Wikibuilder - a knowledge base covering the design and construction of
the built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
Project proposal page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibuilder
See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects
== Basic idea ==
To create a knowledge base covering the design and construction of the
built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
== Scope ==
Much, if not most, of the information could be presented as text (and
could start off as just that), but text presents profound and obvious
limits for describing the built environment, so much of the information
would be pictorial. With the drawing expertise of designers and
draughtspeople around the world who are intimate with CAD (computer
aided draughting) there should be no shortage of people to get the ball
rolling.
There are currently efforts going on in the graphics and architecture
industries to standardise pictorial file formats (see links below) and
the main topic of initial discussion on Wikibuilder may well revolve
around the kind of file formats to use for presenting and distributing
sketch, 2D, 3D and other kinds of pictorial information. Carrying on
from this might be discussion on graphical styles and style
standardisation.
There are a few open-content repository-type websites around for
sharing building details, et cetera, but most of them are woeful and
narrowly focused on CAD technicians looking for details to use at work.
There're a myriad of websites dotted around the internet offering
information on design but this is extremely fragmented.
== Why? ==
Ever since we as a species started manipulating our environment we have
built a vast knowledge of designing and constructing the built
environment. This knowledge belongs to everyone, but much of it is is
locked away in people's heads with no easy way to share such
information except for books (usually expensive ones) and
apprenticeship. A wiki focused on the built environment could help
unlock this knowledge and make it accessible to vast numbers of people
(builders, designers, inventors, diy'ers, knowledge lovers) who could
put it to use and continue to build on it in a open way. A wiki could
also help the push for open standards in the presentation of pictorial
information via the internet.
Kind regards,
Christiaan
The database is locked again. The time is 9:54 P.M. CST (GMT -6). This
is fine, but database locks give me jitters because of recent talk
about locking for up to twenty-four hours. This would not be a
favorable circumstance and I am worried about it. Are we going to have
some warning before that big lockdown takes place? I think we should.
:)
--
Jeff "cookiecaper" Cook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cookiecaper
:)
My personal observations/superstitions, which are NOT based on any
technical insight. My mental model is that different Wikipedia
operations require different capabilities, and perhaps in some cases
different servers, and therefore degrade differently on heavy load.
a) For some reason, reloading a page after saving an edit is one of the
LEAST reliable operations and quickly degrades under load. The failure
can take three different forms. The most common is that the browser
times out. Lately, a very common one has been an error message saying
the database is not available. A third form is that the supposedly
edited page was reloaded, but shows the original text rather than the
edited text.
In ALL THREE cases, there's much better than a 50% chance that the edit
actually took place.
In ALL THREE cases, the most sensible thing to do is save the edited
Wiki-marked-up text of the whole article somewhere locally, wait about
five minutes, then try to view the page and see whether the edit took.
b) A very common symptom under heavy load is that actions "take," but
do not become "visible" for many minutes. For example, when preferences
change spontaneously (an infuriating thing which hits me about every
two weeks) and I change them back, my changes USUALLY take effect--but
do not become visible for many minutes afterwards. Until I discovered
this, I was utterly baffled because I would keep trying various things
to "fix" the problem, every possible combination of clearing caches I
could think of and when the changes took several minutes later I had
tried several other things and naturally assumed that it was the last
thing I'd tried, rather than the first.
c) For reasons that baffle me, the "Go" button creates some kind of
search string and does some kind of search. Under heavy load, all
search operations degrade. This means that manually typing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
is much more reliable in retrieving the Foobar article than typing
"Foobar" into the search box and pressing "Go."
When things are slow, I usually copy the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
text out of the address box for handy pasting in later.
d) I am trying to learn to welcome the slowdowns as nature's way of
reminding me that I'm spending way too much time on Wikipedia. Of
course, the most infuriating situations are the ones when I MEAN to say
"this article should definitely not be," press SAVE, see that I
accidentally typed "this article should definitely be", press EDIT, fix
it, and get a database error. In these situations, I console myself
with the thought that nobody really cares that much about my opinion.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
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Hash: SHA1
Wikipedia went live four years ago today, on January 15, 2001.
Amazingly, this crazy project we've gotten ourselves into is still on
the web, not _completely_ filled with Pokémon stubs and crackpot rants,
and even remains free of advertisements, supported by donations and a
lot of hard work.
Presented for your pleasure:
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/
This is a dump of the English Wikipedia page database from December 20,
2001 -- the oldest complete copy I was able to find. It's actually
running on the current MediaWiki software, so as a conversion necessity
some pages have been altered to make links work correctly. (Due to
limitations in the original conversion script, this version may
actually contain some data which is missing or corrupted in the main
database history on en.wikipedia.org.)
You can find even older, though more fragmentary, bits of Ancient
Wikipedia using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010331173908/http://www.wikipedia.com/
Happy Editing, everybody!
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Why is the database locked, and for how long? Where was it announced that this would take place? Why doesn't the message tell us when it will be back in usable form?
RickK
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page � Try My Yahoo!
> Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes(a)yahoo.com) [050115 20:22]:
>
>> I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in
>> that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the
>> ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24
>> hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing
>> to "interpret" the intention of a specific editor and demanding the
>> power to block at will based on their personal interpretation.
>> There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may
>> block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of
>> what another person is thinking.
>
> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h
> 1m,
> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the
> piss?"
> test.
>
> Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a
> project to write an encyclopedia.
CriminENTles! I have no sympathy at all for anyone who gets all huffy
and legalistic about enforcement of the 3RR rule. Just limit yourself
to what you believe to be TWO reverts within twenty-four hours and
you'll never have any trouble. Whatever it is you think you're trying
to do, if two reverts didn't work a third revert isn't going to,
either.
If you sit over Wikipedia with a hand-tally and a stopwatch and a world
time zone chart trying to score as many reverts as possible, in hopes
of increasing the duty cycle with which some vibrating article is
supporting your POV, and you get blocked, the appropriate steps to take
are:
1) make sure nobody but close friends are within earshot;
2) holler a cuss word at primal scream intensity;
3) count to ten to let the anger subside;
4) complain that life is not fair;
5) lick your wounds;
6) take a twenty-four vacation from Wikipedia. Visit Slashdot, or
USENET, maybe even meatspace.
I'd say "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," but violating
the 3RR isn't a crime. And the penalty isn't even a parking ticket.
It's more like going through a "ten items or less" checkout line with
fifteen items, in Cambridge, Mass, and having someone behind you say
"Are you an MIT student who can't read or a Harvard student who can't
count?"
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Since Wikipedia has been dead for at least 15 minutes now... I use the
opportunity (I need to satisfy my wikipediholism) to remind you of
Wikimedia Quarto, our quartely (well, as much as availability allow in
truth, as well as mood...) publication, which tries to :
* report on the Foundation activity. Read more on our last grants. Did
you know we just got 40000 dollars to help the projects ?
* keep you informed on new projects and generally on projects evolution
aside from the english wikipedia. Do you know in how many languages
Wikinews is currently developped ? Do you know how to say "Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year" in Italian ?
* keep you updated with last trimester technical stuff. Did you know
that we had now three servers in Paris to help the Florida cluster ?
* keep you informed on past meetings and future meetings. Do you know
the name of the great organiser of last netherlands meetup ? (Tip : he
is bald). Have you thought of organising a meeting yourself ? Do you
plan to come to Wikimania ?
* update you on local chapters existence and activity. Quizz : does the
french chapter exist or does not exist ? Which languages are trying to
set up a chapter ?
* keep you informed with the media opinion on what wikipedia is... Do
you know which one refers to Jimbo as the king of England ?
Anyway, plenty of great stuff, now completed in english (but for a board
letter which I had the insuffurably crazy idea to write in french and
which I lack courage to translate for now, you are welcome to help).
You are welcome to read this letter, entirely, or only the parts you
feel like reading, AND to correct mistakes, typos, anything you feel
need improvement in style. We need proofreaders :-)
Many people participated to that letter, and many are not english
speaking, so it *might* be that some of you feel like correcting the
language.
Please do so, but please DO NOT add "sic" behind poorly spelled words,
as this is a reason for blocking people on meta.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/2
Thanks
Anthere
PS : if you have helped write the letter and are not mentionned in the
writers, please add your name without shyness, or complain to me in
private so that I can do it :-)
Anthere,
I see that you are distressed by the recent
exchanges here over the Cassini-Huygens issue. I feel
I should write to tell you how I'm seeing the dispute.
I can say that, as an American, I feel no
particular attachment to Cassini -- I am sure all the
editors who have responded also did not even consider
that the way Cassini-Huygens was reported here could
be seen as pro- or anti-American. Because of this, it
feels odd to me (and perhaps others) that someone
would see our coverage and a) assume that pro-American
bias created the current article situation, and
b)consider the matter serious enough to raise on the
mailing list. I am not saying that you should not
have done so. But it did seem odd to me that the
issue was of that level of significance, especially
since your comments lead me to believe that the
content of the articles themselves was not partisan --
it was merely the naming of articles that gave the
appearance of bias.
I am happy to agree to rearranging article titles
in whatever way is most respectful of the ESA -- I
feel confident that the other editors responding to
you also have nothing but respect for the ESA's
accomplishments. I would say, though, that the
responses I saw to you were not aimed at diminishing
European accomplishments in any way. What I saw
looked to me (again, this is only my perspective) like
good editors who, like me, had never considered the
issue of bias in this area. These editors replied
with an explanation of why they saw the current issue
as reasonable -- I think it is because "bias" is such
a harsh word these days (it suggests that we have
consciously and intentionally pushed America to the
front) that these editors wanted to make clear that
the current article situation had been created for
reasons of space and organization, not because of who
made and/or launched what.
Anthere, I am sorry you have become upset. Stan
did say some things harshly to you, and I hope he will
apologize. But I do understand in a small way how
Stan felt -- it remains confusing to me that this
issue was major enough to take directly to the mailing
list. Matters of article naming are normally handled
on talk pages, and I still don't fully understand why
this should have been different. I recognize that, as
an American, I may be less aware of European concerns,
but as I said above, I am completely confident that
this situation arose entirely innocently. No slight
was intended -- after all, if I saw that the French
Wikipedia had redirected everything about Cassini to a
Huygens article, I would just assume it was for
organizational convenience, or because of common usage
in French, or perhaps simply because well-meaning
French editors didn't consider the American
perspective. I might leave a note on the talk page,
but I wouldn't write to a fr.wikipedia mailing list
accusing them of bias.
And whether or not you intended that tone, Anthere
(and I don't believe you did intend it), I do have to
tell you that I felt you were accusing us of
intentionally biasing the Wikipedia against European
space efforts. And I have to say, I find that
difficult to handle -- rather than asking why the
situation arose, or merely pointing out that it would
be better to name the articles in a different way, the
word "bias" appeared from the very beginning. It made
us defensive.
I like you, Anthere, and we've always gotten along
well. I'm confident we will continue to do so
indefinitely. I'm not writing this to attack you or
to make you feel unappreciated -- you have given more
to Wikipedia than I ever will. Your suggestions about
Cassini-Huygens should certainly be taken. But I feel
that, as a colleague (and perhaps even a friend?), I
need to say that your initial email on this issue came
across as angry, and I think it should not have been.
I find errors and holes in our coverage every day. I
could, if I wanted, see in some of these errors a bias
in Wikipedia -- a bias against Christians (of whom I
am one) or homeschoolers (of whom I am one) or
Swedish-Americans (of whom I am one). And perhaps
there are such biases. But it is more productive for
me, I think, to talk openly with people, to start
dialogue to educate others, to work quietly on my own
to make change happen, and to assume good faith as
much as I can. If I claim bias, I must wait until I
have established good communication with those who may
feel I am accusing them of intentionally doing such
things. You are free, of course, to do as you like.
Perhaps the situation is different for you. But I
would ask you (nicely, I do hope) to consider my
thoughts on the issue. My best wishes to you, as
always,
James Rosenzweig
en:User:Jwrosenzweig
__________________________________
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http://my.yahoo.com
Hello.
Please check
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=0&oldid=93…
It is about the removal of an external link to my site that I first inserted
in October. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=6952756&ol…
The link is this: http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103
I insert only links that I truly believe are informational and I have no
interest to insert any bogus links. I truly believe that my report is
informational.
Please explain why it was considered inappropriate and give me a link to any
external links policies that you may have.
The link was removed by Adam Bishop. He contacted me through e-mail and I
answered promptly. I explained my concern that my link was removed because it
was pointing to a "competing" wikisite. He said that the link was spam
because it was pointing to my site.
Other links to my site removed by Adam Bishop have been featured on
Slashdot.org - check: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/28/1825218 and
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/19/174240 - Links to wikinerds.org
that were featured on these Slashdot stories were added (and subsequently
removed by Adam Bishop) in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation_Europe - I have since
inserted links to the Slashdot stories because I believe that they are
informational.
All that happened the same day I decided to start contributing some of my
articles on Wikipedia (and thus relicensing some CC content under GFDL for
your use) - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsync
I don't agree that I should not be allowed to post links to my site just
because it is mine. This isn't spam.
I post this message on the mailing list because I want a clear answer on
whether my link about Homo Floresiensis was spam or not. If the other admins
agree with me that self-linking is not spam then I would like Adam Bishop to
reconsider and post a public apology on his userpage stating that my link on
Homo Floresiensis was not spam. If you decide that the link was not
informational, I have no problem with this. But I truly believe that
describing it as spam was unfair. Adam Bishop stated in the History log of
the Homo Floresiensis article: "01:45, 12 Jan 2005 Adam Bishop (removing
spam)"
I also promise to not post any other external links without asking on the
mailing list or the village pump first.
--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:28:58 +0530, Rohan Sharma
<gates.plusplus(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't try that with the colon :).
Well, I saw the colon was there already, so assumed I could put
something after it. Perhaps the message should be changed to
"...number of hours and minutes..." to make this clear to those less
prone to experimentation than myself?
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]