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edit Subdomains

These can be added using Create subdomain for the time being. Eventually (read: "not soon") we will improve the bot to handle these) -- TedErnst (talk) 11:07, 7 March 2008 (PST)

see also this proposal: SubDomainPage

edit RssWebfeed

If would be nice if it was easy possible to include RssWebFeed content from the site in the wiki page about the site and/or in other related sites.

edit Auto TOC for big Categories

It would be nice to have a TOC generated automatically for each big Category (at least for each Category that's longer than one page). If this is too hard, why not put the TOC into every Category? Joe Cohen | Reply 18:24, 11 December 2007 (PST)

Joe, I have spoken with John Stanton regarding this. He is looking into better category TOC's as the one you are referencing is a basic one and we are so big, we could stand to have a more heafty one. Thanks! ~~ MarkDilley

We now have {{LargeCategoryTOC}} which works as a quick fix. Hopefully this will hold us over until we get a better solution. TedErnst (talk) 14:44, 31 January 2008 (PST)

edit Cut and Paste

I'm sometimes frustrated by my to cut material from one AboutUs page and paste it into an edit. This is especially a problem when trying to copy code. For example, I'd like to be able to cut Categories from PortlandTech/Instructions and paste them elsewhere on the site. -- Joe Cohen | Reply 16:42, 14 December 2007 (PST)

Joe, are you doing the cut from the edit screen or are you doing it from page view? ~~

MarkDilley | talk

Works fine from the edit screen, does not work from the page view in IE6. I've just found it works fine from IE 7. -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 21:07, 10 January 2008 (PST)

edit Encouraging Community Reviews

edit Making it easier

InfluenceUs is now live! On every domain page, you'll see an InfluenceUs link. We now have to write good documentation for it. Give it a try? TedErnst (talk)

edit Motivating more contributions

(I had given this some thought before hearing about Googlepedia.)

• Recognition. Add a section on each page that lists the top-n contributors to the page or Category. Could be subjectively designated by staff, or even better, automatically generated by a hard-to-game algorithm. Is there another place to recognize most-active contributors?
• Prizes. This could be one (or a few) "big" prizes, or a greater number of small prizes (e.g., an AboutUs t-shirt).
• Revenue sharing???

-- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 11:56, 15 December 2007 (PST)

Good idea! We have thought about how to do uncontests - since we struggle to see how we could implement a contest in a collaborative space. The idea of top - n contributors is good, also could be editors in your circle. ~~

MarkDilley | talk

edit Problem with Safari

In the last few days, I've noticed an extra pair of scroll bars on the main frame of AboutUs pages. This typically results when the content in the frame is only a tiny bit larger than the frame size itself. Was there a recent change that made this happen? I don't think the problem existed before, and I don't see the problem in Firefox. -Pete 22:29, 2 January 2008 (PST)

Sounds like something for Bugs. TedErnst (talk) 00:37, 3 January 2008 (PST)

edit Different type, templating idea?

Heya there. =]

I have somewhat of an idea/feature I'd like to see. Seeing how you guys use "popup divs" for referrals, promote company, page alerts, etc, how about adding those for the 'Login' and 'Signup' buttons? I would love that and a bit of AJax for that (or even a refresh I'd settle for) for a quick login or signup process.

--Nick^{([talk]-[HFAD]-[contribs]-[email])} 20:59, 10 January 2008 (PST)

I love the idea. Not sure where it will fall on the development priorities list. Maybe you want to add it there? OurWork -- TedErnst (talk) 23:59, 10 January 2008 (PST)

edit maps

Can the Domain Page automatically generate a map showing multiple locations? This would be useful / neat for companies with multiple locations. -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 21:28, 10 January 2008 (PST)

It seems this is possible now!

Where can I find documenation of the GoogleMaps extension? -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 14:00, 12 January 2008 (PST)

googlemaps, I believe -- TedErnst (talk) 10:57, 7 March 2008 (PST)

edit WikiPages table style

Is there a style that a user can modify to change the appearance of "WikiPages" generated tables? -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 21:40, 10 January 2008 (PST)

Good question. I'll see if Vinh can answer it. -- TedErnst (talk) 00:01, 11 January 2008 (PST)

edit useful links sidebar

Please consider adding to the useful links sidebar:

1. Concerns FAQ
2. Suggestion Box

-- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 10:56, 12 January 2008 (PST)

edit One-page help index

This discussion has been moved to HelpIndex#One-page_help_index. -- Joe Cohen | Leave me a message 10:01, 15 January 2008 (PST)

edit Language categories

The create subdomain function at Create_Subdomain creates pages with Category:Primary Language French (or whatever the language is) if the primary language is other than English. Perhaps AboutUsBot should as well. You may want to create the primary language categories as well. At this point, only Category:Primary Language French exists. --Eohippus 12:31, 15 January 2008 (PST)

I have a hard time seeing how these categories would be useful. -- TedErnst (talk) 10:59, 7 March 2008 (PST)

edit Zoom tool on maps

Please restore the zoom-in/zoom-out tool that used to appear on your maps. --Eohippus 07:53, 18 January 2008 (PST)

edit Subdomain logos

On your page SubDomainLogo, you ask people to specify the absolute location of the image, This will break if the image server's files get rearranged. It would be better to use a relative address like Example.gif which will remain the same if the image server's file structure is rearranged. --Eohippus 11:05, 18 January 2008 (PST)

• True, but the way the clickpic template works (which is the only way to get clicking the logo to load the URL -- like our thumbnails work on DomainPages) requires the absolute location. I've been looking for a work-around in MediaWiki (some sort of other template?) and would love thoughts/suggestions if you have any. -- TakKendrick | talk 16:45, 18 January 2008 (PST)

edit Usability

Hello, I see that your page template reserves a large amount of space for the top banner, the menus and advertising on the right, and other acillary information. This leaves only a small amount of space for the actual content.

If I reduce my screen to 800x600, then the ancillary stuff takes up almost all of the screen, and the page title takes up the rest. leaving none of the actual content visible.

I hope you will keep these observations in mind as you continue to improve your site.

Rahul

P.S. The editing JavaScript is probably broken when used with Opera, and some of the buttons become nonfunctional. Editing works OK if I switch off JavaScript. I have not had any problems with Wikipedia, so perhaps your custom JavaScript uses some non-generic features.

I will point our designer, Vinh here. Thanks for the suggestions! TedErnst (talk) 04:35, 22 January 2008 (PST)

edit CSS Errors

Hi, previously, I could log in with Opera. Today, Opera does not recognize the login link as a link, and instead, its error console reports a large number of CSS syntax errors.

edit Runaway Captcha

You have an overly-aggressive runaway captcha. Suppose I enter some text, then click on "Save page". The captcha asks me to read some letters and enter them, which I do. Then it wants me copy-and-paste some random text, which I do.

At this point is should know there is a human at the keyboard. Now if I click on the "Preview" button, and then click on "Save Page", the text should be submitted. Instead, the captcha appears again.

The copy/paste deal doesn't sound familiar. Which page are you editing? TedErnst (talk)

Hi, i saw the copy-and-paste request when i was entering the previous text entitled "Automatic domain access fails on redirect".

On this page? And you saw the captcha when making an edit without an external link? Hmm. TedErnst (talk)

I saw the overly-aggressive captcha when using the ">> Click here to add your suggestion <<" link near the top of this page which is used to enter Feedback.

Did you get this more than once? I'm stabbing in the dark here, since this is the first I've heard of this sort of thing. We'll keep our eyes open for it again. Please let us know if you see it again. TedErnst (talk) 08:47, 29 January 2008 (PST)

Hi, this happened only once, and I will let you know if it happens again, but I doubt that that will actually help you. The aggressive captcha came from your wiki software, and if it happens again, it will again come from your wiki software. So my reporting it twice will indicate the same problem location (i.e., your wiki software) that my reporting it once has indicated. I hope you see where I am going with this! A grep through your wiki source code will give you far more information than I ever could.

Probably not. The captcha comes from re-captcha. And if you're the only one that has ever seen it, we're not going to bother tracking it down. If you or others are seeing it repeatedly, it will rise on our priority list. The reason to report again isn't to help us solve it, but to convince us that it's actually something we should solve. TedErnst (talk) 13:31, 30 January 2008 (PST)

By the way, the "Edit" links on this page give an invalid section error.

Which browser are you using? They work okay for me. Try again? TedErnst (talk)

I am using Firefox 2.0.0.11 and it further identifies itself as: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071201. But since the invalid section error came from your web server, I doubt that the browser caused it.

The Edit links work now with firefox. -- presumably it was a temporary problem.

edit Get Page Alerts

Not sure how technically feasible it is, but if the Page Alerts could contain the edit summary, and/or the user name of the person who made the most recent change, that would make them much more handy! -Pete 10:37, 7 February 2008 (PST)

Great idea. I love it! I'll pass on to dev. TedErnst (talk) 12:22, 7 February 2008 (PST)

Cool, glad you like it! One other thought…probably even harder to implement, but here it is: an option to receive no more than, say, one message a day, or one a month. Sort of like "digest mode" on an email list. I say this cause my mom was a little hesitant to sign up for one; I told her it was easy to cancel, which was fine by her, but it just occurred to me that might be a nice feature. -Pete 17:12, 7 February 2008 (PST)

The thing is, logged in folks already have all of this. They get the person's name and I think the edit summary, and they only get one email, no matter how many edits are made, until they go back to the page. So I'm not sure how high a priority this will be for get page alerts, which is targeted for anons. What do you think? TedErnst (talk) 18:23, 7 February 2008 (PST)

Well, this second one was a little more off-the-cuff, and I don't really know all the technical ins and outs. So if it doesn't sound like a winner to you, that's fine by me! Thanks for your consideration though. -Pete 13:20, 8 February 2008 (PST)

edit Flag for deleted web sites

I just visited the site DurangoHostels.com from the AboutUS Wiki. The link brought me to a parked page. The parked page tried to install a virus on my computer.

There was a link to flag the site as "adult content" but not one to mark it as "Deleted," "Inactive" or as "badware".

The turn over for web sites is extremely high. I think it would be good to have a way to flag or delete inactive sites.

Of course, in the case of deleted domains, they become open again once a new business buys the domain and sets up a site.

Thanks, Kevin Delaney

PS: It might be good to periodically scrub AboutUS.org with the list of badware sites from StopBadware.org.

Great ideas! We do have several templates you might like to use. {{ParkingLot}}, {{MalwareSite}}, {{NoWebsite}}. I like the idea of marking badware using an outside list. Is that list public? -- TedErnst (talk) 18:03, 14 February 2008 (PST)

edit list of all categories

I put the answer on the AddCategory page. :-) TedErnst (talk) 12:46, 20 February 2008 (PST)

edit re-run the AboutUsBot

The way the AboutUsBot fills in pages that don't exist is pretty nifty. But it only happens if the page does not exist.

For pages that already exist, is there any way to "re-run" the AboutUsBot, to see what it *would* have written, as if the page did not already exist?

(Possible implementation: the AboutUsBot could append its results to some ephemeral sandbox page, rather than overwriting the pre-existing page. Then some actual human being could look at that sandbox page and see how it differs from the pre-existing page. If the sandbox has any things that would improve the pre-existing page -- perhaps more and better categories? -- then the human could manually copy-and-paste those things to the pre-existing page. ... Or is there some better way to see what the AboutUsBot would have written?)

--DavidCary 08:05, 20 February 2008 (PST)

Hi David! This sounds like a good idea. And probably not going to happen anytime soon. One thing that sysops can do is to delete the page, run the bot again, then restore the deleted edit history for a human editor to be able to review both. It's cumbersome process and can run into casespace problems, so it's not something I'd want to be doing every day. Categories on pages just come from the meta tags, so it's unlikely that the bot will come up with something that you haven't thought of for a category. Related domains are more of a mystery, but I think it's better to use your own human knowledge of which domains are related. All in all, I'm guessing we'll stick wtih the human process for future updates, after the initial bot page creation. -- TedErnst (talk) 12:50, 20 February 2008 (PST)

edit my account

Please see your talk page. TedErnst (talk) 09:11, 25 February 2008 (PST)

edit domain EALUXURYSHUTTLE.COM

Dear Sir/Madarm, Please i need your help am the owner of this domain EALUXURYSHUTTLE.COM this site had renewed it before it was snatched from me and now i can not advise who bought it is there any means that you can locate for me who has this site by now. I had invested alot in this website am so disturbed so i will be very great if i get my website back so what's the way forward?

I would talk to your registrar and maybe even the folks here. Good luck. MarkDilley

edit add my url

You can actually use the search/find bar above to locate your domain page on AboutUs: omahasingles.com. Please check out our intro video and tours, and let me know if you have any questions. Kristina .talk. .chat. 23:49, 29 February 2008 (PST)

edit Incorect PossibleAdultContent Flag

100percentblast.org

100percentblast.com

These sites were flagged as adult content. I am a member of this group of artists and there is no adult content at the website. Nell Devitt

Sorry about that. Those pages were flagged automatically by mistake, and I have removed the category which triggers the flag (Category:PossibleAdultContent) from both pages. Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 17:18, 4 March 2008 (PST)

edit Influence Us badge for use on my site

I'd like to use my AboutUs page as the place were my customer's go to leave reviews. So I'd like to have a link from my site (estampeinc.com) to my AboutUs page for Estampe Auto Dealer Supplies. I see in the Help section were you offer 'AboutUs' link badges/buttons I can add to my site ... which is fine and would work. But do you offer a 'Influence Us' badge/button that would link directly to the form on my company wiki page? Or is that not an efficient approach

Great idea! We need to do this! -- TedErnst (talk) 11:02, 7 March 2008 (PST)

edit adult content

12stepworkbook.org Fixed. -- TedErnst (talk) 08:35, 10 March 2008 (PDT)

edit web page

I think you should remove the video made by Governor Spitzer's wife. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gingercohen (talk • contribs) .

Where? -- TedErnst (talk) 21:29, 13 March 2008 (PDT)

edit subdomains

I notice your system does not allow subdomains... it would be nice if it did. I have a webcomic hosted at a subdomain (hitched.tonybreed.com) and I was not able to add it to your system.

We do allow sub-domains! Please see Create Subdomain. TedErnst (talk) 10:00, 19 March 2008 (PDT)

edit security

Wanted to register cannot read your security code or even listen to it

Ah yes, captchas can sometimes be hard to read and I guess they are designed that way so that people can hopefully read them and machines can't. Can you try loading the "Sign Up" page again and it should give you another one to try that may be easier to read? Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 16:20, 19 March 2008 (PDT)

edit Fixed Width of Site

The new layout change look good and refreshing. However I think the body of the site should not be having fixed width. I think most of the people are using screens bigger or equal to 15" atleast with resolution 1024*768. So that makes a lot of empty area on the right hand side. Besides its squeezing the content in the body. I prefer the previously stretchable page. Best, Muhammad Bilal

Hi Bilal. It's true that fixed width does not take advantage of big monitors. The upside is that designing wikipages is much, much easier now because you don't have to design for multiple widths. TedErnst (talk) 11:08, 20 March 2008 (PDT)

edit New Page Format

I find the latest change to each page's format undesirable. Firstly, I don't like that the thumbnail image completely dominates the top of the page, forcing the user to scroll down for basic information. The old format was far more centralized and efficient, and the new format is especially annoying when the thumbnail is still pending (which never resolves on some pages). Also, I liked the map that was included in the old page format, as well as the date of last edit at the bottom of the screen. It's annoying to have to click through to a page's history to see if it was recently altered, rather than just being able to glance at the main page. User:Saynotospam

• The domain box does eat up a lot of space and we look forward to suggestions on how it can be made efficient. However the fixed width changes were necessary to streamline a uniform look across various screen sizes.
• You can refresh the thumbnail manually, see instructions at Update thumbnail.
• The location map works if you have an Address section on the page without any advanced formatting or anything that does not resemble an address.
• The page counters shall make a comeback soon. Alternately, a better way to keep tabs on pages of your interest is by setting up email alerts for them so you can be notified instantly of a change. --Sa'ad ^{talk•email•chat} 23:56, 23 March 2008 (PDT)

edit Multiple File upload

I was wondering if we could increase the functionality of the upload file link so that we could upload multiple files at one time. doing it one by one is really a pain when trying to make a gallery. Aliaz | talk 22:54, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

I think this is a needed and priority functionality for the upcoming Portal work. I have created a dev task for it. Hopefully somebody will pick it from there: http://www.aboutus.org/MultipleFileUpload --Sa'ad ^{talk•email•chat} 03:00, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

edit Problem Logging In

I forgot my user name & password, but I know the E mail address I used to register... You should put a section for that where you ask for te log in info.

Robert

See the Forgot Password page for instructions (which is linked off of the Need Help? link at the top left of each page. If you can't remember your username you may be able to find it by looking at the history of pages that you have edited before. If that doesn't work there is no harm in creating a new account here at AboutUs. Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 16:14, 6 April 2008 (PDT)

edit two rails=too much real estate

I see two problems with the recent redesign, sorry to say. First, pages with YouTube videos (for instance, see The Open Lobby) leave a very narrow margin for any text beside them. Second, on an 800px-wide monitor, the righthand navbar is 100% hidden. I see more people still using 800x600 monitors than you might expect...for instance, that's the default size for all colored iMacs. Small screens are not as outdated as it may seem to those of us with massive or even medium-sized screens! -Pete

Hi Pete, we see that 7% of the folks that look at our site our in that group. I think we are optimizing our site for the 45% of people that see it at the fixed width size. I appreciate your point. -- MarkDilley

edit Ripped off

AboutUs.org is a wiki with editable articles about millions of websites. Feel free to leave an Influence Us comment on the domain page about the website you are concerned about, but I think it would be best to contact someone along the lines of the Better Business Bureau. Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 16:11, 6 April 2008 (PDT)

edit Protecting a page?

How exactly can I get my page protected, Ever since it's been on here it's been vandalized like crazy.

The page TheDefaced.org

Reply on your talk page. Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 13:48, 10 April 2008 (PDT)

edit About AboutUs

I hate to be the one to burst your design bubbler, and I'm sure a lot of people put their heads together trying to come up with a catchy slogan, but there is no such thing as "most unique". Something is either unique ("existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics") or it's not.

Haha, that's a good point. Best, Kristina .talk. .chat. 20:19, 10 April 2008 (PDT)

edit Concern About Parker Pen

We are AboutUs.org. Kindly leave your comments for Parker on their relevant domain page. You can search for it by typing it in the Find bar. --Sa'ad ^{talk•email•chat} 01:16, 11 April 2008 (PDT)

edit Different ways to add content, and a couple of other things.

I like AboutUs. Really. So I hesitate to suggest features which might not coincide with its original intent. However, since I’m one of those people, it’s hard for me to resist.

• Could the default be to not CamelCase domain names?
  
  Seriously, the automatic CamelCase generator gets it wrong quite a lot of the time, and can make links to those pages problematic.
  
  
• Bulk addition of sites to a watch list.
  
  Is that possible? I haven’t found a way to do it yet, but it would be nice to just batch-add all my domains to my watch list so that I can access them easily.
  
  
• Fast, programmatic way to add “PossibleSpamSite” to a site.
  
  I’d like to be able to write a script to do this rather than have to go through the webpage when I’m doing spam analysis. I realize that this is potentially ripe for abuse—you wouldn’t want to be able to let unauthorized users edit pages willy-nilly with a script—but it would be useful to permit certain users to do so provided that they’d proven themselves responsible.
  
  
• Adding sites to AboutUs programmatically, with the same caveats as the last item above.
  
  In other words, it would be nice if I could have a script I could execute that would check to see if a page already existed for a site, and if not, would then add a page for it.
  
  

I'd even be willing to write an AboutUs Perl module for this kind of thing, if you folks permitted such remote operations on your end.

[Revised.]

--Mcglk 15:58, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

edit Atlantic Kayak Tours

AtlanticKayakTours.com does not contain adult content.

Thanks, Bill

You are certainly right. Not sure why that flag ended up there, but it's gone now. Best, Kristina (contact me) 22:51, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

edit New Theory

There is a Black Hole at the Center of The Universe and I am the only one who can expolain it. I would like to reqwuest a page in WIKI to explain my idea. Thank you, Peter Lamont.

Reply on your talk page. Best, Kristina (contact me) 09:40, 1 May 2008 (PDT)

edit login problems

Hello! Maybe you can help me. Since a few days i can NOT login anymore at the site www.chess-knights.com can you please help me to contact the leader. Is name is NELSON. many thanks yves alias mozartep