ProductWiki's first community meeting for 2008

Books

Random ones aren't that great. Well known ones (Harry Potter) and those techy uniques ones (That thing about music) are good.

DVD's

I can see some very unique gems and some of the more popular ones, such as The Big Labow(e)ski, or the Star Wars movies.

CD's

I really think that the main thing to say about a CD is it's track listing and Artist/Album name. The rest of that is all personal opinion.

Video Games

Are good because the explanation of what it is about is much more important than in a CD. I think they should stay.

Overall CD's and DVD's are iffy. Video Games should stay.

I generally agree with DUIU, but I still think keeping CD/DVD/Books is worthwhile--as long as its not straight-up advertising or spam stuff.  I think PW is a great tool for thinking of gift ideas for someone, and being able to browse the site with reviews (and personal opinions) of CD/DVD/Books is awesome to get a feel for that particular album/movie/author whilst staying on PW rather than jumping ship over to another site such as amazon or whatever.

Y'know- technically the thread is for suggestions, not the actual discussion. ^_^

No matter. Dakalvia, you have me won over, I vote that all four should be kept. For music, movies, and books, we need to get a good list of genres up and going, otherwise books will be impossible to find. For books and movies, I think a synopsis would be useful. On music, a blurb that describes the feeling of an album, IE Battles' 'Mirrored' is what I would describe as "incredible" but that should not be used. 'Energetic' could be. Or 'awesome'. Wait, no....

Erik; tis true. Heck, for most of what I do, my Mini is overpowered. I am a fan of simplicity and elegance. And I hate advertising jargon. Ergonomic my ass....

Me, Jan, Dialup, Silence, Erik, Amanie and Tyrion were at the meeting last monday. Here are some of the take-aways from what we discussed.

Notes from the meeting

1. What kind of products should be on the site

When determining whether or not a report should stay on the site is determined by 2 factors: importance of the product itself, and the quality of the report. So two extreme examples for clarification: 1) A CD like In Rainbows, or a book like Harry Potter just has a stub page for it, the page stays for improvement. 2) Some no-name book or website if the report is done with a good neutral description, etc, then it should stay. Therefore it's the non-notable products that need to make sure there are good reports to remain on the site.

2. Dealing with link spam

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has caused some problems on the web as people drop there links anywhere they can. ProductWiki is a good site that allows for links, and is thus a natural target for SEO-peeps, so we talked about how to deal with the problem. Tyrion recommended a system that lets people add links but they don't become "active" until another person confirms that it's useful. This led to a discussion on...

3. Moderators

It's been a long time coming, but members from the community will be given moderator status in the very near future.

Moderator duties

• choose reports for to show up on the front page
• edit/delete comments
• edit/delete pros and cons, competitors, related products
• delete external links

Moderators can't

• delete product reports
• delete an article/thread
• ban users

Who will be moderators

• silence_omo7
• dialupinternetuser
• squalorking
• jan
• tyrion
• charon9
• dakalvia

Great list!

I'd like to nominate asatruer as a moderator as well. Also, I think as we move forward, we should begin to formalize the process of nominating moderators. I think moderators should be responsible for deciding who should be promoted to moderator.