Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki, but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.
Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was *invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
Uh. No. The proposal born from the fact several editors from the english wikipedia recently decided to entirely fix meta as they believed it was best. THeir work to categorize meta generally met approval. Their work to clean meta (understand speedy delete) generally met opprobe.
So, we are trying to find a common ground so that both deletionnists (the group of newcomers) and inclusionnists (meta people) be both happy.
This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
POV :-)
Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
Yup.
Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki, but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.
Uh ?
David is slightly arranging propositions the way he sees fit. No, meta incumbents have not decided in any way that it was a proposal for en:wikipedia. "Meta incumbents" are probably quite perplex with the proposal at all...
Let me copy here LinuxBeak proposal so that you understand better...
Alex writes
Well, besides from being a clean canvas that we can work from, it would boast some things that Meta currently does not:
A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia. Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project. Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.
B.) Seeing that it is being built from the ground up, it will be several exponential degrees easier to keep things organized in a clear and concise manner. Read: categorization.
C.) It would be much cleaner and accessible by regular Wikipedians. Meta as it stands right now frightens many people on en. I know... I've talked to them.
D.) Old material three years from now would be in a category called "archive" or something akin.
E.) It would have the potential expandability that Meta boasts, except in a more defined and controlable setting.
--Alex
Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was *invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
- d.
I am glad :-) You admitted there was a meta community ;-) Note : a *meta* community, not a *wiki* community ;-) Thanks David
ant
On 3/31/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
Yup.
Eh no, I don't think this project's people are a bunch of dicks for trying - I just resent the attitude that's been shown to Meta in the last few days. Sure, improve it, but that's no reason to lambaste its community, or make false claims about it. (David, you still haven't addressed my questioning of how historical pages make Meta unusable). Anyway, some of this project's members are doing good work, and I commend them.
Cormac
On 3/31/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
Uh. No. The proposal born from the fact several editors from the english wikipedia recently decided to entirely fix meta as they believed it was best. THeir work to categorize meta generally met approval. Their work to clean meta (understand speedy delete) generally met opprobe.
This is the way I see it, too. In general I lean towards keeping documentation unless it's absolutely useless--and I'm not about to make that call. I will be working on categorising pages in main namespace for a while, in the hope that this will help us to at least see all the documents as part of the organisation of meta, and further refine it to correctly mark those that are, at least for now, inactive.
At 01:19 +0200 31/3/06, Anthere wrote:
[...]
Let me copy here LinuxBeak proposal so that you understand better...
Alex writes
Well, besides from being a clean canvas that we can work from, it would boast some things that Meta currently does not:
A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia. Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project. Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.
B.) Seeing that it is being built from the ground up, it will be several exponential degrees easier to keep things organized in a clear and concise manner. Read: categorization.
C.) It would be much cleaner and accessible by regular Wikipedians. Meta as it stands right now frightens many people on en. I know... I've talked to them.
D.) Old material three years from now would be in a category called "archive" or something akin.
E.) It would have the potential expandability that Meta boasts, except in a more defined and controlable setting.
--Alex
Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was *invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
- d.
I am glad :-) You admitted there was a meta community ;-) Note : a *meta* community, not a *wiki* community ;-) Thanks David
ant
Indeed. Not a wiki at all, perhaps.
Are there any groupware experts out there?
In the meantime, here are some handy references to the extant body of knowledge:
1)
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/groupware/
2) TOWER "Theatre of Work Enabling Relationships" , which uses BSCW. I worked for the TOWER project for three months in 2002 at Bartlett Research (UCL)
http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/projects/tower
http://bscw.fit.fraunhofer.de/
"What is BSCW?
BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) enables collaboration over the Web. BSCW is a 'shared workspace' system which supports document upload, event notification, group management and much more. "
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupware
On the subject of groupware, and the efficacy of Mediawiki, I found this.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction
**** What else can MediaWiki do?
While MediaWiki is not designed to do these things, it can be used as...
...Content Management System (CMS) software
...Forum or Bulletin Board System (BBS) software
...Groupware, Messaging, or Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) software
...a Workflow Management System (WfMS).
See m:Wiki Uses for further description and discussion of these items.
****
I also recall Brion saying that Mediawiki was not adequate for the requirements of Commons, but I am sure he will be able to speak for himself and correct me if I am wrong.
Also, if Mediawiki can do everything, why do we need a Mailman mailing list?
David Gerard wrote:
This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
Can anyone please explain to me what "work" means here?
One of the archaic pages on meta is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project proposal is dead, nobody works on it. There are few better examples of dead meat on meta.
The current proposal to "overhaul" meta seems to suggest that the Wikispecies page could be simply deleted. Is that correct?
Then next month, someone can come to this new, fresh and legacy-free meta to do "work", for example by suggesting a new project called Wikispecies. Since there is no previous mentioning of this idea, it must be new. Brave new world!
If I'm missing something here, perhaps a better explanation of the overhaul plans could be needed.
On 3/31/06, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
One of the archaic pages on meta is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project proposal is dead, nobody works on it. There are few better examples of dead meat on meta.
Wikispecies doesn't seem to be dead.
http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
Steve
At 22:51 +0100 30/3/06, David Gerard wrote:
Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki, but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.
Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was *invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
- d.
Can I just add my name to the list who have complained in the past that Meta is not useful for some aspects of our work? I was concerned that information about the inception of "Wikimedia UK" was hard to find, duplicated etc. This meant that many volunteers who might have taken part got lost on the way or may never have known about the existence of the team (who worked very hard and drank some good "real ale" on Sunday afternoons:-)
The main difference between, say, IRC (and email) and a wiki is that a the former are linear (by timestamp) and the latter (a set of Wiki pages) is not.
A recent example of "Wikimeia UK" existing on a island was that (previously discussed) total lack of any involvement from Welsh speakers, who may or may not live in Wales. If "Wikimedia UK" wants to be inclusive, and democratic, it has to open the doors a little wider, and not live in "Meta Space", but In Real Life.
Hence, I would submit to you that Mediawiki 1.5.x and 1.6.x may not be the "magic bullet". A wiki is poor tool for many jobs.