2011/4/5 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> ... And in the Hungarian Wikipedia it was even implemented quite a long time ago. If i recall correctly, at some point i saw it in the Polish, too. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

David Gerard wrote: Aye, the English Wiktionary has had a rating feature in the sidebar for ages as well. (The English Wiktionary's implementation might be the oldest working system.) I wrote some comments about the grant-based ArticleFeedback tool here and there are some interesting, thoughtful replies: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=395730#Assorted_comments I think a neat rating tool would be an awesome addition to MediaWiki. I don't think it's top priority, though. I also don't think the current implementation is anywhere near what users would actually want to see. The English Wikipedia has a lot of "quirky" articles, for example. It'd be awesome if you could get a list of those easily (or randomly flip through the most quirky). Or the most "fascinating," the articles with the "best layouts," (following the addition of a "share this article" feature) the "most e-mailed," (following the addition of proper view metrics) the "most viewed," etc. MZMcBride

On 5 April 2011 22:20, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Classic is largely unmaintained, since no-one seems to want to bother to maintain it. How's your coding? - d.

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 8:22 AM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: As with any volunteer project, the efforts volunteered by grant-writers are not optimal for the long-term evolution of the encyclopedia (not that I think we know / agree on what that path necessarily is, but for the sake of argument...). All types of volunteer project are a brownian random walk in the generally agreed upon direction. I think it's fair to say that the Foundation should reject grants that don't push in the generally agreed upon direction. But I don't think they should reject generally agreed upon direction grants that the donor puts a scope limit on, because they don't completely fulfil the community desires in particular areas. Donors have finite resources and are balancing wider concerns, too. We can always come back and add additional features or function where a grant didn't give us everything we want. Lacking a large endowment, we have to take what we can get. There is a curve in the evolution of volunteer groups into charities; it happens because differently sized organizations have different organizational requirements and structures and imperatives. It's not a straight line; some organizations at a given size are more responsive and closer to their original constituents than others. Some of those goals include the "We have a long term goal, and therefore the organization must survive long-term," which then drives one towards more PR and organized giving and donor development etc. Those things are not in any way directly relevant to the Encyclopedia (and other projects). But having a Foundation is key to the Encyclopedia (and other projects) long term successes; we long passed the point that volunteer labor would keep the lights on, servers up and sufficient for the load, and software development running at acceptable pace. The tradeoff, that a fair amount of what the Foundation does is then necessary because it's a Foundation, was explicit in its founding. It frustrates people a lot at times, but we need to acknowledge that tradeoff, that we made it, that we needed to make it, and move on. Whether the Foundation's board, execs, and staff are as focused on supporting the community that work on the projects as is ideal is unquestionably no. That's part of a dynamic trade between the concerns of the ongoing organization and the concerns of its final end product (the projects). We'll never on the community side be entirely happy with that. What we can ask is whether the board, execs, and staff support the goal and work diligently on it. And as a rule, I have been satisfied with the answers on that one. They generally get it right; when they get it wrong, they talk about it and are open to input. When it's not clear what right and wrong are they let people know there's an unanswered question. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 04/05/2011 10:59 AM, David Gerard wrote: Money is not an issue. Put the finger anywhere in Eastern Europe and you can take [already employed] best programmers for 20-50k EUR who would be loyal to WMF up to their retirement (if they don't need to go to SF). Put the finger anywhere in India (which has four or more times more inhabitants than Eastern Europe) and you can get similar ones for 5-10k.