Brion Vibber
I've temporarily disabled the wiki's internal search engine on the English Wikipedia; searches are directed to google with a site-specific match.
If the search feature is slowing down the site, I think using Google would be a satisfactory permanent alternative. We've been using it for years at the PR Watch web site, with no complaints.
Google opened their APIs up for public use awhile ago. I haven't looked at them, but perhaps there's some way it could be used to lash together a search feature that would simultaneously search several Wikis all at once.
If the search feature is slowing down the site, I think using Google would be a satisfactory permanent alternative. We've been using it for years at the PR Watch web site, with no complaints.
I'm very much against this. Having search results in realtime is of crucial importance for serious article work to avoid duplicates. The Google spider only comes ever so often and misses a lot. PR Watch is one thing, Wikipedia is a couple orders of magnitude bigger, though. As a very, very temporary hack, the Google search is fine. But we need to get the realtime search (with wikisource no less!) back up and running ASAP.
If we have to disable critical features to keep the site running, we may as well disable editing altogether until we have raised enough money to buy a bigger server and/or hire developers.
As for optimization, there are still a few things we need to do, but we also have to keep in mind that a single server is now running all language Wikipedias + meta, and all of them are growing fast (faster now that Google indexes us again). I hope we have the nonprofit setup soon, and if we can't get it setup, we should start raising donations without an organization. Kuro5hin raised 35000 dollars in a few days -- I'm not sure if we can get that high, but we should certainly try.
Regards,
Erik
Not only that, but it doesn't differntiate between a character string in a title and a character string in an article. And it includes postings to the mailing list, which we may not want to publicize. Zoe Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:> If the search feature is slowing down the site, I think using Google
would be a satisfactory permanent alternative. We've been using it for years at the PR Watch web site, with no complaints.
I'm very much against this. Having search results in realtime is of crucial importance for serious article work to avoid duplicates. The Google spider only comes ever so often and misses a lot. PR Watch is one thing, Wikipedia is a couple orders of magnitude bigger, though. As a very, very temporary hack, the Google search is fine. But we need to get the realtime search (with wikisource no less!) back up and running ASAP.
If we have to disable critical features to keep the site running, we may as well disable editing altogether until we have raised enough money to buy a bigger server and/or hire developers.
As for optimization, there are still a few things we need to do, but we also have to keep in mind that a single server is now running all language Wikipedias + meta, and all of them are growing fast (faster now that Google indexes us again). I hope we have the nonprofit setup soon, and if we can't get it setup, we should start raising donations without an organization. Kuro5hin raised 35000 dollars in a few days -- I'm not sure if we can get that high, but we should certainly try.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
If the search feature is slowing down the site, I think using Google would be a satisfactory permanent alternative. We've been using it for years at the PR Watch web site, with no complaints.
I'm very much against this.
Me too. Our search is more up to date, more precise and doesn't have ads. I don't think Google is a good permanent alternative.
I hope we have the nonprofit setup soon, and if we can't get it setup, we should start raising donations without an organization. Kuro5hin raised 35000 dollars in a few days -- I'm not sure if we can get that high, but we should certainly try.
I don't think asking for donations is the way to go once a non-profit is in place. The US is full of foundations that are happy to throw money at half-baked proposals vaguely related to education. Pretty much every billionaire sets up a foundation like that. You just write a grant proposal and wait for the money to come in. Lots of people in academia make their living that way. And we are talking at least an order of magnitude higher than your figure above.
Axel
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I don't think asking for donations is the way to go once a non-profit is in place. The US is full of foundations that are happy to throw money at half-baked proposals vaguely related to education. Pretty much every billionaire sets up a foundation like that. You just write a grant proposal and wait for the money to come in. Lots of people in academia make their living that way. And we are talking at least an order of magnitude higher than your figure above.
Sure, and Jimbo hasn't even ruled out the possibility of taking government money, although he snapped when I mentioned the EU ;-). We should explore all reasonable opportunities. Web donations have the advantage of getting us a quick money fix, if that's what's needed.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Sure, and Jimbo hasn't even ruled out the possibility of taking government money, although he snapped when I mentioned the EU ;-).
I should point out that this was quite some time ago, and not in the context of the current Iraq crisis.
--Jimbo
Axel Boldt wrote:
I hope we have the nonprofit setup soon, and if we can't get it setup, we should start raising donations without an organization. Kuro5hin raised 35000 dollars in a few days -- I'm not sure if we can get that high, but we should certainly try.
I don't think asking for donations is the way to go once a non-profit is in place. The US is full of foundations that are happy to throw money at half-baked proposals vaguely related to education. Pretty much every billionaire sets up a foundation like that. You just write a grant proposal and wait for the money to come in. Lots of people in academia make their living that way. And we are talking at least an order of magnitude higher than your figure above.
I don't think that the Foundation should generally reject donations except when they come with strings attached. Being able to make a modest donation within one's means can give a sense of belonging.
Two cautions come to mind right away: 1. We need to avoid any perception that a person's value to the Wikipedia community depends on the amount of donation. The amounts may need to be kept secret. 2. There needs to be a refund mechanism for banned people who somehow believe that their donation gives them a protection against banning.
Eclecticology
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 09:53:34AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
- There needs to be a refund mechanism for banned people who
somehow believe that their donation gives them a protection against banning.
Wrong solution, I think; the better solution is to make sure it's clear that all donations are no-strings. Otherwise somebody might make a large donation, and then later threaten to demand a refund.