A discussion just came up on the tech list that deserves input from
the list at large: how do we want to restrict access (if at all) to
robots on wikipedia special pages and edit pages and such?
There are two issues to decide for each class of page: do we want
robots to index that page (i.e., list it among those to be searched),
and do we want robots to follow links on that page in search of
others? (These correspond to the "noindex,nofollow" directive in the
robots meta tag).
There is some concern that allowing robots to index everything might
be a performance issue, but there is no evidence of this. Cleearly,
robots provide invaluable traffic boosts. Also, I think it's
important that we maintain a reputation for having _quality_ links,
not merely popular ones.
My own opinion leans toward not indexing pages that are input forms,
namely edit forms, login forms, user setttings form, etc.; because
these pages aren't "information", and don't contain anything that
isn't already on a higher-quality page. I see no compelling reason
to disallow following links on any page, though.
I'm of two minds about "recent changes". Theoretically, it's a
dynamic page that makes all indexing useless because it's content
changes every time it is accessed. On the other hand, it's a popular
page and a good source of timely links.
What do you think?
0
> Robots can be useful as probably Google contributes
> a lot
> to bringing new visitors to the site. Being a
> community this surely is
> a usefull thing. An issue worth considering is
> banning robots from
> special pages, Recent Changes, Talk, User, etc. by
> an appropriate META tag.
> IMHO, robots and spiders should only be allowed to
> go over the articles.
>
> <snip>
>
> regards,
> [[user:WojPob]]
I COMPLETELY disagree with this. Let the robots crawl
everything. It's better that someone finds one of our
Talk or User pages and cruises on over to our main
site than to simply find a completely website!
Chuck
=====
Come to my homepage! Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Información de Estados Unidos y América Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Visítanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/R.E.M.
and others. You can't even edit these, as they're marked "Protected"?
WTHeck?
--
Gareth Owen
Byers, Langley, and Frohike
What is the "Edit user settings" feature? I hadn't heard anything about it
before, but apparently now any sysop can edit the privileges of any other
user -- including other sysops. A privilege formerly only granted to Jimbo.
This could be a useful feature if the sysops knew what each level does and
there was some type of framework for sysops to follow (thinking of checks and
balances here).
Also, what does it mean to be a:
System operator
(I assume this means a sysop since this is checked for the registered sysops
-- does this also mean that any sysop can promote any user to sysop status,
or demote any sysop to a common user? If so, then a feature like this
probably should have been discussed here -- on the policy mailing list --
before it was implemented.)
System developer
(Does this refer to one of the wikiware gods (Like Brion or Magnus)? Probably
should have been discussed before implementation too)
Trusted hand
(What privileges does this grant a user beyond the defaults?)
-- maveric
It seems plain to me that Jimbo and Magus should have developer status
and that the "Edit user settings" feature should be restricted to
developers.
Axel
Karen AKA Kajikit <kaji(a)labyrinth.net.au> writes:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>> I don't know what caused this, but I love it.
>> Now I can start to promote Wikipedia more actively.
>
> It's good isn't it!
I'm glad someone's getting joy. I'm timing out 4 times out of 5...
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)
Since 21:00 GMT (2 pm PDT) Wednesday, Wikipedia is really fast:
- Static images load in less than one second.
- Wiki pages load in 5 seconds (often less than 2).
- Recent Changes loads in 5 seconds in 86% of my samples.
- No responses ever take longer than 15 seconds.
I don't know what caused this, but I love it.
Now I can start to promote Wikipedia more actively.
Note that I'm in Sweden and the server is in San Diego, and the single
roundtrip time (ping) alone accounts for 0.25 seconds. Theoretically
(speed of light, size of Earth), this could be reduced to 0.10
seconds. Starting "wget", opening a socket (one roundtrip), sending a
request, and receiving a response (second roundtrip) containing the
Wikipedia logotype, all in 0.70 seconds is pretty amazing. It never
took longer than 0.91 seconds in the last 14 hours.
--
Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>
tel +46-70-7891609
http://aronsson.se/http://elektrosmog.nu/http://susning.nu/
----- Original Message -----
Lars Aronsson wrote
> In my mind, Wikipedia is about volunteering to make the world better.
> If you are concerned about the divide between wikipedia-l and
> wikitech-l, then *you* can bridge the gap by joining both lists and
> post summaries to wikipedia-l of the technical issues currently under
> discussion.
I hope I don't sound like I'm giving orders; I know we're all volunteers here, including Mr. Wales, who has volunteered his servers and talents to keep the whole show running. I'm not asking for summaries of all technical discussions, nor do I think they should be moved to Wikipedia-L (they were just moved *off* of this list not that long ago). When I say I'm worried about the programmers becoming isolated (note that I don't think the programmering subcommunity *is* isolated yet), I'm mainly talking about two things.
The first is if a Bomis sysadmin has to take drastic steps to keep Wikipedia running (i.e. temporarily removing major functionality), could some sort of announcement made soon afterwards? That way, the community doesn't have to guess what's going on.
The second is my concern about what the Cunctator calls "featuritis". I think that any *major* new software features should be discussed in the general Wikipedia assembly. For example, what is the "Autowikification" button (no offence intended to whoever implemented it!)? What does it do? Why is it useful? How do I use it? Most importantly, do we need it? It sounds like it automatically links words to existing articles. If so, I would argue against the utility of such a creature.
However, I also think that the programmers should not have to be nitpicked by a bunch of people who don't code. ;-) It's only major stuff that I'm talking about here.
So, it's not that I want someone to sum up "This Week on Wikitech-L" all the time. Anyone interested in that can join the list. I'm just looking for ways to keep the rest of the community in the loop concerning major changes to everyday Wikipedia work.
-- Stephen Gilbert
________________________________
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.com
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Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> writes:
> The fixes Brion outlines here have just now been installed on the server.
> There still
> appear to be some minor problems, but at least the talk: links are back!
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Miles_Davis&action=edit
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: doedit() in
/home/wiki-newest/work-http/wiki.phtml on line 95
... that doesn't look minor
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)