Hello,
This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion’s sake, the content of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections - or, better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.
- Itai
(If you wish to contact me directly, use either itai@mail.portland.co.uk or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)
OK
i think you are nuts. seriously. But you have something. and I like it...
How fast is that wiki->PDF script?
I mean.. after the kinks are worked out I would be very willing to download a dump, mod the program a bit to grab the stuff from the DB directly, and generate a couple of hundred thousand Wikipedia articles in PDF. I could tar and gz these and offer them as a single download or just put them on a couple of file sharing programs under the names wikipedia_$articlename.PDF I mean I have no clue why anyone would want these since you can just go to the website and see a (most likely) newer and more correct article.. but it'd be a fun experiment Direct Connect, fast track, and gnutella come to mind.... and I mean I guess they could be published to freenet.. although I dont know what the deal is with freenet and PDF...
If someone thinks this is a good idea, tell me please.
I mean as a start we could do it with Brilliant Prose articles.. or whatever they are called now. These could be PDF'd and packaged as "the best of Wikipedia" or they could be made into a PDF "book". As the selection grows we could put them in categories and organize them better and publish this "book" in PDF format every 2 months or so... Hell, if one topic was covered well enough it might even be worth printing a couple of hundred copies and submitting them to college libraries to raise awareness of the Wikipedia in higher learning environments
Lightning
On Mar 9, 2004, at 11:19 AM, Itai Fiat wrote:
Hello,
This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion’s sake, the content of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections
- or,
better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.
- Itai
(If you wish to contact me directly, use either itai@mail.portland.co.uk or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mar 9, 2004, at 12:35 PM, Lightning wrote:
OK
i think you are nuts. seriously. But you have something. and I like it...
How fast is that wiki->PDF script?
I mean.. after the kinks are worked out I would be very willing to download a dump, mod the program a bit to grab the stuff from the DB directly, and generate a couple of hundred thousand Wikipedia articles in PDF. I could tar and gz these and offer them as a single download or just put them on a couple of file sharing programs under the names wikipedia_$articlename.PDF I mean I have no clue why anyone would want these since you can just go to the website and see a (most likely) newer and more correct article.. but it'd be a fun experiment Direct Connect, fast track, and gnutella come to mind.... and I mean I guess they could be published to freenet.. although I dont know what the deal is with freenet and PDF...
If someone thinks this is a good idea, tell me please.
I mean as a start we could do it with Brilliant Prose articles.. or whatever they are called now. These could be PDF'd and packaged as "the best of Wikipedia" or they could be made into a PDF "book". As the selection grows we could put them in categories and organize them better and publish this "book" in PDF format every 2 months or so... Hell, if one topic was covered well enough it might even be worth printing a couple of hundred copies and submitting them to college libraries to raise awareness of the Wikipedia in higher learning environments
Ok let me rephrase:
As a certain category or a certain topic is populated with articles of a high caliber it might be fun to release PDF formatted "books" or mini encyclopedias of this topic. These could be polished, and put out every couple of months. These files which would be formatted in a manner suitable for printing and stand alone use could be in turn distributed in a limited fashion to certain educational institutions in order to raise awareness of the project.
Imagine this scenario.. a copy falls on the hand of a certain professor who as an assignment makes his students write a paper on a certain topic. Instead of what usually happens with papers (boxed and forgotten about) he might suggest that if students want to contribute they submit their papers to wikipedia. This content would now be opened and improved upon. Many scenarios come to mind, especially architecture. I know many architecture students and they are always writing papers about a certain important building or another. If these could be incorporated into wikipedia it would make research for architects or people interested in the subject MUCH easier. I bring this topic up especially because documentation on buildings is hard to come across in a digital format.
People in college have lots of time and ideals. They are the kind of people who love to advocate their ideas too. Younger contributors from non-tech related areas could really help with the widespread awareness of wikipedia and what we have to offer
Lightning
Lightning
On Mar 9, 2004, at 11:19 AM, Itai Fiat wrote:
Hello,
This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion’s sake, the content of the article will not be recounted here). While I have no problem developing this myself, I was wondering if anybody has any objections
- or,
better yet, suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.
- Itai
(If you wish to contact me directly, use either itai@mail.portland.co.uk or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Itai .)
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Lightning wrote:
How fast is that wiki->PDF script?
The script (see http://wiki.auf-trag.de/ ) uses the Special:Export function to collect the articles, then parses the Wikicode with lots of regexps, and finally runs latex three times (to resolve all referencies like in the TOC). It's probably not a good idea to feed it with 1000 articles at once, but there is no theoretical limit.
As a certain category or a certain topic is populated with articles of a high caliber it might be fun to release PDF formatted "books" or mini encyclopedias of this topic. These could be polished, and put out every couple of months. These files which would be formatted in a manner suitable for printing and stand alone use could be in turn distributed in a limited fashion to certain educational institutions in order to raise awareness of the project.
That already exists for the german WP, it's called "WikiReader"
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
Imagine this scenario.. a copy falls on the hand of a certain professor who as an assignment makes his students write a paper on a certain topic. Instead of what usually happens with papers (boxed and forgotten about) he might suggest that if students want to contribute they submit their papers to wikipedia. This content would now be opened and improved upon.
I agree that this is an excellent way of improving WP
People in college have lots of time and ideals. They are the kind of people who love to advocate their ideas too.
Let's hope we can keep NPOV...;-)
Regards, Stephan
The script (see http://wiki.auf-trag.de/ ) uses the Special:Export function to collect the articles, then parses the Wikicode with lots of regexps, and finally runs latex three times (to resolve all referencies like in the TOC). It's probably not a good idea to feed it with 1000 articles at once, but there is no theoretical limit.
What would be really great would be for the script to be able to keep internal wiki links, and make'em as PDF links. So if I select for instance 'Europe' and 'France', links from/to Europe to/from France are rendered as PDF links. This would make it really easy to make nice-looking PDFs.
Nicolas
Nicolas Weeger wrote:
What would be really great would be for the script to be able to keep internal wiki links, and make'em as PDF links. So if I select for instance 'Europe' and 'France', links from/to Europe to/from France are rendered as PDF links. This would make it really easy to make nice-looking PDFs.
This is an excellent idea, but unfortunately I didn't think of that when organising the script. The problem is that the article retrieving and the parsing happens in two different scripts, so the parser script doesn't know which articles will be in the file.
But sooner or later I'll have to change the whole structure anyway, and then I may implement your idea.
Btw: There is now a CVS repository, anyone who knows a bit of Python is invited to join the development. Go to http://sf.net/projects/wikipdf/ You need a Linux box with Apache, PHP, Python and LaTeX to test the script.
Regards, Stephan
Itai Fiat wrote:
This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion’s sake, the content of the article will not be recounted here).
Both this article you wrote, and this mailing list message you wrote, are pretty weird. What is this about? What is it for? Why are you trying to sound like a mediocre comedian?
If you have any real proposal to bring forward, you should probably make more sense and be more serious about it.
I imagine you may have received similar comments on the IRC channel. If this is what you call "being shouted at", then I'm really sorry, but that's really not my fault.
Timwi
----- Original Message ----- From: "Timwi" timwi@gmx.net To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 10:26 PM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Gnutella
Itai Fiat wrote:
This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a presumptuous one at that.
I
recently had an idea, and have written an written a short (the frame of reference being the Magna Carta) article describing it at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusion’s sake, the
content
of the article will not be recounted here).
Both this article you wrote, and this mailing list message you wrote, are pretty weird.
Not to worry. If you read between the lines, or every third line, you'll get it eventually.
What is this about? What is it for? Why are you trying to sound like a mediocre comedian?
Well, I am a mediocre comedian. As to the first two questions, I suppose I could provide a better answer. (Indeed, already have.) It is not entirely impossible to modify an existing, GPL Gnutella client (there is no shortage of the like) to serve Wikipedia articles (dynamically generated from the MySQL database, very much like MediaWiki and Apache do for HTTP requests) over Gnutella. Imagine saving all existing Wikipedia articles into a single directory and then sharing them using a client of your choice. That should answer the first question. As for what is it for, that's something I did my best to answer in the Meta article. A far more interesting question is whether this should (assuming I can get the "can" worked out) be implemented. As the propagator of this idea, I obviously believe it should, but it would be nice to know I have some backing before plunging into development.
-- Itai
"IF" == Itai Fiat itai@mail.portland.co.uk writes:
IF> Hello, This my first post to wikitech-l (yay!), and a IF> presumptuous one at that. I recently had an idea, and have IF> written an written a short (the frame of reference being the IF> Magna Carta) article describing it at IF> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella (for confusions IF> sake, the content of the article will not be recounted IF> here). While I have no problem developing this myself, I was IF> wondering if anybody has any objections - or, better yet, IF> suggestions or cash - they'd like to contribute in advance.
So, I added comments on-site, but here's my feeling:
I think a p2p distribution mechanism for Wikipedia is an EXCELLENT idea. It would/could do a lot to lower the load on the main servers.
I also think that if I had a fancy new-generation p2p client, I'd make a go of re-distributing Wikipedia content. It would be a great way to promote my network, especially if it has support for in-network Websites (like Freenet does).
But I don't think this is core functionality for Wikimedia, and I doubt that it'll get a lot of support around here. I think probably the best idea is to download the database dumps, and maybe experiment from there.
You may want to shop this idea with one of the open source P2P network groups, to see what they think about it. Frankly, there's more benefit for a P2P network than there is to Wikipedia, so they'll probably be more interested.
Anyways, good idea. You're gonna need to stick with it to see it happen, though. The best ideas are like that.
~ESP
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 18:19:05 +0200, Itai Fiat wrote:
[Wikipedia over Gnutella]
The idea sounds interesting but I think you will run into problems on the long term when there are many different versions of the same document circling around in this network because it has been edited at Wikipedia.
Regards, Lothar
Lothar Kimmeringer wikipedia@kimmeringer.de writes:
The idea sounds interesting but I think you will run into problems on the long term when there are many different versions of the same document circling around in this network because it has been edited at Wikipedia.
But versions not asked for will expire automatically - and the best version of an article will survive. At least, this is how GNUnet is supposed to work.
GNUnet is also a P2P network system.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org