Santa’s reindeer travel at a speed of 3,604 miles per second in order to deliver presents to the world’s 2.5 billion homes, according to Anders Larsson of the Swedish engineering consultancy, Sweco. Larsson estimated there are 120 people per square mile on Earth, with 66 feet between each home. Assuming Santa is all-faith-inclusive, leaves from Kyrgyzstan, and travels against the Earth’s rotation, he has 48 hours to deliver all the presents, while spending 34 microseconds at each stop. Some scientists speculate that Santa’s sleigh, weighed down with metric tons of presents while traveling at supersonic speed, would encounter such massive air resistance it would be vaporised in a firey inferno within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Thus, the mystery of Santa’s technology lives on.

Happy Holidays!

Zach and I have both been pretty swamped in our respective non-ValueWiki lives. As you may have noticed, I am no longer blogging 15 times per week. Due to my schedule, I plan to now use the ValueWiki blog as more of a traditional company blog, only posting relevant updates and announcements.

As ValueWiki approaches its one year anniversary, we are pleased to see the site passing 500 registered users and approaching 5 million page views, with great new investment information being posted every week. Zach is planning a few technical improvements for the site that we hope to unveil in the near future. We will blog as soon as there are new developments to report. Stay tuned!

I am loving the Whole Foods debacle. The CEO kept a yahoo finance message board alias for seven years, and used it to promote himself, Whole Foods, and occasionally attack his competitor, Wild Oats Markets. Message Board posters are constantly accusing each other of being “paid pumpers” or “paid bashers” or secretly working for a competitor. 99.99% of the time, these conspiracy theories are completely ridiculous. But now, thanks to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, we can expect message board conspiracy theories to live on for quite a while.

I own Apple both in my personal portfolio, and the portfolio I manage. But I definitely had my doubts as to how many people would actually want to spend $499 to buy a phone. And I’ve wondered if Apple stock will take a break now that we’ve finally reached the release date.

Well, a friend of mine went to the Apple store today to get her computer fixed, and said it was mobbed like a rock concert. Four hour lines to sign up for iPhone service. Will be interesting to follow Apple stock this quarter.

Is Wikigroaning now an official pop-culture term? The Wallstreet journal has some funny examples of “nerd-bias” on Wikipedia.

If you haven’t checked out WikiGroaning yet, it’s worth a gander. The site compares the completeness of Wikipedia articles to demonstrate how nerdy we Wikipedians are. I previously wrote about Wikipedia’s liberal bias… Does Wikipedia have a nerd bias?

For instance, the site compares:

*Modern Warfare vs. Lightsaber Combat

*Bathing vs. Acne

*Girlfriend vs. Video Games

In all cases, the “nerd” topic far outweighs the normal topic. For more fun and games, check out Wikigroaning.com.

Finding buried treasure in stocks that find, well, buried treasure

In March a friend humorously pointed me to Admiralty Holding Company (ADMH), a sad little penny stock for a company that searches for buried treasure on sunken ships. It sounded like a ridiculous investment. So I was surprised last week when a similar company, Odyssey Marine Exploration (OMR), rocketed up 80% to $7.38 when it discovered buried treasure.

Odyssey Marine Exploration claims to have discovered a Colonial period shipwreck with over 500,000 silver coins weighing more than 17 tons, hundreds of gold coins, worked gold, and other artifacts located in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Atlantic. The claims appear to have some legitimacy, as the Spanish Government is already suing Odyssey, claiming the treasure must belong to the Spanish crown. Presumably, the Spanish will allow Odyssey to keep some of the booty in exchange for their troubles. OMR shares closed down 20 cents, or 3% on news of the Spanish lawsuit today.

Stephen Colbert had Jimmy Wales on his show last week, and a fresh round of Wikipedia pranks has ensued. You can best view the interview here.

Last year, Colbert’s Comedy Central fans began editing the Wikipedia article on Elephants to read, “Thanks largely to the efforts of Stephen Colbert, the world elephant population has tripled.” These edits are still being reverted to this day. Following Colbert’s interview with Wales, a new flurry of pages are being protected. Colbert called on viewers to write a variety of new and interesting facts. Namely, that “Librarians are hiding something,” that “Oxygen is a poison“, that “Albert Einstein was an Alpacca farmer“, and that anyone looking for the Spanish Wikipedia should “just learn English.”

I should note that all of these pages are now semi-protected. Probably because, as Jimmy notes in the interview, Wikipedians watch the Colbert report. Colbert is the comedian who coined the term “Wikiality”, a state in which truth becomes whatever the majority of people believe it to be. This prompted Colbert fans to start the parody wiki, Wikiality.com, “The Truthiness Encyclopedia.”

Wales enjoyed his Colbert interview with good humor, and even noted that Stephen Colbert himself had been banned from editing Wikipedia, for “not behaving himself.”

Advolcano.com has listed the top 57 Wiki’s by traffic rank. ValueWiki should be in the top 50, but the author, Jason Rodriguez, does not seem to respond to blog email or comments.

According to Jason’s list, the top ten Wikis by Alexa rank and Google page rank are:

  1. Wikipedia PR8 Alexa Rank:10
  2. Adobe Labs PR9 Alexa Rank:85
  3. WikiAnswers PR6 Alexa Rank:274
  4. TripAdvisor Wiki PR3 Alexa Rank:504
  5. Apache Wiki PR7 Alexa Rank:939
  6. WikiMapia PR6 Alexa Rank:1,139
  7. Second Life Wiki PR6 Alexa Rank:1,413
  8. Wikia PR7 Alexa Rank:1,657
  9. AboutUs PR6 Alexa Rank:1,982
  10. Debian PR6 Alexa Rank:2,020

On Monday ValueWiki took the plunge and blocked all anonymous IP’s from editing. ValueWiki is now forcing all users to register. We will closely monitor and report the effects this has on the wiki.

Banning Anonymous IP’s – The Perennial Debate

Banning anonymous IP’s is a perennial proposal on Wikipedia, hotly debated for years. There is ample statistical evidence to show anonymous IP’s cause most (but not all) forms of vandalism. However, the radical egalitarian spirit of Wikipedia prides itself on keeping the encyclopedia open to everyone.

Wikipedia’s Policy

I would argue that logging in allows a greater level of anonymity than displaying an IP address. And I would also argue that with hundreds of thousands of users and worldwide brand recognition, Wikipedia no longer has to be concerned about luring in new users through experimental anonymous editing. But I greatly respect the spirit of the policy. It is Wikipedia’s open-source idealism that has captured the world’s imagination and attracted so many loyal devotees from around the globe.

ValueWiki’s Policy

Unlike Wikipedia, ValueWiki has the luxury of not being a democracy! In these early stages, we prefer to think of ourselves as a benevolent dictatorship. 99% of ValueWiki vandalism is clearly the result of anonymous IPs. So rather than spend years on community discussion and spam-reverting, we are simply forcing users to register and log in.

For anyone shocked at our decision to close an open-source system, here is our reasoning…

9 Reasons To Force Wiki Editors to Register

  1. Registering is inherently anonymous. In fact, it is far more anonymous than leaving an IP address.

  2. Registering helps promote community.

  3. Registering on a wiki is a one-step process that takes ten seconds.

  4. Registering stymies spam bots.

  5. Registering makes it far easier to ban abusive users. Blocking IP addresses is sloppy work; banning one IP can block an entire country.

  6. Registering allows a wiki to keep clear statistics on users and usage.

  7. Registering nulls most vandalism and spam (99% of ValueWiki vandals are anonymous IP’s).

  8. Registering is required on all other internet message boards and community sites. So registration isn’t considered a huge imposition…

  9. It’s just an experiment. If we don’t like the results, we can always undo it.