The TOP TEN Things You Want to Know About WikiTalk:

Take a minute to read through these ten items and make your WikiTalk experience much more entertaining and productive!

1) What is WikiTalk?

WikiTalk enables users to comment on and discuss any website, right in their browser while visiting that site, even if that site doesn't have a comments feature of its own.

2) What is the WikiTalk.com Home Page?

The WikiTalk.com website brings together a comprehensive listing of the most active and most popular discussions currently underway.

In brief, here are a few of things that WikiTalk.com website offers:

1. Find today's most actively discussed news stories, web sites, articles, products, etc.
2. Read what other users are saying about them
3. Jump right into the discussion and add your opinion
4. See the discussion and the web page all in one browser window using the WikiTalk Split View

3) Do I Need a WikiTalk Account?

No! Anyone can browse the top sites and read WikiTalk comments, post new topics and add comments without an account.

4) Why Would I Want a WikiTalk Account?

Even though you do not need an account, you'll likely want one: With your one WikiTalk account you can vote on your favorite (or least favorite!) topics, and keep track of your WikiTalk activities.

5) What is The WikiTalk Browser Add-on? Should I Install It?

The WikiTalk Browser Add-on for Internet Explorer adds several features to WikiTalk, such as the ability to start a new discussion at any website in the world while you're at that site, without having to submit it through the WikiTalk.com home page.

The WikiTalk Browser Add-on also adds a notification icon so that you can see whether a website you visit already has comments, even if you didn't get there via the WikiTalk Home page.

The WikiTalk Browser Add-on also makes the whole split-view 'comments and website in the same browser' work more smoothly.

Rest assured, however, that the WikiTalk Browser Add-on contains only the code needed to support the split view and toolbar buttons, and nothing more.

6) What is WikiTalk "Juice"?

Juice is WikiTalk’s way of measuring how important, compelling, or interesting a user or a discussion is. Users accumulate “User Juice” and discussions about topics accumulate “Topic Juice”.

All Juice ratings are normalized into the 0-1000 range, so that the top WikiTalk user is 1000, and all other users are ranked relative to him or her. The top WikiTalk discussion is also rated at 1000, and all other discussions are ranked relative to it.

7) How Do Users Increase their own "Juice" Rating?

The complete formula is secret in order to help avoid having users “game” the system, but basically any action that is positive for the WikiTalk community will increase your Juice, while any negative action will decrease it.

A few examples of things that can increase your Juice:

1. Posting comments to a discussion. If your comments get voted by the other users as being interesting, it counts even more
2. Create new discussions. If your new discussions get a lot of activity, it counts more, as do votes indicating the topic is interesting to the community
3. Reading discussions, the home page, and otherwise being active in the community
4. Referring other users who then join the WikiTalk community

8) What Can Decrease a User's Juice Rating?

Things that can negatively impact your juice rating could include:

1. Short or uninteresting comments that other users vote down
2. Lack of participation (e.g. always reading but never commenting)
3. Spam, off-topic, or inappropriate content are harshly penalized

9) How is the "Juice" Rating Determined for Discussions?

Again, we keep some of the factors secret, but in general the following things contribute to a higher Page Juice rating for a discussion:

1. High comment activity (lots of comments and replies)
2. High reading activity (many users read the discussion)
3. Comments by highly rated users: a discussion started by or participated in by users who in turn have high User Juice rating will help a page’s rating
4. Recently created discussion or comments. As a topic starts to fall off the radar of our users, its Page Juice rating will slowly age out as well

10) What is a WikiTalk Group?

You can think of a WikiTalk Group as if it were simply a user-created category. If, for example, you had a passionate interest in Ford Mustangs, you could create a group especially for them. You could then add a number of related websites to the group and invite friends and people with similar interests to join your group.

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