From Wikipedia to Wikivest

This is the first time I am using Writely. I have known this product for some time now. Today I joined this Writely service after reading an article about it reopened its registration. So I want to try it out. In the last few weeks, I have paid more attention to the Web 2.0 technology trends. This new Web 2.0 has attracted a lot of interests in the venture capital business and in the overall web community as a whole. I am particularly interested in the collective intelligence part of the Web 2.0 technology. According the Gartner's research report, the harvesting of collective intelligence through the web platform will have fast growth in the next five to ten years.

I will see if I can post this Writely document directly to my blog with Google. If it can do this and if I can do collaboration with my partners, it will be great that I will not need to buy Microsoft Office product any more. It seems that the web is taking a great leap about lowering the entry barriers to knowledge. If everyone can have a same access to knowledge, then the world can be created as a flat world, just as someone has already claimed.

Yesterday, I was talking with Jie about my thinking related to creating a financial service website based on the collective intelligence of the crowds, she said there are a lot of things can be done this way. She said any book can be edited in such a way as Wikipedia has done for encyclopedia. She said that there were many books about raising children. But each of them does not have complete information covering the entire spectrum from babies to college. She wish there is such a book form in wikiform.

Almost all text books can be introduced in that way. For example, there are many books about hydraulics. Most of the subject matters in those books are very similar. Some of the hydraulics are written for advanced readers. Some are written for college freshmen. I think there should be a hydraulics book in wikiform so that the entire knowledge can be covered in one place. Besides the wikiform in the web, I think there should be other forms for similar contents. For example, there should be a wikiform like traditional books. There should be a wikiform like movies or TV programs. There should be a wikiform like iPot just for listening.

I should come back to the wikivest, a wikiform web site dedicated to investors, mainly to personal investors at the beginning. Now what are the information personal investors are looking for. First all investors are not created equal. Some are in junior level. Some are in advanced level. So the Wikivest should be useful to both entry level and advanced level investors. Second, there are many forms of information presentation. First there are text books which cover the theories about investments, there are newspapers dedicated to business and investment alone, such as the Wall Street Journal and Investors Daily. There are also analyst reports dedicated to specific securities or industries or classes of assets. There are also entire websites dedicated to investment such as Yahoo Finance or Google Finance. How do we differentiate us from all these existing forms of information presentation?

First, Wikivest is edited by many volunteers just like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very successful in this aspects. So we can learn from Wikipedia in how to accomplish this task.

Secondly, Wikivest should have its own forms of presentation. What are the kinds of Wikivest tags. Now I can think of five forms of tags.

One is the theory tag. There are many investment theorists and practitioners in almost every aspect of investment theories. One aspect of the theory tags is dedicated to theorists such as Markwitz and Sharpe. Another aspect of the theory tags is dedicated to investment practitioners like George Soros and Warren Buffett. Gurufocus is an example about value investment and value investors.

The second tag can be similar to analysis Reports. There are many forms we can learn from. Some features of the tables can be based on the existing forms from Morningstar, Valueline, S&P reports, or Brokerage house analyst reports. Each of these reports has its own advantages. Some are dedicated to mutual funds like Morningstar. Some are dedicated to stocks like Valueline. There are specialized websites like ETFconnect is a great place to find ETF and Closed-end funds information. CEFA's closed-Endfunds website are good to find closed-end funds information.

The third tag can be the type of investments. The division can be along the general classes of investments such as Equity (stocks), Fixed Income (bonds), Hybrids (stocks & bonds), Alternative investments (Realty, commodities, hedge funds, Preferred stocks, convertible stocks, etc). The division can also be along the mutual funds types such as mutual funds, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds, Royalty trusts, Business Development Companies, Unit Investment Trust, Publicly traded Private equity funds.

The forth type of tags are evaluation of investment. S&P and Morningstar give out stars for securities. Valueline specifies timely ranking and safety ranking. All these kind of ranking systems are fine for Wikivest. However, how can we create a uniform ranking system across so many forms for invest? This might be a challenge for us. Personally, I prefer the Sharp ratio to evaluate all kinds of investment vehicles. But the calculation for all of them may not be available uniformly for all securities. We may need to develop a ranking system for each type of investment instruments.

The fifth type of tags are for volunteers. There are successful implementations in eBay and Amazon. In eBay they have developed a system to evaluate the ranking for all sellers. Amazon have developed a system to evaluate books and another ranking system for reviewers. One prominent feature of Wikivest is to promote excellent personal power among the Wikivest volunteer editors and commentators. So that there is a real community for every participants. This points may be similar to game players in willing points when competing with other game players. So the ranking words like freshman, senior, professors, masters should be developed systematically before implementation of wikivest.

Thirdly, Wikivest's ultimate goals should be dual. One side of the duality is the mutual funds should be created based on the general theory of the collective intelligence. Another side is to develop real masters in this community so that the investments are becoming a people movement, a popularity contest. In general, the money management done by selected professionals should be done average citizens.