The other day, I read the [[:en:Wikileaks]] article on Wikipedia. What it said was, more or less, that Wilileaks is a leaks website that used to be a wiki. And I wondered : how long will it take before we read somewhere : Wikipedia, the Pedia that used to be a Wiki ?
Sooner than you might think.
Just yesterday, someone reported a mistake at the French village pump : a castle was located at the wrong location on the new toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers map tool. That castle, called "Pierrefonds Castle", should be located in the Pierrefonds town, not in Senlis town, like the Windsor castle is located in the town of Windsor to the exclusion of any other English town.
I thought this was the time to show the power of a wiki : a cool website everybody can edit, especially useful to instantly correct straightforward mistakes like that one.
The toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers software is cute enough to provide "source: ru" at the bottom of the little popup window that pops up when you click on the wrongly located castle. I instantly corrected the wrong coordinates on the Russian language version of Wikipedia (1) which had the mistake.
We are more or less 24 hours (19 hours, exactly) after I corrected the mistake, but the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers is still wrong. This is not what a wiki is supposed to be.
There are 2 potential reasons. A) The Russian Wikipedia uses "Flagged revisions" and my newbie edit might be ignored by whoever wants to ignore it because it is flagged as a non-flagged newbie edit.B) the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers software might be too slow to perform updates.
Whatever the reason, this is evidence that Wikipedia is changing into something that is not a wiki.
I am wondering if the whole problem is not the sheer idea of having "developers" doing their job : "developping". Developping means changing. If you change a wiki, you have 99% of chances that what it changes into is not a wiki.
This was my first anti-developer rant of 2011. Happy new year everybody.
(1) http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%...
Greetings Teofilo,
Although RuWiki uses Flagged revisions, in most of the articles all changes are "go live" immediately and this is true for Пьерфон (замок). Thank you for your edit http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%...,
it had been patrolled = [отпатрулированная версия] anyway.
Victoriq
On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Teofilo teofilowiki@gmail.com wrote:
The other day, I read the [[:en:Wikileaks]] article on Wikipedia. What it said was, more or less, that Wilileaks is a leaks website that used to be a wiki. And I wondered : how long will it take before we read somewhere : Wikipedia, the Pedia that used to be a Wiki ?
Sooner than you might think.
Just yesterday, someone reported a mistake at the French village pump : a castle was located at the wrong location on the new toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayershttp://toolserver.org/%7Ekolossos/openlayersmap tool. That castle, called "Pierrefonds Castle", should be located in the Pierrefonds town, not in Senlis town, like the Windsor castle is located in the town of Windsor to the exclusion of any other English town.
I thought this was the time to show the power of a wiki : a cool website everybody can edit, especially useful to instantly correct straightforward mistakes like that one.
The toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayershttp://toolserver.org/%7Ekolossos/openlayerssoftware is cute enough to provide "source: ru" at the bottom of the little popup window that pops up when you click on the wrongly located castle. I instantly corrected the wrong coordinates on the Russian language version of Wikipedia (1) which had the mistake.
We are more or less 24 hours (19 hours, exactly) after I corrected the mistake, but the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayershttp://toolserver.org/%7Ekolossos/openlayersis still wrong. This is not what a wiki is supposed to be.
There are 2 potential reasons. A) The Russian Wikipedia uses "Flagged revisions" and my newbie edit might be ignored by whoever wants to ignore it because it is flagged as a non-flagged newbie edit.B) the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayershttp://toolserver.org/%7Ekolossos/openlayerssoftware might be too slow to perform updates.
Whatever the reason, this is evidence that Wikipedia is changing into something that is not a wiki.
I am wondering if the whole problem is not the sheer idea of having "developers" doing their job : "developping". Developping means changing. If you change a wiki, you have 99% of chances that what it changes into is not a wiki.
This was my first anti-developer rant of 2011. Happy new year everybody.
(1) http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%...
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2011/1/4, Виктория mstislavl1@gmail.com:
it had been patrolled = [отпатрулированная версия] anyway.
Thanks!
2011/1/4, Виктория mstislavl1@gmail.com:
it had been patrolled = [отпатрулированная версия] anyway.
What about the message "Стабильная версия была проверена 28 сентября 2010. 1 изменение ожидает проверки." which is written now at the top of the history tab (1), and google-translates into English as "Stable version was tested on Sept. 28, 2010. 1, the change is awaiting moderation" ?
(1) http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%...
I have visited Russia only once in my life. It was a long time ago at the time of the USSR. I was making a long flight from Japan to Poland, and had to stop overnight at a hotel inside Moscow airport. Although I enjoyed the food, the beverage, the kindness of the stewardess, the landscapes with snow, lakes, forests inside the airplane, I disliked my stay at Moscow airport because people kept me waiting without telling why or how long. I think this is what Wikimedia is looking like with the so-called "flagged revisions" software : the USSR.
Le mercredi 05 janvier 2011 à 18:31 +0200, Teofilo a écrit :
I think this is what Wikimedia is looking like with the so-called "flagged revisions" software : the USSR.
J'hésite entre rire et pleurer mais, là, tu as atteint un véritable sommet.
Je ne te comprends pas. Tu es de façon évidente quelqu'un d'intelligent. D'autre part, personne ne peut contester ton attachement aux projets Wikimedia et tu soulèves souvent des questions intéressantes, avec une indéniable capacité à dénicher le diable dans les détails.
Alors comment peux-tu en arriver à dire des trucs aussi débiles ? Tu te rends compte que plus personne ne t'écoute à cause de ça ? Que l'outrance nuit à ta crédibilité ?
C'est surréaliste.
Kropotkine_113
2011/1/5 Kropotkine_113 Kropotkine113@free.fr:
Le mercredi 05 janvier 2011 à 18:31 +0200, Teofilo a écrit :
I think this is what Wikimedia is looking like with the so-called "flagged revisions" software : the USSR.
J'hésite entre rire et pleurer mais, là, tu as atteint un véritable sommet.
Je ne te comprends pas. Tu es de façon évidente quelqu'un d'intelligent. D'autre part, personne ne peut contester ton attachement aux projets Wikimedia et tu soulèves souvent des questions intéressantes, avec une indéniable capacité à dénicher le diable dans les détails.
Alors comment peux-tu en arriver à dire des trucs aussi débiles ? Tu te rends compte que plus personne ne t'écoute à cause de ça ? Que l'outrance nuit à ta crédibilité ?
C'est surréaliste.
Kropotkine_113
I agree that equating Wikipedia with the USSR is... ridiculous. I also agree with the rest of your comments, particularly the strangely self-contradicting nature of Teofilo's list posts. Having said that, perhaps genuine advice would be better received when issued off-list.
Nathan
Theo,
I don't know why you are seeing an indeterminedly old version, you may try to clean up your cache (=purge in the web address of your browser). May be I didn't make myself clear enough: Flagged Revvs doesn't require to wait for anything, you can only see the patrolling interface because you are a registered user. If you were a reader accessing RuWiki from an IP you wouldn't even have known that there is a patrolled or unpatrolled version, you'd just have seen the corrected coordinates.
You can compare Flagged Revvs to Soviet Union, after all, Jaron Lanier is sure that all wikipedians are "digital maoists" but there is a consensus in the RuWiki Community that Flagged Revvs do more good then harm and it is a step toward a better Wikipedia. Sorry, but I don't see how using a non-wikimedia software and a cache version of a random page, which everybody sees differently, proves anything.
Regards
Victoria
2011/1/5 Teofilo teofilowiki@gmail.com
2011/1/4, Виктория mstislavl1@gmail.com:
it had been patrolled = [отпатрулированная версия] anyway.
What about the message "Стабильная версия была проверена 28 сентября 2010. 1 изменение ожидает проверки." which is written now at the top of the history tab (1), and google-translates into English as "Stable version was tested on Sept. 28, 2010. 1, the change is awaiting moderation" ?
(1) http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%...http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%8C%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%BD_%28%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BA%29&action=history
I have visited Russia only once in my life. It was a long time ago at the time of the USSR. I was making a long flight from Japan to Poland, and had to stop overnight at a hotel inside Moscow airport. Although I enjoyed the food, the beverage, the kindness of the stewardess, the landscapes with snow, lakes, forests inside the airplane, I disliked my stay at Moscow airport because people kept me waiting without telling why or how long. I think this is what Wikimedia is looking like with the so-called "flagged revisions" software : the USSR.
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2011/1/5 Виктория mstislavl1@gmail.com:
You can compare Flagged Revvs to Soviet Union, after all, Jaron Lanier is
etc.
I guess that the original poster has a point: we use external services which may or may not be trivial to change or update. It is not important which country, group or whatever entity runs them, and it is indeed useful to have them.
What we maybe need is some standards regarding widely used externals. Don't think anything fancy: all service should have a page on the referenced wiki (or on tooldox.wikimedia.org or whatever) which defines the service, its authors, their contacts, and specified the data source, the updating process (if it requires more explanation, like waiting for a revision to be flagged), the refreshment interval and expected update of the data changed.
So if anyone see a bad entry can look up how to change, and how and when the update goes live. Knowledge is power.
Peter
On 05/01/11 00:33, Teofilo wrote:
We are more or less 24 hours (19 hours, exactly) after I corrected the mistake, but the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers is still wrong. This is not what a wiki is supposed to be.
You seem to be getting confused between a wiki and some software written by some Wikipedia user and not reviewed by anyone. If you don't like the quality of it, you shouldn't link to it from the geo templates.
-- Tim Starling
2011/1/5, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org:
On 05/01/11 00:33, Teofilo wrote:
We are more or less 24 hours (19 hours, exactly) after I corrected the mistake, but the toolserver.org/~kolossos/openlayers is still wrong. This is not what a wiki is supposed to be.
You seem to be getting confused between a wiki and some software written by some Wikipedia user and not reviewed by anyone. If you don't like the quality of it, you shouldn't link to it from the geo templates.
-- Tim Starling
You are totally right, but let's see the problem from a different point of view. Let's look at it from the user's point of view. This is a feature closely associated with Wikipedia. German speaking users encounter it everytime they visit a geography Wikipedia article, like a city, a castle, a museum, and it is located in a prominent place not far from the foremost top right angle of the page. Other language wikipedias are in the process of implementing it. On the French language wikipedia, it happens on railway stations, German cities, and pages randomly using the "coord" template for specific reasons.
So it is a de facto Wikipedia software, whether you like it or not. Toolserver.org is a Wikimedia website, and most people would think that it is a safe software condoned by the Wikimedia Foundation (or by the Wikimedia German chapter). It is so closely associated with Wikipedia and Wikimedia that most people would think that this is the direction the Wikimedia management is leading the project into for the future.
If it can update quickly enough so that you get the "I can correct straightforward mistakes straight away" kind of feeling, it is perfect, and my congratulations go to the developers who made that wonderful tool.
Can't we boost the toolserver.org server so that it can update more quickly ? Or integrate that tool into the main Wikipedia server ? (I have reservations about the way Openstreetmap deals with authorship in its use of Creative Commons licenses, but let's forget this).
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