A New and Improved Real Estate Guide
By: Leslie Pandey, Senior Content Writer/Editor | July 11, 2007
Today’s Wiki Wednesday Feature: New Stuff!
As you may have heard, we just launched a host of new community features. We thought it only appropriate to take this Wiki Wednesday to let you know that we’ve added some cool — and helpful — functionality to the Zillow Real Estate Guide. We originally launched the Real Estate Guide (aka, the wiki) back in December, and since then, it has grown and grown and grown.
With the ever-increasing number of pages, it became clear that we needed search functionality to help everyone find what they’re looking for. And now we have it! You’ll now see a snazzy little search box in the upper left-hand corner of all pages in the Real Estate Guide. Just enter a search term, and you’ll be taken to a list of wiki pages that contain your search term. Before you create a new wiki article, please search for your article topic first and confirm that a similar article does not already exist. If it does, add to it! If it doesn’t, create a new article. Looking for a full list of wiki pages? You can still go to the A-Z list of pages for a complete list.
Another new wiki feature we’re excited to tell you about is image uploading. You can now add photos to any wiki page through a simple process. Just click “Edit this page” on any wiki page and click the “Insert Image” icon. This will then bring you to an image upload box. Upload your image, save the page, and your photo will be there for everyone to see. Take a look at this article to see what a wiki page looks like with photos.
Last but not least, we’ve also launched a “diff” feature which gives you the ability to compare two selected versions of any given wiki page and see what edits were made.
We hope you enjoy your new and improved Real Estate Guide!
Ed: Wiki Wednesdays is a weekly feature that highlights helpful or interesting articles from the Real Estate Guide.
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- Categories: Wiki Wednesdays, Zillow
Comments
7 Comments so far
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Joe Zekas on July 11, 2007 9:34 pm
From the standpoint of someone posting content, you’ve taken a major step backwards.
Removing author / editor credits on the wiki pages themselves kills all motivation for anyone who has quality content to contribute it to Zillow. And, failure to provide a photo credit just makes the situation even worse.
I’m a publisher who spends a great deal of time and money on content and photography. There’s no way we will follow through on earlier plans to post a great deal of it on Zillow, since without any attribution at all it’s wide open to anyone who wants to thieve it.
Your olicy change is, I submit, a serious error of judgment on Zillow’s part, one that will deter serious contributors and encourage the real estate polluters to slather their logo and images all over the wiki.
Zillow needs to rethink this one.
Joe Zekas on July 11, 2007 9:47 pm
Excuse the typo - I meant “policy.”
Drew Meyers on July 11, 2007 11:23 pm
Joe-
I’m sorry you feel that way. We really feel attribution is essential to successful online communities — but, truth of the matter is, wiki content is not conducive to attribution. Anyone can edit the content you put into the wiki, so it would be very easy for someone to go and “edit” every page in the wiki and get their photo up at the top of the wiki (since the most recent editor profile was shown at the top of every page). No one person “owns” any of the content.
I want to note that you’ll receive attribution for everything (photos & comments) placed in the new city and neighborhood pages that we launched Tuesday night.
I hope you’ll reconsider your thoughts on contributing to the wiki. I did receive your e-mail & I’d be happy to discuss further if you’d like.
Joe Zekas on July 12, 2007 5:54 am
Some of us don’t need patronizing lectures about how wikis work. Some of us, you should hold open the possibility, know more about the subject than you do.
You talk the wiki talk, but don’t walk the wiki walk.
The day you become a not-for-profit source of knowledge you can talk philosophy.
In the meantime, read Wikipedia’s policies on copyrights and attribution, which offer content providers far more than Zillow does. Zillow’s terms of use are not consistent with what many other sites provide, which makes it worse.
Also, you’re talking photo placement in response to my lament about photo credit. You should review how Wikipedia - and every other credible wiki - handles that issue.
I hope you’ll reconsider your thoughts on what it takes to get people to participate in your wiki. From the level of participation I’ve seen, it’s pretty clear that you need to.
GundyGroup on July 13, 2007 11:58 am
As far as functionality goes, I like the changes. It’s alot easier to add and edit!
Joe Zekas on July 14, 2007 12:59 pm
Great functionality is a negative when it’s primarily employed by spammers.
Even a cursory look at the Zillow Real Estate Guide makes it clear that the spammers have entrenched themelves pretty thoroughly - some blatantly, some more subtly.
If Zillow has no intention of policing the wiki - and it doesn’t appear that they do - I think they’re harming consumers by leaving it up with its current approach.
Leslie Pandey on July 16, 2007 11:18 am
Hi Joe,
We are policing the wiki, and will slowly, but surely, be cleaning up the spam. We do as much as we can to keep the wiki spam-free, but we also rely on users to flag content that they find inappropriate. If you see spam in the wiki, please flag it and it will be reviewed.