Delirium wrote:
> I'm sure others disagree, but IMO it would be better if there were not
> a particularly easy way to start new projects. We so far have exactly
> one highly successful project, from what I can tell---Wikipedia.
> Wiktionary has been languishing for years now in relative disuse (and
> in my brief attempts to use it to look up words, doesn't have enough
> words in it to be useful as a dictionary, driving me back to
> reference.com), Wikisource is still getting off the ground and is
> fairly disorganized, and Wikibooks has only in the last 6 months seen
> any books that are remotely close to being reasonable books (and even
> the ones labeled with 4 blocks as "complete" are still *far* short of
> book length and detail... we have nothing on Wikibooks that can
> compete with a commercial textbook). I'd rather we spent some time
> working on these projects we already have instead of spawning off
> still more projects, lest we become a clearinghouse of ideas that were
> started but never really carried through.
>
> To be clear, this isn't opposition to Wikinews---I think Wikinews is a
> well-defined project with a clear group of users interested in working
> on it and minimal overlap with other projects, but I think that would
> be a good place to stop for now. After starting Wikinews, and
> counting Wikispecies, we'll have six projects---Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
> Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource---of which only one,
> Wikipedia, is really in a well-developed state.
Perhaps I shouldn't presume to speak on behalf of projects I have yet to
participate in, but the list seems to be missing Wikiquote, the
Wikimedia Commons, and the 9/11 Memorial wiki, at least two of which I
would consider more significant and more successful than the
controversial Wikispecies. Frankly, I wondered why there was so much
insistence on having Wikispecies when contributions stopped completely
after a few days, but now they seem to have started back up again.
I agree that we are close to tackling more projects than we can hope to
do well for now. Wikinews makes a persuasive case, and I see Wikijunior
(or whatever we call it) as being less a fork than a subproject of
Wikipedia, so I'm happy if they manage to go forward. But if we need
challenges, I would like to see us get serious about tackling other
types of media (starting with print), not just cast about for new
specialties in the one medium we've done well in so far.
--Michael Snow
As far as I know, the Wikipedia Junior project would simply be to create booklets targeted at kids. Not for kids to write stuff for kids.
Take a look at www.brandnewplanet.ca/, the website for the Brand New Planet section of The Toronto Star newspaper. We'd end up with the most superficial nonsense you could ever find. Okay, there isn't too much content online, but some of the stuff in the paper is just sad.\
Nick
I've got this hunch that a (hypothetical) Wiki-kid-pedia would be of remarkably high philosophical and scientific quality, whereas a Teeniepedia would largely consist of "J45ON WINSCOTTLE ISA WANKARRR!!", "I LuV mArY JaNe." and "BENNIE {heart} SIMONE!!!" Maybe we should bar participation from anyone between ages 10 and 20?
---------------------------------
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
Sj-
> Yesterday, the O'Reilly Network's Scott Hacker addressed the end-user
> experience of setting up and customizing a wiki (with some eloquent
> commentary by visitors at the end) :
> _Where's the Movable Type of the Wiki World?_ (
> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/5794 )
> Hacker suggests the Wiki world needs its own elegant, soup-to-nuts
> wikiproject, comparing the chaos of wiki communities and documentation
> to that of the blogging world pre-Movable Type. He shopped around for
> a wiki to use for an educational project (which was inspired by
> WikiPedia, retro camel caps and all), and finally settled on MediaWiki
> as the best choice. Unfortunately, its "scattered and obtuse"
> documentation, "stupidly difficult" customizations, and lack of an
> off-wiki user manual, left him cold. He notes he'd be willing to pay
> on the order of $100 for an actively developed, well-supported
> solution.
I'll use this as an opportunity to promote again the help effort on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
This is really something every user can help with. There are now several
services which offer free print-on-demand books in the style Cafepress
offers t-shirts (in fact, Cafepress is one of them). So it should not be
too hard to create a printed manual for MediaWiki.
I wonder whether we need something like [[en:Wikipedia:Collaboration of
the Week]] for the whole Wikimedia community, where the current WMCOTW
would be visibly promoted on all projects. This could help in jumpstarting
things like translation, transwiki, new project proposals, embassies, etc.
Regards,
Erik
Hi,
I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia and would
like to say a few things about it's beginnings and
its workings. How it is maintained and how the
foundation was set up.
Would someone have ideas as to what could
be good talking points to bring out concerning
the Wikimedia foundation and what kind of
pitch to throw in for support?
Any help with this subject would be appreciated.
With regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]
Ec++ (that's up-moderation, not changing your version number :)
Perhaps someone could do this for wikiversity.fr, once the foundation
is in place? --sj
[ moved to foundation-l for clarity. ]
On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 02:06:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > Sj wrote:
> >
> >> And does anyone know these Canadian IT Traning people? They
> >> apparently just started setting up a site, but half of their links are
> >> to Wikimedia projects... and they're obviously waiting for a
> >> wikiversity site to be set up (check their one "Press Release").
> >> http://www.canadianittraining.com/Main.htm
> >>
> > I'm trying to make sense of this.
> >
> > I'm naturally suspicious of this. They have too many domain names
> > which appeared when I looked more closely at the contact information.
> > They also have canadianitoverseas.com and
> > educationbeyondboundaries.com which link back to the same website.
> >
> > The phone number for the CEO is listed as belonging to one W. Jolly of
> > Richmond Hill, Ont. The other phone number appears to be unlisted.
> >
> > I also followed through the link to their Nova Scotia based Web design
> > provider. That gave me another site of theirs at
> > http://www.cittilearningsystems.com/ That, at least, has a more
> > substantial page about the courses that they offer, mostly IT and
> > business related but with none of the courses being described beyond
> > having a title. Evolution Learning of Halifax
> > http://www.evolutionlearning.com/# also seems to be theirs. The lack
> > of any personal names to all this is an alert to me.
> >
> > I suspect something like Vancouver University International that was
> > dicscussed not long ago. They may be trying to piggyback on
> > Wikiversity to build credibility for themselves!!! :-D So far their
> > track record is too slim to be meaningful.
>
> Further to the above I have pre-emptively registered the domain
> wikiversity.ca
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
--
+sj+
_ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
Is it true that the board has officially declared that links from
Wikipedia to Wiktionary are internal links? And if yes, could they
please specify whether Wiktionary is part of Wikipedia or the other
way around?
Andre Engels
Since you copied to me specifically... personally, I would prefer dual Opterons for web servers and have advocated that option. There are pros and cons to each option, so it's not an obvious choice either way and not something anyone is likely to get really unhappy about.
Pro-dual something:
*Less port and rack space use per box.
*One dual Opteron was tried and did well, hasn't been properly benchmarked so views on how well differ.
Con-dual something:
*We have a crude ping-type load balancing system at present and the single dual box initially grabbed a disproportionate amount of traffic until its priority was adjusted.
*Filling rack with dual CPU 1U boxes is sometimes said to be unadvisable for heat/power reasons.
*We had single CPU P4s initially to get plenty of boxes so losing one single box wouldn't do much harm. Inertia favors buying more of the same, as does the load balancing issue.
*A bit more expensive per CPU. Whether that's worth it for performance isn't currently known.
There's also a fair bit of agreement that we're not really happy with the cost of 1U rackmount boxes compared to commodity systems when it comes to the page builders (Apaches). There's a fair chance that we would try the commodity supercomputer approach once we switch from renting racks to renting a room, which is likely to happen once we have filled the second rack. At that point the prices for a room and a rack are about the same and the room is more flexible.
The Opterons are used in part because 64 bit is mandatory to use more than 2GB of RAM for MySQL's InnoDB buffers. So, all database servers are likely to be dual Opteron until we have some pressing reason to switch. I don't recall anyone having a different view on this (though having written it, I'm probably about to find out that someone does disagree and I missed it or forgot it:)).
When it comes to donated equipment, we'd simply accept whatever was offered and raise the priority on getting the load balancing sorted out if necessary. There's work on that proceeding, though at a slow pace since it's not currently urgent.
It's rare for me to read the lists. I just happened to see your question after my mail rules broke and I was sorting by hand. BCCs are usually an unreliable way to attract my attention - the rules treat them like any other list post and file them in a place I'm unlikely to read. Please send a non-BCC copy to me if you really do need a my comments on something.
Should Wikimedia launch a project to summarize and report the news
(Wikinews)? The vote on the Wikinews project is now open under
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
Please read the full Wikinews proposal before voting:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews
The proposal has been translated into French, German, Japanese, Old
English and partially into Romanian. I see no problem with people
continuing to make translations during the voting period (three weeks).
Regards,
Erik
I noticed you prefer Intel P4 for Apachies and AMD Opterons for database
servers.
Is there any reasoning behind this scheme, or is it just accidental? Do you
think P4 is better in web applications and Opteron is more suited for backend
work?
Wouldn't a dual Apache have more performance than a single one?
--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
Project Manager of http://maatworks.wikinerds.org
The notes from the meeting of the Board last Saturday have now been
published on the Foundation wiki. Please see
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_16%2C_2004
Topic covered included
1 Grants
2 Webshop
3 Donations and Benefactors
4 Development related matters
5 French chapter feedback
6 Mandrake DVD
7 Legal issues and forks
8 Public relations
9 Miscellaneous
In addition, a meeting was held today to discuss the membership
sections of the bylaws. A summary of this meeting is at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_22%2C_2004
If you would like to comment on either of these meetings or discuss
any of the points raised there, please do so at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Board_meetings
Angela Beesley