http://abcnews.go.com/Business/print?id=88655
"Finally, as long as Mr. McHenry is going to end on a crude analogy, so will I: using a traditional encyclopedia is like owning a nice, well-built automobile that, unfortunately, has the seats and mirrors locked in place, the radio frozen on one station, the throttle welded in one position -- and the car is capable of only driving to a limited number of places predetermined by the manufacturer.
Frankly, I'd rather pee in a public toilet."
*mreee-oww!*
- d.
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:59:26 +0000, Red Drag Diva fun@crushed.velvet.net wrote:
[...]
*mreee-oww!*
Wow! It seems a no-holds-barred fight is rapidly spreading through the world's media over whether Wikipedia is a hopeless idea, or the beginning of something amazing. [After the rash of warring blogs, now we're getting journalists with pretty good credentials...]
I love the way Malone throws everything right back the other way; a nice demonstration of the use of 'spin', I feel. E.g. "approaching 400,000 pages" vs McHenry's back-handed "over 382,000 pages that were thought "probably" to be encyclopedic articles".
May the best man win, I guess - but lets hope we make some serious progress on validation soon, to give them an extra weapon or two...
Rowan Collins (rowan.collins@gmail.com) [041119 11:32]:
Wow! It seems a no-holds-barred fight is rapidly spreading through the world's media over whether Wikipedia is a hopeless idea, or the beginning of something amazing. [After the rash of warring blogs, now we're getting journalists with pretty good credentials...]
I saw an interesting thing at Dorkbot (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/) last night: http://uo.space.frot.org/?LondonFreeMap - a Wiki-like mapping of the streets of London. They referred to Wikipedia as an example a lot. A friend who works for a mapping provider was there and didn't think much of the project (it's presently at a level only truly obsessive nerds could love), but I pointed out the example of Wikipedia as well ... it was a lot less impressive when it had thirty articles .
The point being that we are an example and inspiration for others.
(The reason for the need for an open-content map is that, unlike in the US where government data is p[ublic domain, the good data in the UK is owned by Ordnance Survey and is Crown Copyright. This is considered a bad thing.)
May the best man win, I guess - but lets hope we make some serious progress on validation soon, to give them an extra weapon or two...
Erm, yes. What was up with that proposed referencing syntax? Were any developers taking any notice?
(I'm going to have to learn decent Perl just to get my ideas into the codebase, aren't I.)
- d.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
(I'm going to have to learn decent Perl just to get my ideas into the codebase, aren't I.)
Sadly, no. MediaWiki is written in PHP. When I tried to pick up PHP (partially with an eye toward contributing to MediaWiki), I ran screaming back to Perl.
Excuses excuses. We have 2000 times as many active editors as we do active developers. Everyone has damn excuses. What's so hard about learning a language or two? It'll only take you a few months, and you'll come away from it with a skill you can use elswhere in life.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
(I'm going to have to learn decent Perl just to get my ideas into the codebase, aren't I.)
Sadly, no. MediaWiki is written in PHP. When I tried to pick up PHP (partially with an eye toward contributing to MediaWiki), I ran screaming back to Perl.
Excuses excuses. We have 2000 times as many active editors as we do active developers. Everyone has damn excuses. What's so hard about learning a language or two? It'll only take you a few months, and you'll come away from it with a skill you can use elswhere in life.
Months? It takes me a few *hours* to be able to create useful code in a new language. A few days and I can embark on significant projects. This isn't about difficulty or time (though I'd not be happy about wasting the time), it's about not wanting to subject myself to the horror that is PHP just to be able to do a couple things with MediaWiki, probably never to touch the code again.
Call me when you're using a sane programming language. I'll be happy to help. I'd even be willing to deal with Java, of all things, but I will not touch PHP.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Call me when you're using a sane programming language. I'll be happy to help.
Great! We already have three working modules in C++ (wikidiff, UTF-8 normalisation and waikiki) one in C (Chinese word splitting) one in Ocaml (texvc), one in Perl (EasyTimeline), a bot written in Python, plus Lee's incomplete test suite in Java, Timwi's incomplete parser in bison and Magnus' incomplete parser in C++.
If you're interested in C/C++, completing Timwi's parser module would be really great.
An interesting project amenable to C++ or just about any other language would be writing a differential storage engine. Something to store consecutive revisions efficiently. If you write the low-level part, I'll write the PHP interface.
Really the possibilities are unlimited. My point was that PHP is not a very good excuse for avoiding MediaWiki, despite being often cited. It's easy to learn, but if it's against your religion or something, you can always code in something else.
-- Tim Starling
I'm not sure what this discussion is doing on wikien-l, but I'm happy to participate.
Tim Starling wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Call me when you're using a sane programming language. I'll be happy to help.
<aol>I wholeheartedly agree</aol>
Great! We already have three working modules in C++ (wikidiff, UTF-8 normalisation and waikiki) one in C (Chinese word splitting) one in Ocaml (texvc), one in Perl (EasyTimeline), a bot written in Python, plus Lee's incomplete test suite in Java, Timwi's incomplete parser in bison and Magnus' incomplete parser in C++.
I'm note completely sure of your tone here, I am bad at interpreting it. Are you or are you not being sarcastic here?
Really the possibilities are unlimited. My point was that PHP is not a very good excuse for avoiding MediaWiki, despite being often cited. It's easy to learn, but if it's against your religion or something, you can always code in something else.
I think a lot more people have this "PHP-religion-problem", really (I know at least three people in my immediate environment with this problem: a Pythonist, a Rubyist and a Perlist). If the modularisation of PHP is of a degree that it would indeed be possible to code new parts in other languages, I'd be happy to dive into a task that could be fulfilled in Python (I'm already an active pywikipediabot-developer).
Multi-lingual coding has major advantages and disadvantages. It can draw more people in the development process: Nicholas and I are most certainly not the only people avoiding MediaWiki because of PHP (calling it religion is unfair: there are very good reasons, perhaps PHP-ers don't care about them). Further, some languages may be better at other tasks. Disadvantages might be that it would be more difficult to have an overall view over the codebase, and that it might be slower. The latter, however, might be negligeble or not too important, depending on the task involved.
I am an experienced Python programmer with a relatively broad knowledge, only no database experience. But I suppose a number of tasks currently fulfilled by pywikipediabot could and should be done server-side or partly server-side. It would be much faster. I'm sure there are other points beside further development of Pywikipediabot where Python knowledge might be useful.
PHP *can* be a valid reason to refrain from MediaWiki. Some people care about things like language design, and since MediaWiki is of course OSS, those people will not get involved in a PHP project. Nicholas and I apparantly are two of them, I'm sure there are many others.
kind regards, Gerrit Holl.
Gerrit wrote:
I think a lot more people have this "PHP-religion-problem", really (I know at least three people in my immediate environment with this problem: a Pythonist, a Rubyist and a Perlist). If the modularisation of PHP is of a degree that it would indeed be possible to code new parts in other languages, I'd be happy to dive into a task that could be fulfilled in Python (I'm already an active pywikipediabot-developer).
If it was written in Python you'd just find some other way to avoid contributing. And then we'd have lots of people complaining that they can't code in Python, and that we should be using Java or Ruby or something. You can't satisfy every programmer, everyone has their own preferences.
PHP *can* be a valid reason to refrain from MediaWiki. Some people care about things like language design, and since MediaWiki is of course OSS, those people will not get involved in a PHP project. Nicholas and I apparantly are two of them, I'm sure there are many others.
I'd code for Wikipedia regardless of what language it used. I had never looked at PHP before I started on Wikipedia. If it was in Python, I'd be there. It wouldn't have mattered if it was in Ruby, C, Haskell or x86 assembly, I'd dive in. Because Wikipedia needs programmers and Wikipedia is a worthy cause.
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
-- Tim Starling
--- Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to suppose that if you identify a problem that you can fix, then you have an obligation to fix it. Even if you have the capability, there is no moral imperative for volunteers to do anything at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is already a positive contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of course, to grumble or whine about a problem that you've identified is churlish, as you have no right to expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the developers. I would quite like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but right now I prefer to spend my time contributing to the content of articles -- this is not an *excuse*; this is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such implication.
-- Matt (User:Matt Crypto)
___________________________________________________________ Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win £10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality. Get Yahoo! Mail www.yahoo.co.uk/10k
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to suppose that if you identify a problem that you can fix, then you have an obligation to fix it. Even if you have the capability, there is no moral imperative for volunteers to do anything at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is already a positive contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of course, to grumble or whine about a problem that you've identified is churlish, as you have no right to expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the developers. I would quite like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but right now I prefer to spend my time contributing to the content of articles -- this is not an *excuse*; this is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
-- Tim Starling
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 23:28:49 +1100, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to suppose that if you identify a problem that you can fix, then you have an obligation to fix it. Even if you have the capability, there is no moral imperative for volunteers to do anything at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is already a positive contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of course, to grumble or whine about a problem that you've identified is churlish, as you have no right to expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the developers. I would quite like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but right now I prefer to spend my time contributing to the content of articles -- this is not an *excuse*; this is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
-- Tim Starling
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I'd help were I paid - I'd love to do it as a job! But even my Wikipedia editing is eating into valuable work time, in fact, too much of my "relaxation time" is Wikipedia editing as it is. I should rest my eyes more.
Sorry, but I can't afford to spend even a couple hours a week on development, not to mention the initial familiarisation and learning PHP (OK it'd be useful elsewhere - but I have enough to do with my ordinary University research).
Zoney
Tim Starling (t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au) [041119 23:27]:
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
Hmm. I am tempted to learn PHP just for my favoured features (though I haven't written anything more complicated than a shell script with a loop and a condition for over a decade) - as if I haven't got enough things using my time ;-)
A suggestion: would it be worth putting an ad in the top line of the article pages? The place where donation beg notices go. "Wikipedia needs volunteer developers. PHP and Python. No fortune, a small amount of fame. Your MediaWiki needs You!" With the last sentence being a link to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker .
- d.
I would personally like that the number of programmers remain small, otherwise there will be an need for project managers, documenters, and, well, overhead. And overhead just kills developer productivity. (trust me on that one).
On an aside, I'd like to point out that I think that mediawiki is better than a lot of commercially available software and that the core team needs more of "Thankyou Thankyou"s than "Biatch, where's my featureitis".
Furthermore, if you like what the developers have done, email them a $50 paypal donation.
On another aside, I've deployed mediawiki internally on the company intranet, and it took 30 minutes to set up, so "ThankyouThankyou" to the devs.
===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com
Christopher Mahan wrote:
I would personally like that the number of programmers remain small, otherwise there will be an need for project managers, documenters, and, well, overhead. And overhead just kills developer productivity. (trust me on that one).
I would say that I would personally like for Brion, Tim, and all the rest to get whatever they like, right? And if they say they need more help, then let's all go out and recruit them some more help, or try to find time ourselves if we can.
--Jimbo
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would say that I would personally like for Brion, Tim, and all the rest to get whatever they like, right? And if they say they need more help, then let's all go out and recruit them some more help, or try to find time ourselves if we can.
Heck Jimbo, I agree. Whatever your developer needs, make sure they get it.
I just don't want to have 30 people bickering about whether documentation should be in UTF-8 or 16, and how to split the meager budget.
By the way, if the devs want help with documentation of the code, I can do some.
===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com
Christopher-
By the way, if the devs want help with documentation of the code, I can do some.
Well, it would help to have a decent user documentation as well. The help is being maintained at Meta, but there's really not enough people there who work on it: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
This is something everyone with some understanding of how the wiki works can help with. It is essential for new projects like Wikinews, which rely on these pages, as well as for other users of MediaWiki outside the Foundation framework.
Much of what currently is there is out of date or inaccurate. It also doesn't follow consistent guidelines for interwiki linking, images etc., which is key to portability. So any participation would be greatly appreciated.
If there are any questions, there's usually someone on #mediawiki (irc.freenode.net) who can help.
Regards,
Erik
--- Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
Wikipedia would rather think
of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
suppose that if you identify a
problem that you can fix, then you have an
obligation to fix it. Even if you
have the capability, there is no moral imperative
for volunteers to do anything
at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
already a positive
contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
course, to grumble or whine
about a problem that you've identified is
churlish, as you have no right to
expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
developers. I would quite
like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
right now I prefer to spend my
time contributing to the content of articles --
this is not an *excuse*; this
is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
-- Tim Starling
I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to be able to learn how to contribute. What do you need exactly, only people who know PHP?
I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn from scratch :). Hopefully there are other people who want to learn, we can form a little group and go though a few tutorials. This way people who know PHP could help multiple people at once learn saving time. How long would you guess it take before a person would learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
ShaunMacPherson
______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
[[User:The bellman]] rjs
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
--- Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
Wikipedia would rather think
of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
suppose that if you identify a
problem that you can fix, then you have an
obligation to fix it. Even if you
have the capability, there is no moral imperative
for volunteers to do anything
at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
already a positive
contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
course, to grumble or whine
about a problem that you've identified is
churlish, as you have no right to
expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
developers. I would quite
like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
right now I prefer to spend my
time contributing to the content of articles --
this is not an *excuse*; this
is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
-- Tim Starling
I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to be able to learn how to contribute. What do you need exactly, only people who know PHP?
I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn from scratch :). Hopefully there are other people who want to learn, we can form a little group and go though a few tutorials. This way people who know PHP could help multiple people at once learn saving time. How long would you guess it take before a person would learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
ShaunMacPherson
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 13:50:18 +1100 Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
[[User:The bellman]] rjs
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
--- Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
Wikipedia would rather think
of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
suppose that if you identify a
problem that you can fix, then you have an
obligation to fix it. Even if you
have the capability, there is no moral imperative
for volunteers to do anything
at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
already a positive
contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
course, to grumble or whine
about a problem that you've identified is
churlish, as you have no right to
expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
developers. I would quite
like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
right now I prefer to spend my
time contributing to the content of articles --
this is not an *excuse*; this
is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem to be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help, and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few hours per week.
-- Tim Starling
I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to be able to learn how to contribute. What do you need exactly, only people who know PHP?
I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn from scratch :). Hopefully there are other people who want to learn, we can form a little group and go though a few tutorials. This way people who know PHP could help multiple people at once learn saving time. How long would you guess it take before a person would learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
ShaunMacPherson
______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/ i agree with you and would also be willing to
learn._______________________________________________
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Cool idea. I'd be in. Mark --- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
[[User:The bellman]] rjs
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
--- Tim Starling
t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au
wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- Tim Starling wrote:
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
Wikipedia would rather think
of excuses, complain about the lack of
progress
and file bug reports.
There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia
to
suppose that if you identify a
problem that you can fix, then you have an
obligation to fix it. Even if you
have the capability, there is no moral
imperative
for volunteers to do anything
at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem
is
already a positive
contribution, albeit a comparatively minor
one. Of
course, to grumble or whine
about a problem that you've identified is
churlish, as you have no right to
expect that others fix things on your behalf.
But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to
the
developers. I would quite
like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
right now I prefer to spend my
time contributing to the content of articles
--
this is not an *excuse*; this
is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any
such
implication.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to impress on everyone that Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're
ever
wondering why some feature hasn't been written yet, it's because there's been no-one around to write it. Most of the active developers seem
to
be more interested writing features for a general audience than for Wikimedia projects. There's more editors on the Old English
Wikipedia
than there are developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to
help,
and that's fine. I get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is
there
anyone? Every second Wikipedian seems to know a programming language.
We
just need, say, two or three developers willing to put in a few
hours
per week.
-- Tim Starling
I currently have some time on my hands and I'd
love to
be able to learn how to contribute. What do you
need
exactly, only people who know PHP?
I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn from scratch :). Hopefully there are other people
who
want to learn, we can form a little group and go though a few tutorials. This way people who know
PHP
could help multiple people at once learn saving
time.
How long would you guess it take before a person
would
learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
ShaunMacPherson
______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Tim Starling wrote in reply to Gerrit:
If it was written in Python you'd just find some other way to avoid contributing.
What makes you think that?
I contribute to Pywikipediabot, because it's written in Python.
And then we'd have lots of people complaining that they can't code in Python, and that we should be using Java or Ruby or something. You can't satisfy every programmer, everyone has their own preferences.
This is only partially true.
My complain is not that I cannot code in PHP. I can learn. But I don't *want* to learn. I would want to learn Ruby, or perhaps something less known. My complain is that I do not *want* to code in PHP.
To put it easily: each language has a group of lovers, a group of haters, and a lot of people in between. I would not be surprised if the group of people in between is relatively small for PHP. I do not know for sure, however.
Indeed. In Python, Java or Ruby there would be people refraining from contributing because they hate the language. I think the group would be much smaller than for PHP, however.
PHP *can* be a valid reason to refrain from MediaWiki. Some people care about things like language design, and since MediaWiki is of course OSS, those people will not get involved in a PHP project. Nicholas and I apparantly are two of them, I'm sure there are many others.
I'd code for Wikipedia regardless of what language it used. I had never looked at PHP before I started on Wikipedia. If it was in Python, I'd be there. It wouldn't have mattered if it was in Ruby, C, Haskell or x86 assembly, I'd dive in. Because Wikipedia needs programmers and Wikipedia is a worthy cause.
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
When I contribute to Wikipedia, I do not do so out of some mission I have given myself in life to make the World a Better Place. I do so for fun. I do not find PHP or Java fun. Hence, I will not contribute to Mediawiki core.
Nobody needs an "excuse" not to contribute to Mediawiki. Mediawiki is OSS. Nobody is obliged to contribute. If nobody contributes, nothing happens. That's Open Source.
I do find programming Python fun. Because of this, I contribute to Pywikipediabot. Meanwhile, I also do something that might be useful.
Finally, I'd like to ask you to stay polite. You are implicitly accusing me of lying, because you do not believe that my reason to refrain from contributing is PHP. You are free to disagree with me. However, I think it would be best for everyone to keep the discussion fair.
regards, Gerrit Holl.
On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:48:56 +0100, Gerrit gerrit@nl.linux.org wrote:
And then we'd have lots of people complaining that they can't code in Python, and that we should be using Java or Ruby or something. You can't satisfy every programmer, everyone has their own preferences.
This is only partially true.
To put it easily: each language has a group of lovers, a group of haters, and a lot of people in between. I would not be surprised if the group of people in between is relatively small for PHP. I do not know for sure, however.
I think you may just be assuming that your feelings are those of a majority here. There are plenty of people who hate PHP, but there are also plenty of people who love it; the same is true of Perl, Java, C++, etc, etc. That you don't like the 'feel' of PHP is fine, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that this is some kind of consensus view (and I'm not trying to blame or insult you, by the way, it's a natural psychological tendency to do that, I believe).
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
Nobody needs an "excuse" not to contribute to Mediawiki. Mediawiki is OSS. Nobody is obliged to contribute. If nobody contributes, nothing happens. That's Open Source.
Indeed. I think Tim is talking about those who say "we really must have a such-and-such feature, but I'm not going to code it, because..." There are a lot more people generating even quite well-designed ideas than people actually implementing them, and I think the existing developers find that rather tiring. I'm probably guilty of this kind of excuse myself, although I do have a go at the odd bit of code occasionally.
Finally, I'd like to ask you to stay polite. You are implicitly accusing me of lying, because you do not believe that my reason to refrain from contributing is PHP. You are free to disagree with me. However, I think it would be best for everyone to keep the discussion fair.
I may be wrong, but I don't think such an accusation was intended. The point is that there's not a lot anyone can do about the fact that people will not contribute because of language preferences, etc, because there are always an infinite number of configurations, and they'll always provide *somebody* with a valid excuse not to contribute. So, yes, not liking PHP is a valid reason not to code in it, but that's to do with *your* preferences, and doesn't really reflect on the project or what anyone else should do.
Rowan Collins wrote:
To put it easily: each language has a group of lovers, a group of haters, and a lot of people in between. I would not be surprised if the group of people in between is relatively small for PHP. I do not know for sure, however.
I think you may just be assuming that your feelings are those of a majority here. There are plenty of people who hate PHP, but there are also plenty of people who love it; the same is true of Perl, Java, C++, etc, etc. That you don't like the 'feel' of PHP is fine, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that this is some kind of consensus view (and I'm not trying to blame or insult you, by the way, it's a natural psychological tendency to do that, I believe).
I don't think it is a consesus, and I would image people loving PHP to be over-represented among Mediawiki hackers. My 'feeling' that I think the feeling for PHP is stronger is not
Indeed. I think Tim is talking about those who say "we really must have a such-and-such feature, but I'm not going to code it, because..." There are a lot more people generating even quite well-designed ideas than people actually implementing them, and I think the existing developers find that rather tiring. I'm probably guilty of this kind of excuse myself, although I do have a go at the odd bit of code occasionally.
I can understand it might be tiring for existing developers. On the other hand, I can also understand not everyone with a good idea has the time, resources, energy and wish to implement it.
Finally, I'd like to ask you to stay polite. You are implicitly accusing me of lying, because you do not believe that my reason to refrain from contributing is PHP. You are free to disagree with me. However, I think it would be best for everyone to keep the discussion fair.
I may be wrong, but I don't think such an accusation was intended.
OK. Let's close it now. Tim didn't mean it as such, as is clarified by his later post, and I don't want to have a language war. I'll contribute to Pywikipediabot: I know some features I'd like to see that I might be able to implement.
The point is that there's not a lot anyone can do about the fact that people will not contribute because of language preferences, etc, because there are always an infinite number of configurations, and they'll always provide *somebody* with a valid excuse not to contribute. So, yes, not liking PHP is a valid reason not to code in it, but that's to do with *your* preferences, and doesn't really reflect on the project or what anyone else should do.
There might be an infinite number of configurations, major ones and minor ones. Here, I define major ones the ones that cannot be bridged, and minor ones the one that can. For me, PHP is a major one. The coding style in Pywikipediabot was a minor one.
Let's close this discussion, it's bringing us nowhere. I should have read Tim's second post before replying, and maybe Tim could have phrased things a bit differently - let us put those differences aside and edit Wikipedia. We had our 400.000th article today - let's celebrate that!
kind regards, Gerrit Holl.
From: "Rowan Collins" rowan.collins@gmail.com
I love the way Malone throws everything right back the other way; a nice demonstration of the use of 'spin', I feel. E.g. "approaching 400,000 pages" vs McHenry's back-handed "over 382,000 pages that were thought "probably" to be encyclopedic articles".
His ending "crude analogy" was on the mark too. ;-)
"... Finally, as long as Mr. McHenry is going to end on a crude analogy, so will I: using a traditional encyclopedia is like owning a nice, well-built automobile that, unfortunately, has the seats and mirrors locked in place, the radio frozen on one station, the throttle welded in one position -- and the car is capable of only driving to a limited number of places predetermined by the manufacturer. ... Frankly, I'd rather pee in a public toilet."
May the best man win, I guess - but lets hope we make some serious progress on validation soon, to give them an extra weapon or two...
FWIW, I think those "mark article as 1.0 version" and similar proposals, would go a long way there.
regards, sabre23t =^.^=
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