretty much still at the preparation level. EC and I have found something to practice our editing skill and EC is now searching for information to cite the article. He has to juggle between researching and his work so please be patient.

@Coloma Just has the Cheerleader’s outfit ON !

@Mimishu1995 Thanks for the udate Mimi.

@Tropical_Willie Wow, and I’m 10 again!

You will always be a TEN on Fluther !

@Tropical_Willie Awww shucks. :-)