Hello, just a shameless copy-paste from meta (http://
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cluster_report%2C_September-November%2C_2005)
These months were yet again amazing in Wikimedia growth history.
Since September request rates doubled, lots of information added,
modified and expanded, more users came.
To deal with that site had to improve both software and hardware
platforms again.
Of course, more hardware was thrown at the problem.
In mid-September three new database servers (thistle,ixia,lomaria)
were added to the pool, removing ancient type of hardware from the
service.
With data growth rates 'old' 4GB-RAM boxes could not keep up with
operation, except quite limited one.
40 dual-opteron application servers have been deployed, conserving
our limited colocation space, as well as providing lots of
performance for a buck.
One batch of them (20) was deployed just this week.
They're equipped with larger drives and more memory, thus allowing to
place various unplanned services on them (9 apache servers are
storing old revisions as well), some servers participate in shared
memory pool, running memcached.
One of really efficient purchases was 12k$ worth image server
'amane', providing us with storage space and even ability to to
backup at current loads.
It is running now highly efficient and lightweight HTTP server -
lighttpd.
So far images are served, but growth of Wikimedia Commons will force
us to find a really scalable and reliable way to handle lots of media.
Additionally 10 more application servers are ordered together with a
new Squid cache server batch.
These 10 single-opteron boxes will have 4 small and fast disks and
should enable efficient caching of content.
As all this gear was bought for donated money, we really appreciate
community help here, thank you!
Yahoo supplied cluster in Seoul, Korea has finally got into action,
bringing cached content closer to Asian locations, as well as having
master databases and application cluster for Japanese, Thai, Korean
and Malaysian Wikipedias.
For internal load balancing Perlbal was replaced by LVS, and we've
got a nice flashy donated load balancing device that may be deployed
into operation soon as well.
LVS has to be handled with care and several tiny misconfiguration
incidents seriously affected site performance.
Lately the cluster has became quite big and complex and now we need
more sophisticated and extensive sanity checks and test cases.
There are lots of work in establishing more failover capabilities -
we will be having two active links to our main ISP in Florida.
Static HTML dump is (becoming) nice and usable and may help us in
case of serious crashes. It can be served from Amsterdam cluster as
well!
As for last several days we managed to bring cluster into quite
proper working shape, now it's important to fix everything and
prepare for more load and more growth and yet another expansion.
We hope that we will be able with the help of community to solve all
our performance and stability issues and avoid being Lohipedia :)
Lots of various problems were solved so far in order to achieve what
we have now, and lots of low hanging fruits have been picked.
What is dealt now with is complex and needs manpower and fresh ideas
as well.
Discussions are always welcome on #wikimedia-tech in Freenode (except
during serious downtimes :).
And, of course, Thanks Team (or rather, Family)! It is amazing to
work together!
Cheers,
Domas
Mr. Wales,
Thank you for your apology. Really. I am perhaps taking this whole
thing overboard way too much.
I really do have the best interests at heart with what is going on
for Wikibooks, and what I have enjoyed the most there is actually
sitting down and writing textbooks. While I've been involved with the
politics of Wikibooks as well, my heart is with trying to write content.
I believe in that mission, and while I may differ with you on the
philosophy that other content besides strictly textbooks should exist on
that project, I do support the concept of an "open source"
collaboratively written textbook, such as what is happening on
Wikibooks, and elsewhere to a lesser degree such as Benjamin Crowell's
Light and Matter on http://lightandmatter.com
One of the motiviations that I have had for this project is that I
am the father of six children, and I'm living in a state where the
rising costs of textbooks is being particularly felt locally. My
children are often using textbooks that are 10-15 years old and have
scribbles in them from almost a full generation of school children,
because the local schools can't afford to replace these books. There
was one local school that was built brand new, but because the school
district was really stretching it budget for the construction they
couldn't afford to buy any books, either for the library or for the
classrooms, including textbooks. The ones they finally got were
discarded from another school district that were updating their
textbooks, together with a community book drive for the grade school
library that finally got at least a few books in there.
One of my goals to be involved with Wikibooks was to try and make
textbooks for children where I am living to be much more affordable.
There is no reason why a science textbook for sixth grade should cost
60 or 70 dollars, yet they do. I'm not talking some obscure 3rd world
country, but right here in America where we both live.
I've also benefited in the past from cheap or free "textbooks" in a
professional capacity as well. By profession, I'm a software engineer,
and I've had what would best be called an unorthodox educational
experience to say the least to get to the point for where I'm at. I
picked up much of my knowledge by experimentation on a number of
computer systems that were made available to children while I was
growing up, including on-line technical manuals and early predecessors
to IRC chatrooms. I had an e-mail address 30 year ago and got my first
piece of spam about the same time. Using those early systems I was able
to learn techniques and concepts that often my professors in college had
no idea about until after I demonstrated the idea. I got an "F" from
one professor because he thought I was a smart-ass and because the
professor couldn't get the computer to do the things I made it do.
I feel I am getting old enough that I need to start passing on the
knowledge that I've gained over the years to the next generation, and
Wikibooks has provided me with a forum to be able to accomplish this
goal. In the process of learning more about Wikibooks and its
organization, I've also come to know more about the Wikimedia Foundation
and how Wikipedia was started.
I do want to thank you for starting Wikipedia, and having the vision
to see that perhaps the Wiki concept could be applied to other areas of
human knowledge as well. I know other people were also involved, but
you have been giving it the encouragement that it has needed as well.
The early financial backing is also something that I don't think
anybody is going to forget, and thanks for that as well.
I am going to take a break for now from what I've been doing on
Wikibooks, and scale back my activities. Still, with your apology and
some retrospect on my part, I'm going to continue to be involved in some
small part. I've often said that even ordinary users on Wikimedia
projects can do extraordinary things. I'll try to prove that point by
doing it.
I'm also sorry that I had to be such a pain in your side. And I
apologize for the facist comment. That was made in a moment of passion
and I should have measured my comments that way in a much better tone.
Dredging up painful memories of an awful world experience 60 years ago
and casting you as a participant of a truly evil group of people was
really over the top, and I promise that I will never do that again.
As far as the White Nationalism and associated group of Wikibooks is
concerned, I hope you understand that all I'm trying to suggest is that
there could be an interesting Wikibook about the topic, and I completely
agree with your assessment regarding a Neutral Point of View being
essential when presenting things of that nature. I was an outspoken
critic of that Wikibook when it appeared, and to be honest I don't even
understand the mentality of the people who actually believe that stuff.
The only point we differ on is how it should be dealt with when content
like that appears, and this is really a very minor point to be arguing
over. We both agree it should have been removed as it was written, and
I was not willing myself to make it into a NPOV book. Life is too
short, and I have other things I would rather do.
I also want to thank you on one point with Wikibooks as well: There
was a need to "clean house" and get the Wikibooks community to pay
attention to the out right silly books that have somehow been ingrained
within the Wikibooks project. This whole thing has caused the debate
over what the direction of Wikibooks should be, and I geuninely hope
that Wikibooks becomes a better place. Looking at things like Alexa
rankings and citations around the internet, Wikibooks is about to really
come out from behind the shadow of its bigger cousin of Wikipedia and
become something truly remarkable.
--
Robert Scott Horning
This is a reminder/formal notice that the voting period for the creation
of Wikiversity is now over, and that the proposal to create Wikiversity
as a new Wikimedia sister project is now being submitted to the
Wikimedia Foundation board for a formal review, as per guidelines
outlined on this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy
and the time table I submitted previously on:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikiversity#Wikiversity "Relaunch"
---
The participation IMHO have been outstanding, with one of the largest
user interest surveys that I have been able to find with over 300
Wikimedia contributors weighing in to voice their opinions on the
subject, both for and against the proposal. There is quite a body of
opinion there for the Foundation board to work with to try and come up
with their own opinion on the subject. I hope this vote has been viewed
as a success at least in terms of getting people interested in a future
direction for Wikimedia projects and that the energy particularly of the
supporters of Wikiversity will translate into active participation with
the project in some form.
I could use some help from an admin on Meta to "freeze" the voting
pages, unless the board doesn't mind continued voting for the next few
days. It isn't that big of a deal, but essentially the voting is over
and there is no real reason to continue. There has been some "policing"
of the votes, and a few duplicates, but I think members of the board are
intelligent enough to figure out what is going on and can come to
reasonable conclusions about what direction to go regardless of the raw
numbers.
Preliminary raw count was approval of Wikiversity by a vote of 208 in
favor to 86 against (voting before November 1st... a few votes did come
in afterward) and that ratio has been roughly consistant throughout the
entire voting process, generally 2:1 in favor.
See this page for the current vote:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote/en
(also in other languages besides English)
--
Robert Scott Horning
As has become apparent recently there is considerable confusion
possible when reading the text of the Wikisource copyright page at
[[Wikisource: Copyright]]. It is not clear whether only GFDL works,
GFDL-compatible works and public domain works can be posted at the
site, or whether any licence that allows relatively free reproduction
can be used. We need this situation cleared up. I am therefore
proposing to re-write the offending bits of the Wikisource copyright
page to remove the ambiguity.
Since this is a serious step for the project I thought it sensible to
post here and see what the level of agreement is with what I am
proposing to do. I will also post an equivalent message to the
Scriptorium.
What I am proposing to do is to re-word the licensing page to make it
clear that the documents themselves are licensed separately from the
content of the site. That means that things on talk pages, the
Scriptorium, Community Portal and similar will be under the GFDL as
per Wikipedia. However, the documents themselves will be licensed
according to conditions appropriate to their source. That means that
works that are public domain in the United States should be noted as
such with a template at the top or bottom of the page, whichever is
felt most appropriate. It means that works that carry different
licensing conditions from the GFDL and that have licences that are
incompatible with the GFDL can be noted as such.
Such a step will open up Wikisource to a large number of possibilities
of hosting that are currently not open and it will also clear up a
considerable amount of confusion. What do you think?
David Newton
Joanot Martorell wrote:
>2005/11/22, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
>
>
>>2. To discourage the creation of new Wikipedia editions in dialects
>>which do not significantly differ from existing Wikipedias. We want to
>>keep from being hoaxed, and from falling into political traps.
>>
>>For dialects, then, we want to require a much higher threshold before
>>allowing the wikipedia -- we need a good reason to start it. A
>>"Bavarian" Wikipedia proposal would need a much much stronger rationale
>>before we start it than "German". Obviously.
>>
>>
>This point isn't enough to clarify when whe should or should not create a new
>dialect wikipedia, because it's using the unique criteria of interlegibility.
>By exemple, Catalan (my native lang) and Occitan are mutually interlegible in
>text written, or between Neapolitan and Italian. And for some persons
>Portuguese and Spanish are interlegible too, but they are considered as
>independent languages. I think that perhaps the point to consider the inclusion
>of a new dialect wikipedia would be better moving around the
>exclusionist-inclusionist poles.
>
>
I don't think we're talking about an interlegibility criterion here, at
least that's not how I understand Jimbo's proposal. Certainly nobody
objects to separate wikis for the Scandinavian languages. The issue is
not whether native speakers of one language can read material in another
language. It's whether there are native speakers who actually read and
write in this as a literary language at all, as opposed to reading and
writing in some "other" language of which theirs is merely a dialect.
Expanding on Jimbo's point, here's the problem with dialect Wikipedias
(leaving aside, for a moment, the thorny problem of deciding whether
something is a dialect or a language). Dialects tend to be in a similar
position to constructed languages, in that they have no pre-existing
literature and their orthography has to be invented to a significant
degree. When the standards these establish are missing, we really have
no factual basis from which to write in such a language. Inventing
spelling or grammar while you write the encyclopedia, just like
inventing facts while you write the encyclopedia, is perpetrating an
intellectual fraud and a hoax.
However, both dialects and constructed languages of long standing may
develop their own literature and a more or less standard orthography,
which would enable us to accept them as potential Wikipedia languages.
--Michael Snow
2005/11/22, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
> 2. To discourage the creation of new Wikipedia editions in dialects
> which do not significantly differ from existing Wikipedias. We want to
> keep from being hoaxed, and from falling into political traps.
>
> For dialects, then, we want to require a much higher threshold before
> allowing the wikipedia -- we need a good reason to start it. A
> "Bavarian" Wikipedia proposal would need a much much stronger rationale
> before we start it than "German". Obviously.
This point isn't enough to clarify when whe should or should not create a new
dialect wikipedia, because it's using the unique criteria of interlegibility.
By exemple, Catalan (my native lang) and Occitan are mutually interlegible in
text written, or between Neapolitan and Italian. And for some persons
Portuguese and Spanish are interlegible too, but they are considered as
independent languages. I think that perhaps the point to consider the inclusion
of a new dialect wikipedia would be better moving around the
exclusionist-inclusionist poles.
I mean when you want a new wiki in a dialect with important linguistic
particularities that today are being actually assumed as "proper" of another
language, so you wouldn't need a Wikipedia if there exists a Wikipedia in those
language. In this case, wikimedia should adopt an exclusionist attitude.
But when you want a new wiki in a dialect with particularities wich are being
rejected (or considered as "bizarre", etc.) or aren't assumed as "proper" by
the most nearest languages, perhaps you and your linguistic community would
need a Wikipedia. In this case, wikimedia should adopt an inclusionist
attitude.
Let's see a practical and real exemple. If we see the cases about a new
wikipedias proposals in Murcian and in Andalusian, most people who are opposing
these are Spanish-speakers, but the reasons are different. In the case of
Andalusian, Spanish-speakers opposers are saying that "Andalusian was always
considered as a developed form of Spanish" (that is, the most possible future
form of Spanish language). They are being "inclusionist" with Andalusian
dialect, accepting the andalusian particularities as proper. In opposition of
it, about Murcian, Spanish-speakers opposers are saying that writting "Murcian
is a bizarre/coloquially/speech/deformed Spanish used in Murcia region". It
would mean also that they perhaps have some interlegibility difficulties, and
aren't assuming as "proper" form. So they are being "exclusionist" with
Murcian.
And, according to exclusionist-inclusionist poles, Wikimedia would be able to
have a exclusionist attitude with Andalusian, but being inclusionist with
Murcian. Of course, it's only my own opinion.
Cheers!
Joanot Martorell,
(not real name, but real person)
--
Viquipèdia, l'enciclopèdia lliure.
http://ca.wikipedia.org
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> > So an organization cannot, without permission of government-sanctioned
> > bodies, send people to observe and report on events? We're not talking
> > about official government press passes here (the U.S. analog is
> > state-issued passes), simply a piece of paper that indicates the person
> > in question has the sanction of Wikinews to report on their behalf.
> > People are free to ignore that piece of paper of course, and demand
> > something government-issued, but are you saying that the mere act of
> > issuing that piece of paper is illegal,
>
> I am just saying that not only can it be illegal, but also that it will
> certainly engage the liability of the foundation.
>
> Unions accreditating journalists will certainly be mad at it (as in
> France), and it would picture the foundation as a liable editor rather
> as a not-liable publisher.
>
Would make thing easier if the the word journalist is never used?
What the matter if a person is just accredited as external
(unprofesional) collaborator?
Form Italian laws being unprofessional there is no need to be register
(actualle there is not the need to pay the fee to be register) as
journalist and being declared that is an external collaborator (and
not an employed by the newsagency) should limit very much any action
againt the comunity or the foundaton.
By the way wikinews editor act just exactly like an external
unprofessional collaborator. The only difference is that they made it
for free and that there is not a editor-board approvation (actually
this last point is not irrivelant)
About an eventual legal reponsability of the foundation a possible
(but unfortunately not free of charge) solution would be to required
accredited Wikinewsers to have an insurance to cover their civil
responsabilities and foundation civil responsabilities.
As for any other thng like this it would very interesting to know what
legislation is in acts (since every country could claim that their own
legislation should be consider valid).
AnyFile
Sorry if I'm in the wrong list in this matter, but I'm just too lazy
to subscribe to the Wikisource list just for the sake of one
message. Anyways, I want to add the Handbook of Mathematical
Functions (or a wikified version therein) by Abramowitz and Stegun in
Wikisource, but I am not too sure whether legal issues would preclude
its inclusion.
According to [[w:Abramowitz and Stegun]], it is not protected by
copyright, as it is a product of American government employees acting
in official capacity, but it has been commercially reproduced. Free
copies of the handbook are available online, according to its
external links version.
Advice on the matter is greatly appreciated.