Overstock.com has launched a community portal where they hope their customers will write "guides" about things that they're passionate about. Seems like an interesting idea. I've wondered about the ability to harness people's passion to create customer service sites that are more useful than those run by the company.

Interestingly it's built on MediaWiki which I think is a great platform, but a little hard for wiki novices to use. I wonder if they've done something to make page editing any easier.

I'm wondering rather than looking because when I went to sign up for an account, they wanted a credit card. Uh-uh. Way too much friction. You can skip it, but that ought to be the default, not an opt-in option.