ValueWiki Blog

Last night, Zach built an internal edit counter for ValueWiki. Now any wiki editor with editcountitis can quickly see where they stand.

ValueWiki had previously been relying on Interiot’s nifty edit count tool, but this required manual updates. Wikipedia also relies on database dumps and manual uploads, which is a bit labor intensive. Zach’s solution is automated and requires zero effort.

User Contributions

Zach also coded user contributions to display each user’s total edit count.

Is this Relevant?

Obviously the importance or relevance of edit count is deeply debatable. But the fact is, people are going to check their edit count regardless. And it certainly helps us evaluate our user statistics.

Edit Count and Authority

All message boards, from Digital Point Forums to Hot Stock Market, rank users’ authority by number of posts. This gives a general estimate of a user’s knowledge and credibility. For instance, it is hard to imagine a Wikipedian with an edit count of 5,000 who doesn’t know something about Wikipedia.

Similarly, discovering that a user has an edit count of 3 may cause you to tread lightly. It is helpful to know who the newbies are, too. Thanks for building this tool, Zach!

Last week, following a conversation with one of the good folks at Snap.com, Zach added Snap Previews to all external links on ValueWiki.

Snap Previews are the sneak-peeks you get on this wordpress blog when you mouse-over a link. However, unlike WordPress, the ValueWiki Snap previews are less obtrusive. The preview will only generate if you mouse over the Snap icon.

Zach and I love this feature, as it lets you view a site before deciding to navigate. Honestly, it keeps people on ValueWiki longer. I may submit this as a technical proposal for Wikipedia, since it took Zach about two minutes to build and is fairly useful. Is there any chance Wikipedians will go for it?

Update: I added this proposal to Wikipedia, here. Feel free to add your two cents.

Every now and then, Zach and I like to check out ValueWiki’s most popular pages to see where people are clicking. This is a cool feature of the wiki that tallies pages by number of visitors (therefore older pages have an advantage over newer pages).

Check out ValueWiki Popular Pages for the full list.

1. Main Page ‎(25,091 views)
2. Sulja Bros. Building Supplies, Ltd. (SLJB) ‎(4,882 views)
3. IDS Worldwide, Inc. (IDWD) ‎(4,500 views)
4. Apple, Inc. (AAPL) ‎(4,249 views)
5. Conversion Solutions Holdings Corp. (CSHD) ‎(2,891 views)
6. Google Inc. (GOOG) ‎(1,664 views)
7. Message board ‎(1,576 views)
8. North West Oil Group, Inc. (NWOG) ‎(1,373 views)
9. ValueWiki ‎(1,257 views)
10. Research in Motion Limited (RIMM) ‎(1,175 views)
11. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) ‎(1,151 views)
12. ToDo ‎(1,130 views)
13. PIER ONE INC (PIR) ‎(1,046 views)
14. Starbucks Corporation (SBUX) ‎(1,035 views)
15. Exchanges ‎(889 views)
16. Contest ‎(839 views)
17. ABBOTT LABORATORIES (ABT) ‎(831 views)
18. Project List ‎(784 views)
19. Browse ‎(770 views)
20. FUND ‎(709 views)

ValueWiki has just added coverage of the Australian Securities Exchange, the 8th largest exchange in the world. This brings our grand total to 56,518 worldwide securities covered in our Wiki.

With the major exchanges in America, Canada, and Australia, ValueWiki now covers nearly 50% of the total worldwide marketcap (approximately $19 trillion of $40 trillion).

To quickly search for an Australian Security, just use the conventional TICKER.AX syntax. That is, ABB GRAIN LIMITED (ABB.AX), is categorized under “ABB GRAIN LIMITED” or “ABB.AX.” Makes sense, right?

Welcome, Australia!

ValueWiki now covers the Toronto Stock Exchange, adding 2,131 stocks to ValueWiki’s database. The TSX is the world’s 6th largest exchange, and we are excited to begin covering our neighbors to the north. Welcome, Canada!

The fastest way to find Canadian companies on ValueWiki is using the search tool. Enter your company name using the conventional stock syntax, TICKER:CA. For example, typing “T” into the search will take you to the American AT&T (NYSE), but typing “T:CA” will take you to the Canadian Telus (TSX).

ValueWiki Canada is still in Beta as we tinker with templates, charts, and other features. Feel free to browse ValueWiki Canada and let us know any suggestions you have.

ValueWiki may now be the only financial site showing all funds holding a position in each stock. Thanks to Zach for some nifty programming.

Here’s how it works…

Let’s search for Apple Computer. The ValueWiki Apple Computer article shows a dashboard box stating that 1191 Funds hold Apple in their Top 25 Holdings, making Apple Computer the 25th most held stock by funds.

So every stock on ValueWiki now has a subpage listing all the funds with Top 25 ownership positions. Another upgrade to ValueWiki’s Fund coverage is on each Fund page. We now list the Top 10 Holdings for every US Fund.

How we generate this data

All Funds (aside from private Hedge Funds) make their holdings pubicly available. A fairly accurate portrait of a fund can be garnered from their Top 25 Holdings, or even their Top 10 Holdings, because of portfolio weighting. Zach parsed data for all US Funds (NYSE, NASD, AMEX, OTC) and found that only 4,500 stocks were held in the Top 25 position by US Funds. Ranking this data, Zach was able to discover which stocks were the most widely held by Funds. Due to the large number of ties, there are only 351 ranks. Thus, Apple Computer is ranked 25th out of 351, for stocks held by Funds.

Stocks most widely held by Funds

For those who are curious, these are the Top 10 Stocks held by Funds (in the Top 25 position in a Fund portfolio). The first number is the Stock’s rank, the second number is the total number of Funds holding. The full list of all 4,500 stocks can be found at ValueWiki.

1. BK OF AMERICA CP: 2750

2. GEN ELECTRIC CO: 2734

3. CITIGROUP INC: 2649

4. EXXON MOBIL CP: 2643

5. Microsoft Corporation: 2508

6. JP MORGAN CHASE CO: 2411

7. Cisco Systems, Inc.: 2313

8. PFIZER INC: 2230

9. AMER INTL GROUP INC: 2094

10. PROCTER GAMBLE CO: 1899

I wrote a new ValueWiki Tutorial this week. Wiki can intimidate a lot of new users - this is probably the biggest challenge ValueWiki faces as a startup. I know it took me a while before I began to contribute to Wikipedia. I guess the trick is to present a tutorial that is as user-friendly as possible, and then add easily accessible help links to every page of the wiki.

The truth is, there’s really only about eight commands you will ever need to write on a Wiki. Just bold, italics, bullet lists, most of which are available as soon as you open an edit window.

Wiki is a great way to introduce people to programming, and is a sort of gateway drug to learning HTML. Zach believes HTML should be a mandatory high school class nowadays, a required course in a modern society. I take his point.

If you’re new to Wiki, check out the Tutorial’s wiki cheatsheet to help you get started. If you’re a Wiki pro, you can check out how I programmed the stacked folder windows. If you’re a Wiki Ninja, you may notice some redundancy in my programming; most likely Zach is going to trim things down. Take a minute to give the Tutorial a test drive and let us know if you think the Tutorial will be helpful to newcomers.

Zach struck again. He has expanded our user voting from Articles to People. Now ValueWiki has a system for ranking users.

ValueWookies can now add “” along with “[ [Category:Top_10_ValueWookies]]” to their personal profiles to be voted by the ValueWiki community. Many stock message boards attempt user rankings, to separate quality posters from less credible users. Even Wikipedia has implemented a charming albeit non-scientific barnstar policy.

Our system allows users to vote for or against each other, just like a Digg button. The Value-Wookies with the highest rank are displayed at Top 10 ValueWookies. Eventually, we will probably display more than just the Top 10. That way, any ValueWookie can check their standing in the community.

Our goal is to inspire a positive community where users recognize and commend good writing, editing, and etiquette. Newbies can immediately recognize which ValueWookies have experience and credibility.

Stay tuned for new tweaks and additions to this feature.

Zach has built the framework for our user voting and I for one, am excited.

As usual, it seemed to take him less than an hour, which always mystifies me. You can try out a sample “Vote” button here.

So many Web 2.0 companies focus on voting, digging, and ranking. Meanwhile, the Wiki-universe is struggling to catch up on this. For instance, the MediaWiki Board of Trustees elections are labyrinthine. As is Wikipedia’s policy for selecting daily featured articles, a voting process that can take months or even years. Granted there are reasons for preventing anonymous users from gaming the vote, and a huge site like Wikipedia is faced with special challenges. But don’t these featured article criteria seem a bit Byzantine?

The only live Wiki Voting example I have seen is at the Democracy Wiki. It’s very slick and Digg-like, dynamically updating the number of user votes. Eventually, we may slick up our voting appearance as well, but for now it’s about 79th on the to do list.

How Our Voting Works

Voting allows ValueWookies to rank articles, stocks, and users. Any page a user votes on ends up in the Top 10 List Category. To start a new Top 10 List, just start a new page and add the [[Category:Top 10]] tag. This automatically places the page in the Top 10 List Category and adding the [[Category:Vote]] tag allows users to vote on it. That’s it.

As ValueWiki’s voting evolves we hope it will help guide every user’s experience. We will soon be testing a system for allowing users to vote “featured articles” to the mainpage.

Everything on ValueWiki is a work in progress. The system is still very Beta and your comments are appreciated. Stay tuned for more updates!