Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.
Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.
However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.
For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.
In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.
Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.
A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.
Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.
Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.
All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?
If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)
Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?
Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?
If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?
Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?
Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?
If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?
Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?
Are you proud of what you are currently doing?
Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?
If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?
What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?
Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.
A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not
1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)
2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.
3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.
4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.
5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.
6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.
7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.
8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))
9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".
10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...
11. Please add your own ideas below.
Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip�dia ?
If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?
Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)
If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?
How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.
If opposed, please briefly indicate why.
If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?
Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?
If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?
Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty system.
Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?
What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?
What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?
Do you have your own pay pal account?
Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?
Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?
Would you be interested in receiving professional training?
If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?
Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?
Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.
-------------------------
-------------------------
We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.
Anthere
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
Dear colleagues,
> > == LanguageCs.php ==
> > 1. Could anybody change these variables in the living copy of
> > LanguageCs.php?
> >
> > # There are no month abbreviations in Czech language.
> > /* private */ $wgMonthAbbreviationsCs = array("1.", "2.", "3.",
> > "4.", "5.", "6.", "7.", "8.", "9.", "10.", "11.", "12.");
> The english language use the first three characters of the month for
> abbreviations:
> /* private */ $wgMonthAbbreviationsEn = array(
> 'jan', 'feb', 'mar', 'apr', 'may', 'jun', 'jul', 'aug',
> 'sep', 'oct', 'nov', 'dec'
> );
I know.
> Can you confirm Czech language really use numbers for that purpose?
I can. There is a lot of examples:
http://www.abicko.cz/Clanek6602.htmhttp://jyxo.cz/clanky/all-20040514http://www.sovavsiti.cz/weblog/2003/12/31.html
...
> > # Czech ISBN servers
> > /* private */ $wgBookstoreListCs = array(
> > "Národní knihovna" =>
> > "http://sigma.nkp.cz/F/?func=find-
a&find_code=WRD&request=&request_op=AND&find_code=WAU&request=&request_op=AND&find_code=WTL&request=&request_op=AND&find_code=WYR&request=&request_op=AND&find_code=WPB&request=&request_op=AND&find_code=ISN&request=$1");
> The bookstore is now in cvs and will reach wikipedia live site soon.
Thank you.
> You change these by editing the Czech equivalent of en's
> [[Wikipedia:Book sources]].
Really? IMHO this is only a text about book sources, not the
handling of ISBN in international wiki.
> > 2. How to force caching of special pages in :cs? There is
> > currently no cached page at all.
> Caching page, also known as misermode is managed in the server
> configuration. The normal (default) behaviour is to have special pages
> generated upon request, the cache is enabled when the wiki servers are
> under high load.
But they are not. You can look at [[:cs:Speciální:Wantedpages]].
Normally there should be something like that:
Žádoucí stránky
Z Wikipedie, otevřené encyklopedie.
Ukazuje 50 výsledků od čísla 1.
Ukázat (50 předchozích) (50 následujících) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).
1948 ( odkazy)
1945 ( odkazy)
1970 ( odkazy)
1981 ( odkazy)
1918 ( odkazy)
In case of high load there should be something like that (before
the message was translated in MediaWiki):
Žádoucí stránky
Z Wikipedie, otevřené encyklopedie.
Sorry! This feature has been temporarily disabled because it slows the
database down to the point that no one can use the wiki.
Here's a saved copy from 17:33, 14. Dub 2004:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003 ( odkazy)
1945 ( odkazy)
1918 ( odkazy)
1999 ( odkazy)
1990 ( odkazy)
But nowadays there is *no* list at all.
> > 3. The upload log file is missing.
> The LanguageCs.php file in cvs use the following entries:
> "uploadlog" => "kniha nahrávek ",
> "uploadlogpage" => "kniha_nahrávek ",
>
> I removed the ending spaces, that should fix it once the new file
updated on the new site.
OK. I'll see.
> > 4. To translate namespace Category into Kategorie. But there is
> > a lot of category pages in cs:, therefore they should be
> > automatically changed from [[Category:]] into [[Kategorie:]].
> The software should be able to understand both english and localised
> namespaces names.
OK.
> While we are fixing it, can you please provide translations for the
> following entries ?
OK.
NS_TEMPLATE => "Template",
NS_TEMPLATE => "Šablona", # Šablona
NS_TEMPLATE_TALK => "Template_talk",
NS_TEMPLATE_TALK => "Šablona_diskuse", #
Šablona_diskuse
NS_HELP => "Help",
NS_HELP => "Nápověda", #
Nápověda
NS_HELP_TALK => "Help_talk",
NS_HELP_TALK => "Nápověda_diskuse", #
Nápověda_diskuse
NS_CATEGORY => "Category",
NS_CATEGORY => "Kategorie",
NS_CATEGORY_TALK => "Category_talk",
NS_CATEGORY => "Kategorie_diskuse",
> > 5. [[:cs:Wikipedie:Co je článek]] can't be deleted.
No reaction.
> > 6. Would it be useful to transfer All system messages in MediaWiki of
> > LanguageCs.php into the living copy of LanguageCs.php? Approximately
> > half of all messages is in MediaWiki which may slow down perfomance.
> System messages are set in the databases at installation and then
> cached in a big object. On page request the MediaWiki software just
> load that big object, if a change is made to a Mediawiki:something
> page, the database is updated and the big object is rebuild.
> I heard about a script to sync wikipedia.mediawiki entries and the
> languageXX.php files. I am not sure if anything have been done yet.
> *All* messages are in the MediaWiki namespace. Copying them into
> LanguageCs.php does not increase performance.
Aha.
> > == Rendering of layout (presumable Standard) ==
> > 1. There is too much space between end of an external link and non-
> > space characters. For instance: [http://aa.bb.cc First]. is shown as
> > "First .", not as "First.".
> Please create an account on sourceforge and fill bug reports at
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192 They will be
> looked at as time allow (aka I am not going to fix them right now).
> This bug has already been fixed (by me :>). It just isn't live yet
OK.
> > 2. All system messages (HTML) should have only 2 columns, because
there
> > is no difference between Default text and Current text.
> Default text is the text set in LanguageCs.php while current text is
> the one set in the big object cache (see above) and seen by users.
If you look at [[:en:MediaWiki:All system messages]] in PHP, you
wiil see only one set of messages. If you look at [[:en:MediaWiki:All
system messages]] in HTML, you will see *no difference* in both columns.
> > 3. List of users (special pages) should distinguish between users
> > with their own pages (blue links) and without them (red links).
> Please create an account on sourceforge
I've already had it.
> and fill bug reports at
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192 They will
> be looked at as time allow (aka I am not going to fix them right now).
I'll do it.
Yours truly,
Vít Zvánovec, bureaucrat of :cs
In an attempt to raise the hit ratio for the parser cache, I've
increased the amount of memory available to memcached. Because the
client algorithm distributes keys to each available server equally,
without regard for the amount of memory in each one, it's necessary to
have multiple instances running on each machine, each instance having a
fixed amount of memory. We're using 15 instances with 512 MB of memory
each, for a total of 7.5 GB. The arrangement is:
bart: 2
bayle: 2
yongle: 4
rabanus: 4
will: 3
I wanted to put some on suda but I had trouble with installation. Keys
are distributed using the hash mod the number of instances, so whenever
we change the number of instances, most keys get lost. In other words,
adding more servers incurs a performance hit since the cache needs to be
rebuilt.
-- Tim Starling
hey all,
I was wondering - which form of wiki (the underlying tech) best supports commercial
typesetting and printing (ie: regular paperback and hardcover)? I'd like to be able
to produce either quark express documents or PDF. I'd also like to embed either
encapsulated postscript or illustrator figures into the text, and perhaps produce
automated table of contents and/or indexes.
I'd very much like the technology to be open source/unix based, but unfortunately
the books I'm going to be producing can't be.. Hence, ideas on commercial
collaboration models would be appreciated as well. I was thinking either editorial
credit, payment per article/chapter, or a percentage basis - but I was wondering if
people had experience with this...
Thanks much,
Ed
I am really glad nl wiktionary is now switched to utf 8.
I hope you noticed as well that the page content you wanted removed on
en, had been blanked yesterday.
It is a good idea to think of thanking Shaihulud who helped you during
his holidays. I think he will be glad to help you again next time.
Gerard.Meijssen wrote:
> Yipeee !
>
> Thanks to Shaihulud, who was so kind to do the technical biz while on holiday, nl:wiktionay is now on UTF-8. I have been adding new words that contain special characters and it works like a dream.
>
> The other good news it that the current content is also really as it should be. So all the information copied from Timwi's website is really looking good. It also means that I can now add new content to other wiktionaries without fear of mucking things up. On that note, there is content on en:wiktionary that is not UTF-8 (English - see the edit page..)
>
> The word that I have done first is Nederlands. :)
> http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nederlands
>
> Thanks,
> GerardMnt-Dispo
Gerard.Meijssen wrote:
> Thanks to Shaihulud, who was so kind to do the technical biz while on
> holiday, nl:wiktionay is now on UTF-8. I have been adding new words that
> contain special characters and it works like a dream.
It seems that nl:wiktionary is declaring UTF-8 as its character set now,
but the article data is actually still in Latin-1. If you look at that
same page you quoted:
> http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nederlands
you get invalid characters. (Or you should, if your browser is
standards-compliant.)
Yipeee !
Thanks to Shaihulud, who was so kind to do the technical biz while on holiday, nl:wiktionay is now on UTF-8. I have been adding new words that contain special characters and it works like a dream.
The other good news it that the current content is also really as it should be. So all the information copied from Timwi's website is really looking good. It also means that I can now add new content to other wiktionaries without fear of mucking things up. On that note, there is content on en:wiktionary that is not UTF-8 (English - see the edit page..)
The word that I have done first is Nederlands. :)
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nederlands
Thanks,
GerardMnt-Dispo
Interlang link to minnan wikipedia is not working properly.
[[minnan:blah]] will NOT appear in the navigation bar. It will
appear as part of the text (with correct URL link to
minnan.wikipedia.org/blah)
Can someone help to fix this?
Thanks
pektiong
Hi all,
today i was asking in #wikipedia to reopen the SQL-queries again for admins.
The new hardware and the low server load of SQL-queries should be a reason
to reable the most important tool of an admin.
It don't need to be on the main db-server - i could be on a slave or just
availble on low load times (1-3UTC?)..
In #wikipedia someone suggested, the option should only be granted to some
users - i also would accept that solution.
I have spoken to some de.wikipedia admins, and all of them support my
enquery.
Best regards,
da didi
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