Hi Shlomi,
On Saturday 08 July 2006 06:26, you wrote:
> > On Friday 07 July 2006 17:47, you wrote:
> > > Personally, I feel that putting the central Perl wiki within Wikipedia
> > > may not be such a good idea. That's because Perl hackers may wish to
> > > deviate somewhat from Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View. For example,
> > > the Perl wiki may have an entry about Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. with some
> > > criticisms of their approaches of doing things.
> >
> > There is a correct time and a correct place for everything. There are
> > some things that are appropriate to be placed neutrally under the Perl
> > topic within Wikipedia itself, and some are not, so we just need to
> > organize and police things smartly, moderating the content as needed to
> > make it public, while providing external links out to the proper private
> > location, or locations, for the Perl biased expressions to occur. No
> > foul and no problem, I believe.
>
> Right, but this will fragment the Perl central wiki. If people have to look
> in two different places, this would be confusing. I'd rather have one wiki
> and that's it.
>
I absolutely agree with you, but all options are kept available to us. I'm
formally removing the incorrect name "Perl-Wikipedia" from this discussion
about "The Perl Wiki," to avoid any further confusion.
People will be going to two major information resources. They will be going
to Wikipedia to learn about many topics, including Perl, and they will be
going directly to The Perl Wiki for its centralized Perl information. I
believe that the Perl related topics within Wikipedia will be a very big part
of the total information solution, along with The Perl Wiki however it is
implemented.
> > I also believe that a truly objective Perl person could legitimately
> > write a factually valid and complete critique about the various
> > programming languages, comparing "their approaches of doing things"
> > without showing a bias toward any particular language, or languages.
>
> True, but see below.
>
> > We just need to be very
> > fair, complete and moderate in what we do for the general public. It's
> > simply a difference between the formality of writing from "Wikipedia's
> > Neutral Point of View" and someone quickly hacking out an expression of
> > their Perl biased opinions in a more private Perl setting.
>
> Yes, but I still believe that a Perl wiki may be somewhat different than a
> Perl section in the wikipedia.
>
I completely agree with you, because like you've been doing with your recent
Wikipedia entry about Tom Christiansen, and your Wikibooks project for
Newbies, there are "A Lot of Things Perl," including good encyclopedic or
technical information that is best created within Wikipedia or Wikibooks, and
simply referenced by The Perl Wiki as needed to amplify the local topics or
discussions going on in the in everday happenings of The Perl Wiki.
The global Perl community has a very good story to tell to the world through
all of the Wikimedia components that are available. You're doing exactly
"The Right Stuff," by utilizing the Wikimedia components to tell part of the
Perl story, by adding a page in Wikipedia to tell the world about Tom
Christiansen's great contributions to Perl, and by writing new Wikibooks to
help bring new people into the Perl community.
Eric
Hello to The Wikimedia Foundation,
I'm a Systems Engineer in Pennsylvania, USA. "Shalom" to Shlomi, in Israel,
at http://iglu.org.il, and a "Good Day" to Jacinta, in Australia, at
http://perl.net.au.
I don't know if Shlomi or Jacinta have read my very enthusiastic response to
Shlomi's post on the perl.advocacy usenet, but I've begun to research my idea
on Wikipedia, towards the creation of Perl-Wikipedia, "The Free Encyclopedia
of Perl."
I've just joined the <foundation-I(a)wikimedia.org> mailing list, and I'd like
to start a discussion with The Wikimedia Foundation on their mailing list,
and I'm also asking my two fellow Perl advocates to participate in this
discussion with me.
Shlomi and Jacinta both have valuable Wiki development expertise and their own
excellent perspectives on this matter of creating "The Perl Wiki," or
Perl-Wikipedia as I see it.
Shlomi Fish wrote in the perl.advocacy usenet:
> While I may be invoking Joel's Quarreling Kids Rule here[1], I think a
> central wiki for Perl may be a good idea, not only as a way to consolidate
> all these specialised wiki's, but also to be "The Perl Wiki" which
> everyone will refer to. We can have http://wiki.perl.org/ for easy linking
> and good Google Juice.
>
I responded to Shlomi:
I believe that this http://wiki.perl.org, "The Perl Wiki," is an absolute
requirement, not an option, and I'm fully available to contribute to its
making. Let's add a Wiki link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl, right
under the Website link to http://www.perl.org, and let's do it.
I've learned a lot from Wikipedia, and I've also learned a lot about
Wikipedia, and I just see this "The Perl Wiki" as a normal extension of
Wikipedia, creating the Perl-Wikipedia, "The Free Encyclopedia of Perl."
I've learned what happens on Wikipedia, where "Over 94% of all vandalism is
removed within ten minutes" [1]. That's a very good statistic, and I've
actually seen it happen.
There are so many good things to come from this great idea.
I'm in.
I'm an advocate of three global topics:
1. The Religion called Christianity (PERSONAL TRUTH)
2. The Free Encyclopedia called Wikipedia (PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE)
3. The Programming Language called Perl (PERSONAL POWER)
I personally believe in and use, all three of them, all of the time.
As a result of my personal decision to commit to this next good public thing,
I've begun to learn what I need to learn, in order to make this great idea of
Shlomi's happen, for the sake of our global community.
Today I reviewed what I could find in Wikipedia, The Wikimedia Foundation, and
the new project policy at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy.
I want to help create a new global topic, or a new Wikipedia subtopic, called
The Free Encyclopedia of Perl, "'The Perl Wiki' that everyone will refer to,"
and I need everyone's help to decide how to engineer it "The Right Way."
What is "The Right Way" to create, establish or begin the foundation of "The
Free Encyclopedia of Perl?"
Should we simply expand upon Wikipedia's Perl entry already established at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl, opening the door to exponential growth and
the possibly rapid consumption of The Wikimedia Foundation's valuable
resources, or should we add an external Wiki link in Wikipedia pointing out
to http://wiki.perl.org as "The Perl Wiki," which may or may not eventually
become Perl-Wikipedia in the future.
Whatever solution is found, I want "The Free Encyclopedia of Perl" to be
highly integrated with "The Free Encyclopedia," called Wikipedia, to get the
maximum synergy of out two very good things put together for the public good.
I've come to ask the people of The Wikimedia Foundation for their expert
opinions and guidance. From what I've read today, advancing a new Wikimedia
Foundation project called Perl-Wikipedia to fruition could take years, so I
know that besides having this initial discussion, the external hosting of
http://wiki.perl.org, "The Perl Wiki," is probably the first stage of the
development towards my thoughts of Perl-Wikipedia, "The Free Encyclopedia of
Perl."
I look forward to all of your valuable contributions to this discussion.
Eric R. Meyers
I apology I did not take the time to comment sooner.
Away from home, little computer time.
I would like to say wholeheartedly to Angela that I
thank her for all the time and work she put in the
organisation. Even though we did not always agree on
all matters, I was happy to share the responsability
and workload of board member with her. She was simply
someone I could trust to have the interest of the
Foundation at heart, rather of her own interests. She
was someone who deeply respected the pact of
representation with the community and of support to
editors of all projects and all languages.
It seems being on the board is very consuming. Not
only time consuming but energy consuming. I respect
very much Angela for deciding to let another
fresh-volunteer join the board. I respect her doubly,
because I think this shows that the position of board
member should not be seen as a position of power, to
hold on against winds and storms or simply to get on
as a goal. I believe the Foundation needs stability,
but also highly diverse human input, with new ideas
and different methods to reach its mission.
I recently proposed to the board to set up an advisory
board. If the board approves this creation, I'll be
happy that Angela be its first member. Meanwhile, I
hope an Australian chapter will soon born ;-)
Thanks
Ant
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I noticed that Mediawiki 1.6.7. has some issues with current content
with Infoboxes and Cite.php references when citing books and websites.
I also read that 1.7 is what's running on Wikipedia. Is there a good
reason why XML dumps are kept broken and Wikipedia is always using
unreleased versions as opposed to the other way around. Most folks run
production websites on a stable release and leave the experimental
releases for developers -- here this is reversed.
It's a little frustrating to run down continual problems with the dumps.
Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
Jeff
To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
might want to approach.
Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and
extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
community model)
Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
--
#######################################################################
# Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge #
# http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world #
#######################################################################
Hello,
it exists: http://wikipedia.linux.co.nz/index.php/Main_Page
I found out (by accident!) that someone had burnt WP onto DVD and had
given copies to some schools that were interested. He is interested in
knowing what the WM people think of what he is doing. Below are some
of his comments. BTW this is all happening in Australia.
cheers,
Brianna
en.wp,commons,meta:User:pfctdayelise
[him:]
> > um , yeah, hi. the disk is being uploaded to a mirror which you can get a bittorrent feed from shortly.
> >
> > As the database is a myisampack compressed file on a read-only filesystem , I had to change the wikimedia code so that any insert , delete or update code would not be run , else you'd get errors.
> >
> > I don't know much about the relationship between wikimedia and wikipedia , but I'm concerned about what I'm doing is going to piss off anyone.
[I told him it wasn't because the GFDL encourages re-use]
[...]
yeah , I've just put on a complete copy of the DB. its one of the last
ones done in SQL format before they went for their xml dump .. so its a
bit old , but I don't forsee many problems updating it to a newer db.
the main screen that appears is pretty much like the one that shows up
on the main wikipedia site , except it doesn't do any extra searching of
articles... which is handy , because it's not exactly fast searching for
an article.
[me: (they=WMF)]
> The main concern for them is filtering out
> copyright violations, junk and incorrect information, as you may have
> noticed these things are not entirely infrequent occurrences. :) The
ooh yeah :)
[me:]
> idea is that once they make a CD version they could be sued as
> "publishers" for copyright violation etc, but running a website is
> somehow not being a "publisher".... just wondering if you have any
> concerns about that? (being sued)
never thought about it. you're scaring me :)
[me:]
> For example on English Wikipedia a lot of pages have tags like
> {{hoax}} or {{unverified}} or {{clean-up}} - did you do any kind of
> exclusion at all?
no , none. straight DB dump , plus as many images as I could fit in the
time I had on a single sided single layer dvd. I plan to go dual layer ,
just as soon as I rustle up the money for a burner , more ram.. mare
hdd..
[...]
I'm aware of the german dvd, but I've never seen it IRL. Didn't know
they did any filtering. My thoughts on filtering is that if I do any ,
the trust in what I've done would go down , and I'd rather have a db
with some crap in it , than one that noone wants to "trust".
[...]
the disk should be downloadable in a few days , its just waiting to be
mailed to canberra and stuck in LA's server.
the link you were posted is slow because its using mysql on my box at
home , but the mediawiki install is on a hosted box in NZ.. so its a bit
slow , and I don't have the cash to pay for hosting anywhere else, so it
could easily drown in a slashdotting. But please let the wikimedia
people know.
The ISO isn't exactly release ready or anything , I've tried to put
logos in and and stuff , but it needs polish , I was hoping that people
who download it can give me a hand with making it better. there's a lot
of optimising that can be done to make it faster/better.
In wikipedias users make articles, which are not articles but galleries or there are (galleries) sections of articles. It is often the same what we have on commons. Look here:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalisz#Galeria_Zdj.C4.99.C4.87_Kalisza
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kalisz
or
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_-_album
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w
So, I think, that not only users want albums of their cities. Many people want to look for Zoological atlas, Historical atlas... We have many files now, but on commons there are described in English or native language for described city, village or person. If I want read something about Madrid I must know English or Spanish. If you want read about Polish villages on commons you must know that language. Of course we hawe Wikipedia, but people wants gallery of photos, maps and other graphics described in their languages. Description in all languages is not good, if it on one page.
But, if we will have a new project: "Wikiatlas" or "Wikialbums"... So I've written about it on meta. I only supplemented old proposal for project Wikiatlas:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiatlas#Not_only_geographical_atlas
What do you think about it?
Przykuta
In wikipedias users make articles, which are not articles but galleries or there are (galleries) sections of articles. It is often the same what we have on commons. Look here:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalisz#Galeria_Zdj.C4.99.C4.87_Kalisza
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kalisz
or
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_-_album
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w
So, I think, that not only users want albums of their cities. Many people want to look for Zoological atlas, Historical atlas... We have many files now, but on commons there are described in English or native language for described city, village or person. If I want read something about Madrid I must know English or Spanish. If you want read about Polish villages on commons you must know that language. Of course we hawe Wikipedia, but people wants gallery of photos, maps and other graphics described in their languages. Description in all languages is not good, if it on one page.
But, if we will have a new project: "Wikiatlas" or "Wikialbums"... So I've written about it on meta. I only supplemented old proposal for project Wikiatlas:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiatlas#Not_only_geographical_atlas
What do you think about it?
Przykuta
Hi all,
I emailed this list (and textbook-l) a few weeks ago about final
feedback on Wikiversity [1], but, surprisingly, there was no response
at all on this list (only on textbook-l). Can it be true that nobody
here is interested in Wikiversity? Or is it that nothing new can be
said at this stage? Or possibly that a lack of response indicates
tacit agreement/approval?
There was, in any case, a single response on the current proposal's
talk page [2] (by Amgine) - which I found instructive. Amgine is still
concerned about a lack of clarity in the proposal - I'm wondering if
anyone here agrees/disagrees, and how so? I see Wikiversity as
occupying a niche within Wikimedia as well as serving the interests of
the other projects, but there is still some ambiguity about some of
these inter-project relationships - particularly with Wikibooks. I'll
briefly define how I personally see this working, and the
distinctions.
* Wikiversity and Wikibooks will both host educational materials - but
of a different kind. Wikibooks attempts to develop its resources into
textbooks; Wikiversity will turn its materials into discrete learning
objects, designed to fit within a course structure (though not
nercessarily), so that students can avail of them in their own
self-directed learning. On top of this, teachers may use these
materials "off the shelf" in their lessons, and Wikiversity will
construct lesson plans to facilitate their ease-of-use. If people want
to do further reading on a subject, they can do so on Wikibooks.
* If someone wants to develop a course (or some sort of body of
information for learning), they can start doing so immediately on
Wikiversity. It may very well be that this material will, through
time, develop into a textbook. I think that the material should then
be *copied* (not moved) to Wikibooks, leaving behind material to be
used in learning activities. (Note: I'm not sure if the mechanics of
this will work within the GFDL licence - I'd appreciate comments on
this.)
* Some learning activities on Wikiversity will be to develop content
on other Wikimedia projects. For example, a learning group/community
will apply their learning in writing a textbook (on Wikibooks) on
their subject of interest, or apply their, say, researching skills in
writing an article for Wikipedia or Wikinews.
* Finally, as a clear difference between it and Wikibooks, Wikiversity
will allow research - though how this is to be done should be left to
its community. Personally, I feel that we should be allowing for
original research to be carried out and published on Wikiversity -
this will then require a peer reviewing process and possibly a way for
work to be "protected". How all this is to be done needs to be worked
out by the community - we have been hesitant to define such a process
on the wikiversity subcommittee, because the project really needs to
be developed through its participant community [3].
As an update, I'm still trying to move this process along within the
Special projects committee, and hopefully there will be something to
show for it soon. Meanwhile, however, I continue to invite comments,
suggestions, criticisms from anyone, however new or peripheral to the
discussion you may feel yourself to be.
Best regards,
Cormac / Cormaggio
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity_community