With the resignation of Larry, there is a much less pressing need for
funds. Therefore, all plans to put advertising of any kind on the
wikipedia is called off for now.
We will move forward with plans for a nonprofit foundation to own
wikipedia, and possibly to solicit donations and grants to help us
carry out our mission. (Ironically, I think that grant money would
come with many annoying strings attached, which we could not accept,
comparted to advertising money, which is virtually 100% string-free.)
Just as the National Geographic Society is supported in large part by
advertisments in the National Geographic Magazine, I expect this to be
a potentially necessary thing at some point in the future, if we wish
to have an impact beyond our own little corner of the Internet. (And,
I think we all do.)
But for now, there's no pressing need unless and until we find chaos
descending on us from the lack of constant oversight.
The hosting of Wikipedia I can continue to do for no charge for the
foreseeable future. Even if Wikipedia traffic were to grow by a
factor of 10, I would be willing to absorb all the bandwidth and
hardware costs. If it grows beyond a factor of 100 or 1000,
obviously, alternative solutions would have to be found.
>I think the hosting of the server should be left to Jimbo to decide.
>But what I'd really like to see is something like groove.net, where I
>can keep an offline copy on my own computer, edit articles locally,
>and sync the changes with the server the next time I'm online. I'm
>not on a modem connection, but I'm moving with my laptop and wireless
>LAN between home, workplaces and cafes. This of course would be a
>major software change. Some two-way synchronization protocol (like
>unison) would be needed.
what if someone else edits your article after you last see it? how would the software reconcile different edits from the same point? i rather prefer the current system, where you can go in and choose the best bits of each to save. I don't foresee software being that sophisticated within our lifetimes. maybe you have some ideas about it.
kq
0
Larry --
It's a damned shame and I'll miss you. That said, I know what it's like
to have feet in both the academic and money making worlds, and know
exactly the kind of calls you're having to make. Ugh.
Cunctator et al --
Why would we want to distribute hosting? And for that matter, what's
wrong with advertising, provided it's done as subtly as possible, and
not from various merchants of death ;-) (which I still think is for
Bomis to decide -- I may feel very proprietary about a lot of stuff
here, but I still remember I'm on somebody else's playground. Jimbo et
al. have been very cool about trying to get input, but business
decisions should belong to them)
Just a few questions and comments...
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
OK, I've unsubscribed from wikipedia-l and bunches of other lists. I'll
still be on advisory-l and nupedia-l in case anything interesting happens
there.
Larry
Dear friends:
I hereby resign as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and I also hereby give up
any position of authority I had with Wikipedia; assuming particularly that
funding will not be able to be found for the position of Nupedia
editor-in-chief (see below), I don't intend to work on either project any
significant amount within the next few months, and very possibly ever.
Obviously, I owe you an explanation.
First, let me stress that this has *nothing* to do with my lack of faith
in the projects or in the nobility of the mission. It also has absolutely
nothing to do with my relationship with Jimbo or Bomis, which remains
friendly. I really *do* hope the projects go on to great successes, even
without me. It is even still possible even that Bomis, or a future
Nupedia Foundation, will find the money to pay for my job, and I might be
in a position to come back to the old job. But I'm frankly not expecting
this.
As you know, since the beginning of February, I've been working on
Wikipedia and Nupedia as a part-time volunteer. I haven't been able to do
nearly as much as I wish I could do, but job-hunting and money-making
activities necessarily occupy a great deal of my time. Unfortunately, I
do not expect to see, within the foreseeable future, any sort of
compensation for the time and responsibility I've continued to hold in the
projects. Now that I'm unemployed, I can ill afford to spend my free time
this way. This is, I'm afraid, *by far* the most important reason for my
resignation.
Second, a little bit of history will help to explain this as well. I was
more or less offered the job of editing Nupedia when I was, as an ABD
philosophy graduate student, soliciting Jimbo's (and other friends')
advice on a website I was thinking of starting. It was the first I had
heard of Jimbo's idea of an open content encyclopedia, and I was delighted
to take the job. So I want this to be clear: I did not *set out* to be a
leader and crusader and organizer. As a job, this has been the best I've
ever had. But this project is not something I would have chosen as a
hobby, frankly; *with* *my* *spare* *time*, even after having started it
and having grown to care a lot about it, I must admit I'd rather be
spending time with my wife, reading and writing philosophy, and playing
fiddle. (I'm making a little money now teaching fiddle in Columbus and
enjoying that immensely.)
A third important reason is that I feel I simply cannot do a good job
working only part-time. It seems like every time I sit down to do a
little work on Wikipedia or Nupedia, I am now asking myself, "What's the
use? I don't have any time to do anything of importance." If I can't do
the job right, what's the point of doing it at all?
So--I wish Wikipedia all the best and hope that it can find its way
forward without my involvement. Wikipedians, don't take my departure as
an excuse to leave yourself. My departure should not be taken as a
reflection on Wikipedia, or you. It still might succeed brilliantly.
It's very important that you continue to edit each others' work, that you
encourage in each other good habits, that you welcome new contributors,
and that you praise good work when you see it. As for Nupedia, obviously,
the only way it can be revived is if it either finds money to pay an
editor-in-chief or perhaps an emeritus professor who is willing to
volunteer. I am no longer going to pretend*to be able to be
editor-in-chief as a part-time volunteer--even if I had the desire and the
spare time. I'd be interested in helping to organize it--again--as an
employee, but I'm not holding my breath.
I will try to assist in any transitioning, if any needs to be done (e.g.,
listservs I now moderate will probably have to be made unmoderated). I
should continue to be reachable at lsanger(a)nupedia.com, but not via
mailing lists (I'll be unsubscribing). Otherwise, I feel a clean break is
necessary. I have no hard feelings at all for Jimbo or the others at
Bomis, and I wish to thank and say "best wishes" to--well, a long list of
people in both Wikipedia and Nupedia. You know who you are. If you don't
mind, I'd rather not name names, for fear of leaving anyone out.
By the way, if you've got a serious job lead for me, please let me know.
:-)
All the best,
Larry Sanger, Ph.D.
Ex-editor-in-chief, Nupedia
Ex-chief organizer, Wikipedia
I am just trying out Opera on Windows (www.opera.com) (Version 6.01
Build 1041 Platform Win32).
I can't edit a page.
For example,
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/SPARC&action=edit
because the HTML seems to be bad. When I click the "Edit this page"
link I see a page which has an editable text box with no text in, and all
the text that is obviously supposed to be in the box has been rendered
outside of the box.
I validated the edit page (
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikipedia.com%2Fwiki%2FS…
)
And got the following:
:: Line 22, column 6:
::
:: </HEAD><BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
:: ^
::
:: Error: end tag for element "HEAD" which is not open; try removing the
:: end tag or check for improper nesting of elements
::
:: Line 22, column 31:
::
:: </HEAD><BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
:: ^
::
:: Error: element "BODY" not allowed here; check which elements this
:: element may be contained within
And much more. Indeed, looking at the HTML produced (just lines 18 - 24):
18: a.newlink { color: black; text-decoration: none; }
19: .newlinkedge { display: inline; }
20: //--></style>
21: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
22: </HEAD><BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
23: </BODY></HTML><table width="100%" class="topbar" cellspacing=0>
24: <tr><td valign=top height=1><font size="+3">SPARC</font><br>
It looks like the close tags for HEAD and BODY and HTML are in the wrong
place, and that META is closed.
I guess that upsets opera enough to stop it rendering properly.
Any chance of a fix / some documentation so that I can do it myself?
Cheers,
drj
How wiki work:
Edit this page --> generate a text plain
<user edit this page>
this text plain --> generate a html page
- - -
Suggestions #3-A
#Bookmarks for Articles
Every page has a key called "add this item to your route" You can collect
favorites pages with this.
/*
Suggestions #3-B
#WikiExplorer
Delphi app (writen by me) that hidden the fact you hare navigating a web page,
and shows you a book view, with bookmarks tab, preloading, etc... GPL. I will
release the source code soon in my berlios ftp space... (maybe)
*/
Suggestions #3-C
#Globals
A way to attach a style CCS file to the page. Ex:
"<#CSS MathPage>"
Suggestions #3-D
#Templates
A way to aply and code a template por wiki pages:
"<#TEMPLATE DuneBookCharecters>"
1 saludo
Tei (RatBert)
---------------------------------------------
This message was sent using Endymion MailMan.
http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/
A topic that was briefly discussed several times on this list in the past is
the automated "wikification" of pages. I think it is time to work on that,
is there is a need.
Some wish to ban all HTML code from the wiki articles, though I find this
rather extreme. Others prefer to use HTML as much as possible, especially if
copying from other (free) web sources.
IMHO, the best was is to use wiki tags where they are available, and leave
the complicated stuff (like tables) to HTML. A function that could help with
that could be invoked as follows:
1. After or prior to editing, as standard setting. This would enforce
wikification, but reduce the "editing freedom", thus probably not a good
idea.
2. After or prior to editing, as a user option. If you check that option on
your user page (default:off), wikification would take place when you edit an
article.
3. As a button on the edit page. Like "Preview", maybe "Wikify & Preview".
The functions that could be performed (and that I can think of) are:
1. Replacement of HTML tags by wiki tags (namely, "<b>" and "<i>", maybe
"<h1>" as well)
2. Eliminating links to redirect pages by changing the link in question to
the target of the redirect
3. Marking [broken links]] and [[more broken links]
4. Optimizing external links with too many [] (like
[[http://www.google.com]])
5. Optimizing [[link|links]] to [[link]]s
6. Removing [[Talk:thispage|Talk]] links (at the end of the page)
I am sure you can think of some more details that have always bugged you,
but that were (be themselves) not important enough to call for a function;)
We could use this for rather fancy things as well:
7. In the preview, mark words (or word combinations) that are currently
plain text, but that do exist as a topic in the database (to find pages one
could link to).
8. In the preview, mark all numbers that could be dates (more link
candidates).
9. Automatically put the title phrase in bold if it appears in the first
paragraph.
Thoughts? Comments? Threats? ;)