Cross posting to wikitech-l
2009/5/8 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>:
> Well, the wikipedia is big... google is big also.
>
> One of the tricks google use is they try stuff out on victims... I
> mean users. They pick a small percentage of the internet and do
> something slightly different for them, and see if it works or not. The
> advantage of only doing it for a small number is that it means you can
> write the test with prototyping tools, rather than having to make it
> run fast, and you'll have a lot less complaints if it doesn't work
> very well. It also means you can do back-back comparisons stuff like:
> 'we tried this, and it showed a 23% improvement in referencing'.
>
> I think if at all practical, the wikipedia needs to start doing stuff like that.
That sounds like an excellent idea to me. Is it achievable?
Hi all --
I'm putting together a talk proposal for SVG Open 2009, which will be in
early October at the Google campus in Mountain View, CA:
https://www.svgopen.org/2009/
I've got plenty of background I can pull in on the challenges and
benefits of SVG on the web and the tradeoffs we've made in our usage and
implementation, but I know lots of you folks out there have been more
active on the 'content-generation' end of things and can point out some
things I wouldn't think of.
If anybody's got any particularly interesting issues, examples,
problems, or idea prototypes relating to usage of SVG on Wikipedia and
other Wikimedia sites, I'd love to see how much I can pack in. :)
Pointers to cool feature proposals like Nikola's localization
presentation at Wikimania last year, or bulk anaylsis like benchmarks
and compatibility tests on images in actual use would be of particular
interest.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
The Wikipedia Usability Initiative has extended the application deadline
for the Software Developer position till May 30th. We are recruiting
two candidates for this position. Both local applicants to the San
Francisco Bay Area and remote applicants are encouraged to apply.
Please help spread the word.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Software_Developer_(projec…
Naoko Komura
Program Manager
Wikipedia Usability Initiative
Wikimedia Foundation
-----
Job Title
Software Developer
Employment Duration
June 1, 2009 to April 16, 2010
About the Wikipedia Usability Initiative
The Wikipedia Usability Initiative was realized by a grant from the
U.S.-based Stanton Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to
measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by
improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral
studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation. This
position is part of the program team for the initiative.
For more information, please see the press release.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_to_become_more…
Job Purpose
The core responsibility of this position is to design, develop, test and
deploy new features and improvements of the MediaWiki software for the
the Wikipedia usability initiative by working closely with the
interaction designer and peer developers of MediaWiki.
Reports to
Program Manager
Job Summary
*Propose software design solutions and obtain consensus from senior and
peer tech teams
*Create implementation prototypes based on design concepts
*Develop, test, and deploy new features and improvements to the
MediaWiki core and to MediaWiki extensions
*Collaborate in designing and implementing QA processes including
multi-lingual and performance tests
*Work closely with operations staff to ensure proper integration with
testing and production systems
Required Qualifications
*Computer Science degree or equivalent work experience
*5+ years experience as a software developer is required
*Experience with PHP development is required
*Extensive experience with AJAX/HTML/CSS is required
*Experience with cross-browser compatibility testing is required
*Experience with security implications of JavaScript/PHP software is
required
*Experience with LAMP is a major plus
*Experience with testing and analyzing usability and accessibility is a
major plus
*Experience with MediaWiki is a major plus
*An understanding of internationalizing and localizing software products
a major plus
*Any other free/open software development experience highly welcome
*Comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment
*Experience with wikis and participatory production environments is a plus
*Understanding of the free culture movement is a plus
*The ideal candidate will be creative, highly motivated, and able to
operate effectively in multiple cultural and language contexts
Salary
The salary is in the range of $75,000 to $85,000 plus benefits,
commensurate with experience.
This position will be filled in June 2009. Due to the volume of
responses that we anticipate we will not reply to all applications, so
please do not interpret our silence as a lack of interest.
Based in San Francisco, CA., but remote candidates will be considered.
--
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Firefox 3.5 will be launching this summer (betas available now!) and
will include support for downloading and using regular TrueType and
OpenType fonts referenced from a style sheet:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/@font-face
This is also supported in Safari 3.1 and later, and apparently by the
latest Opera betas as well.
It might be helpful for some language wikis to link in a free font this
way, when standard fonts supporting their script are often unavailable.
Right now on such sites there tends to be a little English link at the
top such as 'font help' leading to a page like this telling you how to
download and install a font:
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Font_help
Internet Explorer afaik still only supports converted embedded (EOT)
font files, which would require that we can either get our hands on an
existing .eot version of each free font, or be able to generate one
ourselves.
Note there's an old feature request with an .eot copy of a Tamil font:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361
but we never had authorship info on the font or cross-browser support,
since .eot is only supported by IE.
-- brion
Hello to all,
I am developing Apri wiki editor and at this moment have a what I call
a working prototype which I want to share with you.
Still a lot of work to do but I like the results so far ;-).
Functionality is very basic but shows enough to give you an impression.
UI is not what the end result will look like but I'm still looking for
the right design in combination with functionality.
Please see http://ria.apri.nl/mediawiki-1.14.0/index.php/Main_Page
Read the page.
Click the edit button and see what happens.
Greetings,
Andre
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Aryeh Gregor
<Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_format_policy, although that never
> passed AFAIK -- but are probably not legal as long as we're only
> allowed to distribute under the GFDL.
While we are on this topic... I am wondering if (or when) we will
allow ODF files to be uploaded to Wikipedia / Wikimedia.
I created a presentation for a conference a few months ago; I think
some slides can be reused by others... I think it would be a great
idea to allow collaboration in creating conference presentations!
Currently I can only upload the file as PDF, which is not designed for
editing... I googled but could not find discussions on uploading ODF
files -- which is why I still have not uploaded the ODF file to
wikipedia!!
Rayson
======================
Join the Grid Engine project!!
http://gridengine.sunsource.net
The new-upload branch includes a good set of new features is available
here:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/branches/new-upload/phase3/
Major Additions:
* action=upload added to the api
* Supports New upload Interfaces (dependent on mv_embed / jQuery libs )
** supports upload over http with reporting progress to user.
** support for chunks upload with progress indicators and client side
transcoding for videos (chunks for other large flies types "almost
there") (dependent on the firefogg extension)
** supports upload-api error msg lookup and report back.
To test the new upload /interfaces/ you need the latest copy of mv_embed
/ add_media_wizard.js You can get by checking out:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/MetavidWiki/ski…
(add then adding something like the following to localSettings.php :
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = 'addMediaWizard';
function addMediaWizard(){
global $wgOut;
$utime = time();
$wgOut->addScript( "<script type=\"{$wgJsMimeType}\"
src=\"http://localhost/{path_to_skins_dir}/add_media_wizard.js?urid={$utime}\"></script>"
);
}
Comments or references to new bugs can be reported to the following bug
18563 which is tracking its inclusion.
== Things already on the TOOD list ==
* Deprecate upload.js (destination checks, filename checks etc) in favor
of the jQuery / mv_embed style upload interface. (this is dependent on
getting the script-loader branch into the trunk bug 18464 (along with
base mv_embed / jQuery libs) ) will have a separate email with call for
feedback on that branch shortly once I finish up the css style sheet
grouping and mv_embed lib merging.
--mv_embed upload interfaces--
* Support pass though mode for firefogg (passthough mode only in
development branches of firefogg ... should be released soon)
* Support remote iframe driver ( for uploading to commons with progress
indicators while editing an article on another site (like wikipedia) )
(will be an upload "tab" in the add_media_wizard)
peace,
michael
Hello,
I've installed MediaWiki 1.13, all required extensions, MySQL 5.0.77,
configured MediaWiki and created a wikidb; after that I imported the
three tables 'page', 'revision' and 'text' from a snapshoot of the
Spanish Wikipedia: eswiki-20090421-pages-articles.xml.bz2
all details are in the attached installation guide which worked fine
also on another laptop running FreeBSD 7.0. (the attached guide names
the 1.11 extension, ofc for 1.13 I have installed the 1.13 extensions);
There have been no problems noted in the 'mysqlimport' (btw: run 16
hours on the small EeePC 900). The three tables are there and filled,
how can one prove for example with:
$ mysql -A -uroot -pxxxxxxxxx wikidb
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1
Server version: 5.0.77-log FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.77_1
mysql> select count(*) from text;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 1114075 |
+----------+
but if I launch a browser against the Wiki, for example:
http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Roma
I get a mix of information/pages which reads for this example:
Roma
Para otros usos de este término, véase Roma (desambiguación).
Imagen:BH escudo.jpg
Detalle del escudo de la fachada de la antigua fábrica de Eibar.
Bicicletas BH, siglas de Beistegui Hermanos, es la denominación
histórica y una de las marcas comerciales de la empresa Bicicletas de
Álava, S.A., también denominada BH Bikes. La empresa, fabricante de
bicicletas, tiene su sede en la localidad vasca de Vitoria, en Álava
(España), aunque es originaria de Éibar (Guipúzcoa). Es uno de los más
importantes fabricantes de España y tiene representación internacional.
...
What could be the problem causing that? Thx in advance
matthias
--
Matthias Apitz
t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211
e <guru(a)unixarea.de> - w http://www.unixarea.de/
People who hate Microsoft Windows use Linux but people who love UNIX use FreeBSD.