AboutUs
Template:NotAWiki"NotAWiki" is not in the list (Vibrant, Active, New, In preparation, Dormant, Spammed, Private, Cannot connect, Dead, Locked, ...) of allowed values for the "Wiki status" property.
| http://wikiindex.org/images/6/6d/AboutUsLogo.png | AboutUs Recent changes WikiNode [No About] [No Mobile URL] |
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| Founded by: | |
| Status: | NotAWiki"NotAWiki" is not in the list (Vibrant, Active, New, In preparation, Dormant, Spammed, Private, Cannot connect, Dead, Locked, ...) of allowed values for the "Wiki status" property. |
| Language: | Multilingual |
| Edit mode: | OpenEdit |
| Wiki engine: | MediaWiki |
| Wiki license: | YourWiki'sLicense"YourWiki'sLicense" is not in the list (Custom license, Attribution to contributing authors, Copyright to contributing authors, Site retains copyright, WTFPL, Licence Art Libre, Open Content License, Apache License, BSD Documentation License, FreeBSD Documentation License, ...) of allowed values for the "Wiki license" property. |
| Main topic: | Internet |
Description
AboutUs is a 'grab' of websites that anyone can edit – though it is NOT technically a 'wiki'. It is currently in Beta. AboutUs encourages people to register with their Real Names.
| Wiki size: | 0 article pages see stats |
Criticism
AboutUs has been criticized for displaying public whois data information from websites. The website has a bot which scrapes information from a website and uses it to make a starter AboutUs wiki page. The initial seeding of the wiki had a bot that disregarded websites protected by a robots.txt. Websites are still vulnerable due to the fact that the wiki encourages AboutUs users to add information about the website to it.
Response
AboutUs uses publicly available information to create a starter wiki page on every website that is searched for on its system. (after the initial 2+ million seeding) Unlike weblogs, or the whois system, it is very easy to change or request removal of information (from the history).
The initial seeding of the wiki had a bot that disregarded websites protected by a robots.txt. That was quickly fixed and efforts are ongoing to revert the edits that are in conflict.
It is a bit jarring to people who are not used to an open edit internet, that anyone, anywhere can write about them or the things they care about in such a manner. I suppose it was also jarring to people when weblogs exploded on the scene.
Wiki pages
The wiki has over 983,674 wiki pages which have been editied according to our stats page – but these include "talk pages, redirects, and other non-article pages"; which obviously needs to be honed down a bit: stats.
- Wikidweb is another wiki that discusses the web as a whole.
- Whoisbehind also discusses the web as a whole.
- Quarkbase is another wiki that discusses the web as a whole, with one page per website.
- WebsiteWiki is a similar wiki in German, focused on German sites