Maybe I just haven't noticed the appropriate messages sent to this
list, but it seems to me that progress reports have been spotty. Is
there discussion going on somewhere else?
I'm very bummed. I try to pepper my postings at K5 with links to the
'pedia, but today I couldn't even get to the main page. I had to link
to archives.org instead [1]. I would have preferred to put that
high-quality off-site link [2] in the 'pedia Titanic article and
linked to it instead of [2]. :-( (Breaking News: While composing this,
I was finally able to get to wikipedia.com and make the edit.)
I'm deeply saddened that Wikipedia is a victim of its own success, but
I also want to praise Jimbo, Magnus, Lee, and all the others who've
supported the project technically. I'd offer to help right now, but I
have other commitments for the next couple of weeks... I'd just like a
way to stay abreast of developments.
<>< Tim
[1] see the Titanic link at
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/7/9/04416/40645/222#222
[2]
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/american_originals/titanic.html
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> In the last week, my script made 410 attempts at 20 minute
> intervals to reach the page http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Chemistry
> Out of these, only 86% were served in less than 5 seconds.
> Five percent of the calls timed out (my limit is 60 seconds).
> Now, this is far better than the worst problems that Wikipedia
> saw in April or May, but it is still pretty miserable.
I believe the performance in the new code is much improved.
Even under all the load I can put on it with a T1 line, the beta software is
producing average load times of less than 1.5 seconds.
A number of people are now working on stress testing this software before it
is put into production. And I think there is a general commitment to
solving the performance problem, and I see lots of movement in the right
direction.
On Friday 12 July 2002 12:01 pm, : Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> I don't think it sounds silly... sure within the context of a single
> country it's wierd and wouldn't be used, but when you're talking
> worldwide then it's quite normal to use the country name as well as the
> city just as an identifier. You want to make it obvious to people who
> are ignorant just where Sydney is, and if they don't know where
> AUSTRALIA is then the situation is hopeless and you can just give up
I agree with Karen here. Since [[Sydney]] redirects to [[Sydney, Australia]]
you still will be able to simply type [[Sydney]] and end up in the most
famous Sydney.
However, since [[Sydney]] redirects to the Australian city it is necessary to
have the following statement at the top of that [[Sydney, Australia]]:
"[[Sydney]] redirects here. There is also another article named [[Sydney,
Nova Scotia]]."
And if there were a long list of other, even less well know uses of the word
"Sydney", then they would be in [[Sydney (disambiguation)]] and linked to
after the above mention of the Nova Scotia city.
This is called a disambiguation block and this form of disambiguation is
useful in cases like this where a famous thing has the same name less famous
things. Paris is an even more obvious example.
All this has already been worked out to a great deal of detail here on the
list and in about a dozen talk pages.
More documentation can be found at:
[[wikipedia talk:naming conventions (city names)]] and
[[wikipedia:naming conventions]]
BTW, it looks like Canada has systemic internal naming conflict issues with
the [[City, Nation]] format and I am considering whether it would be a good
idea to advocate moving Canada to the [[City, Province]] name format (similar
to the USA) because of this (most of the Canadian cities are already in this
format anyway). For example, there appears to be several significantly
important places named Richmond in Canada.
As for every country, whatever is decided should be internally consistant for
that country (per the naming convention).
--maveric149
> I asked two weeks ago what this picture is about and have gotten no
> answer. What is it for? If I don't hear back soon, I shall delete
> it.
I don't think it is appropriate to delete a picture just because you
don't know what it is for and the uploader didn't respond to your
mailing list request. The upload area is used by all Wikipedias, and
unless we are dealing with a clear case of warez or music swapping,
the uploaders should get the benefit of the doubt.
Axel
On Friday 21 June 2002 09:02 am, Robert wrote:
> However, the [City, State] convention works fine - it's quite
> sufficient to disambiguate between Australian cities and
> any from elsewhere, AFAICT, and it's not hard to identify that
> the cities are Australian. If somebody really wants to
> change the entries, go ahead.
Opps! Sorry, I seemed to have given the wrong impression: I wasn't advocating
moving Australian city articles to the [[city, state]] format, but was just
asking if Australians reused city names as often as Americans and only
<i>if</i> they did, then the [[city, state]] format would need to be used --
which you indicate isn't the case.
So then, why don't we just take the path of least resistance and use whatever
format is the dominant one? Oh drat, I just checked and found out that that
path is to not disambiguate at all.....
If city names in Australia are unique within that country (or any country for
that matter) why not simply have [[Perth]] or [[Sydney]] live at [[Perth,
Australia]] or [[Sydney, Australia]] giving these notable examples redirect
priority over their one word names (only since they are the most famous
cities by those names -- in the same way as [[Los Angles]] redirects to [[Los
Angeles, California]])? Side note: It would be nice for the existance of
redirects to be made more obvious -- at least in "pages that link here".
Again, either way, we should name city articles consistently within
countries. However, [[Sydney, New South Wales]] sounds like an unnecessary
amount of information to my American ears and I would wager that most
netcitizens wouldn't know which Australian state Sydney is in (and therefore
wouldn't be likely to either link to or search for it by that name -- What
netcitizens search for on Google and how Google ranks pages is also important
to consider). So the format of [[city, country]] would appear to be the best
choice for Australia after all.
But then what I think is worthless if the Aussies disagree. Please take the
above as a somewhat well-reasoned suggestion. :-)
maveric149
>> I'd also like to brainstorm a bit on how to raise
>> the visibility of
>> the mailing list.
>Hmmm. How about announcing its existence on the front
>page? Or is that too easy a suggestion? :)
>
>--Stephen Gilbert
I would suggest putting such an announcement on
RecentChanges instead --- 99% of the people accessing
the main page couldn't care less about the list � that
is, except for spammers.
--maveric149
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LDC wrote:
>The questions, then, are (1) when a new user signs
up, giving an e-
>mail address, should we further require that he check
a box
>saying "allow other wikipedians to mail me" or should
we let him
>check a box saying "don't allow other wikipedians to
mail me". The e-
>mail address is never published in any case, and the
only mails
>received are one-to-ones, not lists, but I suppose
opt-in is still
>the more responsible thing to do. (2) Perhaps the
double opt-in
>confirmation message could be sent whenever this
option is selected.
> (3) The mail messages themselves might have a
section something
>like "This mail was sent from Wikipedia's e-mail
function. If you
>don't want to receive mails like this, go to..."
If we do decide to have this function, I think that in
order for it to be at all useful the user account
set-up should allow the user to opt-out if they click
the box next to "don't allow other wikipedians to mail
me". It has been my experience that most people simply
accept the defaults on webforms and if the default is
set /not/ to enable this function, then there won�t be
enough users with the function enabled to make it
commonplace (if the great majority of users don�t have
a link to �Email this user� then other users visiting
user pages won�t look to the link).
I also agree with your previous statement about
requiring sysops to have this function enabled
(anybody taking on sysop status needs to be
contactable to the community and other sysops). I�m
not sure if it would be worth the effect to hard-code
this requirement into the software � visiting sysop
pages will reveal who is and who is not adhering to
policy (if this does become one).
It would also be nice if sysops could be able to email
all other sysops when needed (or even to each and
every user signed up if absolutely needed � like if
somebody hacked the server and stole user passwords).
For example, I had to manually post a message to each
and every sysop a while back warning them not to use
the administrative move feature because of a serious
bug that truncated page histories. It would have been
nice to draft a single email for that.
BTW, would it be possible for users to eventually have
@wikipedia.com email addresses (on a pay basis open
only to users with user accounts � but that
requirement isn�t essential to me)? I would happily
give Bomis or a �Wikipedia Foundation� 30 bucks a year
for a maveric149(a)wikipedia.com
(maveric149(a)wikipedia.org would be even better) than
have to pay the same amount for maveric149(a)yahoo.com.
--maveric149
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> I'm deeply saddened that Wikipedia is a victim of its
> own success,...
Indeed. The short answer to "what's being done" is that the
new software goes live on Saturday, July 20. A more formal
announcement is coming shortly. The new software and new server
will help us get some real numbers.
0
One of the post-live features I'd like to implement is a link on User
pages for "email this user", which will produce a form that can be
used to send email to the user without actually revealing the email
address, for those times when you want to talk to someone directly who
may not be active on the list or follow the talk pages. This will
also help reduce the clutter on talk pages.
I'd like to get a sense from the community what privacy issues or
other issues there are in implementing such a feature. We may want to
have a user setting for "don't allow email" or something, though I
personally would rather not have that feature, and I definitely want
it turned off for sysops (a working, responsive email address is the
single most important qualification for a sysop as far as I'm
concerned, although I suppose active participation on the mailing list
might be an acceptable alternative).
I'd also like to brainstorm a bit on how to raise the visibility of
the mailing list.
0