Hi Manuel, et al.,
On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Manuel Schneider manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch wrote:
The question at hand is why people don't think about the consequences before they act, why central notices are created linking to directly to pages full of business logic without talking with the people who run that page first.
+1, I can think of one recent deployment I worked on where they kept changing the date and then once they finally decided on a date I was left out of the notification loop!
On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Only destinations tested for the load should be linked.
You could build up gradually to the desired weight. But that's hard to do if they're going to show up because of a deadline rather than showing up because they just saw the banner.
Sorry, this discussion is totally off-topic. We have done this for a while and it was never neccessary to have another extra IT just for Wikimania.
I'm not sure I agree. (and don't necessarily disagree either) But, I think the question of whether they needed some custom work or something different than what they ended up getting is a small detail.
Maybe there was some public planning or discussion (or even something on the -team list) that I missed or somehow wasn't subscribed to. But maybe this is one more an example of how I wish Wikimania were more like DebConf (debconf.org). Typically I've wanted to apply the DebConf model to organization in general and video recording/streaming/etc. but I imagine this applies just as well to setting up a registration server. Not saying we should copy everything exactly nor are they perfect as is but I think they have a good model to learn from.
With DebConf, more work is typically done in house by volunteers that are interested in what they're working on. (Much like the way enwiki works, things are typically done by people interested in making them happen because otherwise they're not done at all. There's rarely or never any paid staff involved and rarely anyone assigning work for someone else to do. People are given opportunities to find out about how something will work early and when someone wants to do something differently or thinks there's a problem with the something they are often invited to join in that work themselves.)
Some work is necessarily done out of the public eye (e.g. some negotiations with potential fiscal sponsors or handling of private personal info about attendees) but that's the exception rather than the rule. Most work is planned and discussed in public and the organizing teams (which are essentially defined as whoever shows up regular and takes on some work) have regularly scheduled and widely announced public meetings. (for IRC meetings logs are published very soon after the meeting. for public meatspace meetings there is usually no recording but some basic notes are taken and published.)
Some examples: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120703.022020.76785594.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120701.233202.64f18798.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120701.234402.d6ae00ac.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20130408.200353.623deacf.en.html
Thanks!
-Jeremy
[[user:jeremyb]] Wikimedia NYC && Wikimania 2012
Am 14.04.2013 16:48, schrieb Jeremy Baron:
Maybe there was some public planning or discussion (or even something on the -team list) that I missed or somehow wasn't subscribed to. But maybe this is one more an example of how I wish Wikimania were more like DebConf (debconf.org). Typically I've wanted to apply the DebConf model to organization in general and video recording/streaming/etc. but I imagine this applies just as well to setting up a registration server. Not saying we should copy everything exactly nor are they perfect as is but I think they have a good model to learn from.
I don't know how debconf works or what the model is like. I have never been to any debconf, and I guess a lot of otheres here neither, because teh debconf was mentioned several times by you and so far I haven't seem someone picking it up. It would be interesting what they do better.
In our case we do what you mentioned with "With DebConf, more work is typically done in house by volunteers that are interested in what they're working on.". After Gdanks I managed to get the source code of registration and scholarship websites which has long been maintained by one or two people only. Putting it on my webserver I made it available to every Wikimania team since 2010. Harel in 2011 made a lot of improvements to the system, with him and the upcoming chapter scholarships we added multilingual support. In 2012 Aude improved the coding style of the scholarship tool (I think it was basically a re-write at least of the PHP framework, the database seem to be the same). The 2013 team also did some changes, even though I don't know exactly because I didn't track it.
Anyway, the tools will be available for the 2014 team again, whoever it will be. If we keep working on these tools and not start reinventing the wheel again (which happens sometimes) every team can benefit from the improvements done over time. Another problem we solved by that is that the teams now have access to the tools by themselves, via SSH to the server and to the code and also via PHPMyAdmin in a convenient way to access their data. And if everything breaks and nobody feels responsible for it or the local team disappears, I am still their as a neutral host to have a look, export data or do whatever is needed.
For video archiving, streaming (not recommended) and wifi we also have plans in the Wikimania team wiki, available to every team and to be improved (theoretically) over the years. Here, I don't know why, we haven't managed yet to get into a gradually reusing and improving process. Most of the suggestions and plans there are still mine from 2010 and revised in 2011 but with no further use or improvement.
/Manuel
Jeremy Baron, 14/04/2013 16:48:
[...] On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Only destinations tested for the load should be linked.
You could build up gradually to the desired weight. But that's hard to do if they're going to show up because of a deadline rather than showing up because they just saw the banner.
Sorry, this discussion is totally off-topic. We have done this for a while and it was never neccessary to have another extra IT just for Wikimania.
I'm not sure I agree. (and don't necessarily disagree either) But, I think the question of whether they needed some custom work or something different than what they ended up getting is a small detail.
Maybe there was some public planning or discussion (or even something on the -team list) that I missed or somehow wasn't subscribed to. [...]
I doubt it. CentralNotices are usually announced at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar What happened is probably just that the sysop enabling the banner assumed everything was ok because it's what has been done last years too, except that it wasn't because in the past the wikis were linked instead. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=wikimania_reg_anon The root problem seems more that the CentralNotice promoter and implementer were the same person (a temporary sysop, not someone experienced with the tool).
I agree with all the rest of your post, but it's not really the cause of this particular problem, IMHO. On the other hand, it may be the reason why we still don't have Wikimania 2012 videos while FOSDEM 2013 videos were online only a few days after the conference.
Nemo
But maybe this is one more an example of how I wish Wikimania were more like DebConf (debconf.org). Typically I've wanted to apply the DebConf model to organization in general and video recording/streaming/etc. but I imagine this applies just as well to setting up a registration server. Not saying we should copy everything exactly nor are they perfect as is but I think they have a good model to learn from.
With DebConf, more work is typically done in house by volunteers that are interested in what they're working on. (Much like the way enwiki works, things are typically done by people interested in making them happen because otherwise they're not done at all. There's rarely or never any paid staff involved and rarely anyone assigning work for someone else to do. People are given opportunities to find out about how something will work early and when someone wants to do something differently or thinks there's a problem with the something they are often invited to join in that work themselves.)
Some work is necessarily done out of the public eye (e.g. some negotiations with potential fiscal sponsors or handling of private personal info about attendees) but that's the exception rather than the rule. Most work is planned and discussed in public and the organizing teams (which are essentially defined as whoever shows up regular and takes on some work) have regularly scheduled and widely announced public meetings. (for IRC meetings logs are published very soon after the meeting. for public meatspace meetings there is usually no recording but some basic notes are taken and published.)
Some examples: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120703.022020.76785594.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120701.233202.64f18798.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120701.234402.d6ae00ac.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20130408.200353.623deacf.en.html
Thanks!
-Jeremy
[[user:jeremyb]] Wikimedia NYC && Wikimania 2012
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, it may be the reason why we still don't have Wikimania 2012 videos while FOSDEM 2013 videos were online only a few days after the conference.
I think most are online already at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhVZi8OXqfHtOiP2LADQW_jMY5kGPjYMs&...
And maybe sometime in the next few months they'll make their way to commons. (I've asked about that relatively recently and there has been relatively recent communication between the Wikimania team and the vendor they're waiting on.)
However, your reasoning might be correct; I don't know much about FOSDEM video besides that a lot is the same as DebConf video. (both in terms of methods and equipment but also overlap in team members) The DebConf method involves streaming and recording the stream for upload. Files are then given a quick review to be sure there's no readily apparent serious issues and are then available for download by the general public. There is no editing done at all unless a major problem is found, so no waiting for the editing process to finish.
-Jeremy
Jeremy Baron, 14/04/2013 17:11:
On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, it may be the reason why we still don't have Wikimania 2012 videos while FOSDEM 2013 videos were online only a few days after the conference.
I think most are online already at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhVZi8OXqfHtOiP2LADQW_jMY5kGPjYMs&...
Sure, but for practical purposes that's been mostly useless to me. I had to manually upload some videos myself to Commons, and of course I can't do anything about the quality.
And maybe sometime in the next few months they'll make their way to commons. (I've asked about that relatively recently and there has been relatively recent communication between the Wikimania team and the vendor they're waiting on.)
However, your reasoning might be correct; I don't know much about FOSDEM video besides that a lot is the same as DebConf video. (both in terms of methods and equipment but also overlap in team members) The DebConf method involves streaming and recording the stream for upload. Files are then given a quick review to be sure there's no readily apparent serious issues and are then available for download by the general public. There is no editing done at all unless a major problem is found, so no waiting for the editing process to finish.
And surely the also have no waiting for someone outside the organising team with shell access to upload them to the server!
Nemo
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