We're looking into the possibility of setting up a planet-style feed aggregator for Wikimedia blogs. It would be nice to get some software recommendations. Specifically, we would need an aggregator that supports - web based administration - filtering feeds based on tags assigned to posts
It should scale well a large number of blogs & readers. It would also be nice to be able to form "groups" of blogs, but that is optional.
Any tips & reviews would be appreciated.
Erik Moeller wrote:
We're looking into the possibility of setting up a planet-style feed aggregator for Wikimedia blogs. It would be nice to get some software recommendations. Specifically, we would need an aggregator that supports
- web based administration
- filtering feeds based on tags assigned to posts
Planet (http://www.planetplanet.org/) is the canonical choice. It doesn't do web administration, but it's configured through a trivial INI-style text file, so you could slap a web administration frontend to it in a few lines of your favorite language.
As for filtering, you have to depend on the blogging software for each individual blog to export tag-specific feeds. Almost all reasonable blog software does this, with exceptions being things like Advogato.
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Ivan Krstić wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
We're looking into the possibility of setting up a planet-style feed aggregator for Wikimedia blogs. It would be nice to get some software recommendations. Specifically, we would need an aggregator that supports
- web based administration
- filtering feeds based on tags assigned to posts
Planet (http://www.planetplanet.org/) is the canonical choice. It doesn't do web administration, but it's configured through a trivial INI-style text file, so you could slap a web administration frontend to it in a few lines of your favorite language.
I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your blog. :)
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
On 3/5/07, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your blog. :)
No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to filter them on our side by tag.
And it would be _very_ nice if we could make it scale beyond you or the dev team -- i.e., if some other volunteer could be in charge of approving and adding feeds.
No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to filter them on our side by tag.
I often blog about extensions that I've written or ways to hack/bypass/modify/deal with MediaWiki. I'd be happy to make a separate feed just for these posts if it might result in my inclusion in the aggregate feed.
http://jimbojw.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blog
Also, you mention filtering the feed items by tag - do you mean the <category> tag in RSS (I believe this is "atom:category" in Atom)?
And it would be _very_ nice if we could make it scale beyond you or the dev team -- i.e., if some other volunteer could be in charge of approving and adding feeds.
I wouldn't mind serving in this facility - but I'm biased since I hope to have my own content included in the aggregate. Would the person in charge of approving/monitoring* feeds necessarily have to be an unbiased third-party?
* I say "monitoring" since it's possible that someone might create a feed which is initially MW/WM related, then after inclusion start spamming the list. Approval is just the first step - the person filling this role would need to be vigilant about spammers.
-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your blog. :)
No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to filter them on our side by tag.
And it would be _very_ nice if we could make it scale beyond you or the dev team -- i.e., if some other volunteer could be in charge of approving and adding feeds. -- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I often blog about extensions that I've written or ways to hack/bypass/modify/deal with MediaWiki.
I think MediaWiki-related blog posts should be fine. It would be nice to get Wikimedians to more actively demand the inclusion of useful MW extensions on Wikimedia servers, and if they hear about that through the feed, so much the better. If it gets too technical, we may want to split things up, but let's be inclusive in the first iteration.
I wouldn't mind serving in this facility - but I'm biased since I hope to have my own content included in the aggregate. Would the person in charge of approving/monitoring* feeds necessarily have to be an unbiased third-party?
Nope. There are enough people who can kick you if you do something unreasonable. ;-)
It would be nice to get Wikimedians to more actively demand the inclusion of useful MW extensions on Wikimedia servers
I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions would be considered. I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions and the community can discuss it?
If it gets too technical, we may want to split things up, but let's be inclusive in the first iteration.
Sounds good to me - we'll have to see whether there are enough technical blogs to warrant a separate list. It may be a very small percentage.
-- Jim
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I often blog about extensions that I've written or ways to hack/bypass/modify/deal with MediaWiki.
I think MediaWiki-related blog posts should be fine. It would be nice to get Wikimedians to more actively demand the inclusion of useful MW extensions on Wikimedia servers, and if they hear about that through the feed, so much the better. If it gets too technical, we may want to split things up, but let's be inclusive in the first iteration.
I wouldn't mind serving in this facility - but I'm biased since I hope
to
have my own content included in the aggregate. Would the person in
charge
of approving/monitoring* feeds necessarily have to be an unbiased third-party?
Nope. There are enough people who can kick you if you do something unreasonable. ;-) -- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions would be considered. I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions and the community can discuss it?
As far as I've seen, it's mostly harassing Tim and/or Brion until they give you an answer.
On 05/03/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions would be considered. I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions and the community can discuss it?
As far as I've seen, it's mostly harassing Tim and/or Brion until they give you an answer.
You oversimplify too greatly.
A huge proportion of the extensions out there are written by, if I may be frank, amateurs. They may be quick and dirty solutions to fulfill people's needs at the time. They may not be compatible with the newest versions of MediaWiki, or may use appallingly bad and even unsafe practices to get things done, which may lead to the inclusion of security vulnerabilities; commonly XSS and SQL injection.
If we're to enable an extension on the Wikimedia cluster, then we have to be reasonably sure that we can trust the code. This means we have to review it for security and for sanity, and for performance. This takes time. Time which we don't have, on the whole.
Some of this can be skipped when the extension is written by an experienced and trusted developer and uses appropriate techniques to do things, although there is still a phase of review which (rightly) needs to take place, so it's still not instantaneous.
Another big problem is that people request the installation of the most ridiculous and pointless little extensions. There are vast arguments over how complex wiki text should be, and internally there is a ripple of discontent over how complex it has become. A lot of the community's thirst for nonsense was slaked in an efficient and effective manner by Tim Starling with the introduction of ParserFunctions. Unfortunately, now they want more. Variables. Arrays. All sorts of nonsense which, frankly, they *do not need* to write an encyclopaedia.
The community frequently bitches at the development and system administration teams to do things faster, but it is the development and system administration teams which have a responsibility to keep the sites alive, and which will take the flak - oh yes, there's a lot of flak to come from all our users - when the shit hits the fan, as it might do without the proper processes.
Rob Church
On 3/5/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
You oversimplify too greatly.
Well, I never meant to go into the *criteria* for acceptance, just the *process*. Which, more or less, consists of bugging Brion or Tim, unless we lesser devs can intimidate the sillier requesters into not bothering them in the first place. As for the criteria, yeah, I think you summarized those nicely.
As for chances of making it in, it's perhaps instructive to notice that on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version, I count 17/22 written by either core devs or ex-core devs with at least shell access (Brion, Tim, Avar, Erik; I don't know if Avar/Erik qualify as ex-core devs, but from what I've seen they appear to), and at least three of the remaining five written by non-core devs (Duesentrieb and you). The last two are by Eric Zachte and Guillaume Blanchard, who for all I know were also devs, and those are two of the very oldest extensions.
So . . . make of that what you will. And be sure to add the numerous extensions by various devs that have *not* been enabled anywhere yet, despite requests. Probably Labeled Section Transclusion will be accepted at some point in the not-too-distant future, and ProofreadPage on Wikisource is by ThomasV, so it's not like the chances of getting a third-party extension enabled are zero or anything . . . you just need to be persistent.
On Mar 5, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Rob Church wrote:
On 05/03/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions would be considered. I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions and the community can discuss it?
As far as I've seen, it's mostly harassing Tim and/or Brion until they give you an answer.
You oversimplify too greatly.
A huge proportion of the extensions out there are written by, if I may be frank, amateurs.
Indeed...this describes me pretty well. I believe "rank amateur" comes closer.
They may be quick and dirty solutions to fulfill people's needs at the time. They may not be compatible with the newest versions of MediaWiki, or may use appallingly bad and even unsafe practices to get things done, which may lead to the inclusion of security vulnerabilities; commonly XSS and SQL injection.
For example, I'm pretty sure I used some appalling practices (like saving state by serializing data into the page output itself instead of to a session or cookie) in the Table Edit extension I just wrote...
But then I don't think it should actually be enabled on the Wikimedia cluster. Since extensions like these are being written by us amateurs to get things done on our own wikis, it would be nice to get feedback on which of our appalling practices to look out for. Perhaps someone with more expertise than the likes of me can add some more information to the sections on mediawiki.org about writing extensions and special pages.
But I'm NOT expecting the main devs to have the time to do that.
Jim
If we're to enable an extension on the Wikimedia cluster, then we have to be reasonably sure that we can trust the code. This means we have to review it for security and for sanity, and for performance. This takes time. Time which we don't have, on the whole.
Some of this can be skipped when the extension is written by an experienced and trusted developer and uses appropriate techniques to do things, although there is still a phase of review which (rightly) needs to take place, so it's still not instantaneous.
Another big problem is that people request the installation of the most ridiculous and pointless little extensions. There are vast arguments over how complex wiki text should be, and internally there is a ripple of discontent over how complex it has become. A lot of the community's thirst for nonsense was slaked in an efficient and effective manner by Tim Starling with the introduction of ParserFunctions. Unfortunately, now they want more. Variables. Arrays. All sorts of nonsense which, frankly, they *do not need* to write an encyclopaedia.
The community frequently bitches at the development and system administration teams to do things faster, but it is the development and system administration teams which have a responsibility to keep the sites alive, and which will take the flak - oh yes, there's a lot of flak to come from all our users - when the shit hits the fan, as it might do without the proper processes.
Rob Church
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 3/5/07, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your blog. :)
wikiangela.com/blog
There are also a lot of Wikimedia blogs listed at http://wikiangela.com/wiki/Blogs
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to filter them on our side by tag.
Is it possible to get category-specific RSS feeds in Wordpress? It doesn't seem to be an option in the default install.
Angela
I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your blog. :)
No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to filter them on our side by tag.
Oh, I don't know; Sometimes you get some interesting stuff that's not strictly MediaWiki / Wikipedia / Wikimedia - related.
For example, you might miss out on stats about the number of people that fake their identity online ( http://wikiangela.com/blog/a-sad-loss/ ) , videos of suburbs being hit by asteroids and zapped by aliens ( http://leuksman.com/log/2006/06/17/video-crap/ ), and maybe at some point a posting about the OLPC's security architecture ( http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ivan/ ).
Isn't it nicer to have something organic and freeform and inclusive and alive, that flows in unpredictable directions like a good conversation, rather than something that's narrow and exclusive and walled into a small box?
I say: embrace the weird and the wonderful and eclectic in all its forms, and let the chips fall where they may - the only criteria should be whether MediaWiki (core or extensions) / Wikipedia / Wikimedia / wikis-in-general are a major personal or professional interest to the author, and then wiki-related stuff will just naturally tend to form a large percentage of the planet's content (although it will include other stuff too). You see this pattern already in other planets (e.g. Planet Debian). Or at least maybe try that approach at first, and if it doesn't work then refine it from there.
All the best, Nick.
On 3/6/07, Nick Jenkins nickpj@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, I don't know; Sometimes you get some interesting stuff that's not strictly MediaWiki / Wikipedia / Wikimedia - related.
I consider this primarily a strategic tool to improve communication about what we are doing. Wikimedia is not a generic blog host. This tool becomes useless to me, and probably many others, if it includes blog posts about cat tricks and restaurant visits in New Jersey. Not that I have anything specifically against New Jersey. It's just an example. Cats, on the other hand, are evil.
If there is an optional, non-frontpage "See all posts" view, it will not kill me. But please let's try to minimize noise in the default (or indeed only) view. If people really find something they want to share, I'm confident they will incorrectly tag it on a reliable basis. It's the "forward it to a friend" principle. Or, more accurately, "forward it to a person who could have been your friend if you didn't spam them with irrelevant crap."
Oh, I don't know; Sometimes you get some interesting stuff that's not strictly MediaWiki / Wikipedia / Wikimedia - related.
I consider this primarily a strategic tool to improve communication about what we are doing.
Wow, that sounds really quite dull. I read the words "strategic", "communication", and "tool" all in the same sentence, and I started to lose consciousness and the will to live :-(
This stuff is supposed to be fun, and if it's constrained too much, it ceases to be fun.
Besides, what does Wikimedia communication mean exactly? Does it include people developing extensions that aren't (at least at first) going to run on the cluster? (I'm assuming not, since that's not Wikimedia-related). What about Wikia stuff? (I'm assuming that's out too, since it's not Wikimedia-related). What about volunteer developers thinking about ideas? (I'm assuming that's out too, since there's not much related to the WMF per-se in what a volunteer dev does with their time). What about the citizendium folks? (Certainly not Wikimedia-related, although their endeavours at the very least have the potential to be interesting). It doesn't leave much, and what it does leave isn't likely to be very interesting, especially if people self-censor to fulfil some strategic business communication objective.
In short, I can sort of understand why the WMF might want to _write_ something like this; I'm just a lot less clear on why normal people would want to _read_ it.
Wikimedia is not a generic blog host.
Agreed: The WMF _is_ constrained in this way, but _I_ am certainly not. Furthermore I think my conception of what a planet should be (anything goes, just try and make it fun, and interesting, and semi-wiki-related if possible), and your strategic-communication-objective have irreconcilable differences.
So I sincerely wish you good luck with what you're trying to do; run with it, and I hope it works out well.
But me, I'm setting up a very simple planet as an experiment, that pulls in a diversity of wiki-related-blogs, but which is not restricted based on the whether or not the content is official communication approved by the WMF; In short, I'm aiming for the kind of wiki-related planet that I would actually like to sometimes read. The occasional evil cat doing tricks in New Jersey restaurants is welcome, provided the author has a major interest (social, technical, administrative, etc) in wiki-related things, especially the Wikipedia, the MediaWiki core, MediaWiki extensions, and also Wikimedia, but other wiki-related stuff (e.g. wikia, citizendium, Wikipedia on the OLPC, etc etc) is all good too (provided it doesn't drown out other stuff).
An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ; (If that URL doesn't work for you, leave it 24 hours for the DNS to propagate, & then try again). To start with, it's based on Angela's blog list ( http://wikiangela.com/wiki/Blogs ), including everything in the "Wikipedia/Wikimedia/MediaWiki" category, everything in the "Wiktionary" category, everything in the "Wikia" category, and a handful of things from the "Miscellaneous" category. Anything that I couldn't get a feed in English for was omitted. Also there are tend to be a _lot_ more blogs about the social aspects of wikis, and far fewer about the technical aspects, so the I've tried to include all the technical ones, but haven't included all the social ones from the "Miscellaneous" category, to try and get some semblance of balance between technical and social. Currently it's set to automatically update once an hour, so there may be up to 60 minutes delay between when blog entries are posted, and when they appear on the planet.
Also if you want to be added (especially if you have or start a technical blog, as that's the most underrepresented category) either add yourself to Angela's list or email me directly (or preferably do both). Also if you don't want to be included, please let me know and I'll remove you. And lastly, the Planet software has a concept of a "Hackergotchi" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackergotchi ) - the planet software seems by default to want a PNG image, 65 pixels in width & 85 pixels in height, so if anyone wants to have a little image of themselves against their blog postings then please either email me a suitably-sized image, or send me a web link to one.
All the best, Nick.
On 07/03/07, Nick Jenkins nickpj@gmail.com wrote:
An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ; (If that URL doesn't work for you, leave it 24 hours for the DNS to propagate, & then try again). To start with, it's based on Angela's blog list ( http://wikiangela.com/wiki/Blogs ), including everything in the "Wikipedia/Wikimedia/MediaWiki" category, everything in the "Wiktionary" category, everything in the "Wikia" category, and a handful of things from the "Miscellaneous" category. Anything that I couldn't get a feed in English for was omitted. Also there are tend to be a _lot_ more blogs about the social aspects of wikis, and far fewer about the technical aspects, so the I've tried to include all the technical ones, but haven't included all the social ones from the "Miscellaneous" category, to try and get some semblance of balance between technical and social.
Nice one!
- d.
Nick Jenkins wrote:
Oh, I don't know; Sometimes you get some interesting stuff that's not strictly MediaWiki / Wikipedia / Wikimedia - related.
I consider this primarily a strategic tool to improve communication about what we are doing.
Wow, that sounds really quite dull. I read the words "strategic", "communication", and "tool" all in the same sentence, and I started to lose consciousness and the will to live :-(
Indeed, I'm not sure what the point of that would be. Who's supposed to be doing the strategic communicating?
This stuff is supposed to be fun, and if it's constrained too much, it ceases to be fun.
Amen!
What may make sense is to have a couple of topic-filtered feeds (so Erik can read) and a full one (for the rest of us ;).
An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ;
Guess you beat me to it; planet.wikimedia.org will be up a bit later.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
On 07/03/07, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
This stuff is supposed to be fun, and if it's constrained too much, it ceases to be fun.
What may make sense is to have a couple of topic-filtered feeds (so Erik can read) and a full one (for the rest of us ;).
An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ;
Guess you beat me to it; planet.wikimedia.org will be up a bit later.
How wikilike ;-)
- d.
Brion Vibber wrote:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ;
Guess you beat me to it; planet.wikimedia.org will be up a bit later.
http://planet.wikimedia.org/ up now; I've only stuck on a couple of people who asked in here so far.
The theme's a little plain and MonoBook-ish; it wouldn't hurt to add a little flair. If someone wants to play with it and submit improvements, well I'm no graphic designer really. ;)
The template (default) & CSS/logos (customized) are available on our SVN: http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/tools/planet/
Nick, I'd love it if you can keep Wiki Blog Planet around as a more "flavorful" channel, while Planet Wikimedia will remain a little more focused.
At the moment administration is done via the .ini file... if there's a nice web front-end for administrating the channels that would be spiffy, though. (And if there isn't one, I don't think it would be hard to create one. It's a pretty straightforward file.)
Just a note: WordPress can produce feeds for a specific category quite easily, so we can filter WordPress-based blogs by category with no problem. (I'm using category "wiki" on mine.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
http://planet.wikimedia.org/ up now
Yay!
The template (default) & CSS/logos (customized) are available on our SVN: http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/tools/planet/
Cool, and thanks to r20261 I didn't even have to exert any effort to work out how to add Planet Wikimedia to the sidebar :-)
Nick, I'd love it if you can keep Wiki Blog Planet around as a more "flavorful" channel, while Planet Wikimedia will remain a little more focused.
For sure! And just to complicate matters, I'm going to try setting up yet another planet, at http://open.wikiblogplanet.com , this one highly experimental, which could well end up being the most "out-there" channel of them all! The general idea is explained here: http://blog.nickj.org/2007/03/09/first-post-wiki-related-planets-and-a-new-v...
All the best, Nick.
On 3/7/07, Nick Jenkins nickpj@gmail.com wrote:
This stuff is supposed to be fun, and if it's constrained too much, it ceases to be fun.
I don't think constraining it to stuff which is _actually related_ to Wikimedia projects or the software running it is some huge blow against free expression. Do you know how many Wikimedians there are? And how many of them are running blogs, and have been since long before they became Wikimedians? If the only criterion to be included is "Hey, I'm going to post on wikis here from time to time", it's going to be nothing but a glorified LiveJournal.
On 07/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/7/07, Nick Jenkins nickpj@gmail.com wrote:
This stuff is supposed to be fun, and if it's constrained too much, it ceases to be fun.
I don't think constraining it to stuff which is _actually related_ to Wikimedia projects or the software running it is some huge blow against free expression. Do you know how many Wikimedians there are? And how many of them are running blogs, and have been since long before they became Wikimedians? If the only criterion to be included is "Hey, I'm going to post on wikis here from time to time", it's going to be nothing but a glorified LiveJournal.
That's why I want mine fed from reddragdiva.vox.com rather than reddragdiva.livejournal.com ;-)
Even if one has a LiveJournal, one can give the URL and RSS for a specific tag. Or do as I did and just put anything for the Wikimedia audience on a separate journal.
- d.
Erik Moeller wrote:
We're looking into the possibility of setting up a planet-style feed aggregator for Wikimedia blogs. It would be nice to get some software recommendations. Specifically, we would need an aggregator that supports
- web based administration
- filtering feeds based on tags assigned to posts
It should scale well a large number of blogs & readers. It would also be nice to be able to form "groups" of blogs, but that is optional.
Any tips & reviews would be appreciated.
Erik,
I have a question regarding items of interest in this area. I have managed to download and index all of Wikiedia's images for enwiki, wikibooks, and wiktionary. I have enhanced the appliance tools to the point I can download, process, translate, and extract and sync all images for any given XML dump. I also have the ability to cross reference images with "fair use" and "free" and selectively strip out images and compress them into tar.gz and bz2 files (.7z would also be possible).
I have installed ctorrent at wikigadugi but I have not as of yet created or exposed torrent downloads for all of Wikipedia's images. I do, however. have the entire library of Wikipedia's images.
Would it be useful to host and export a bit torrent with "approved" images and allow mass downloads of all image content from Wikipedia. This would not affect the main MediaWiki sites, but would allow the internet access to the image library I have compiled.
I will not expose any torrents without the approval of the Foundation, but I now have the capability to do so. I can setup DMCA procedures through WMG to address any copyright complaints from contributors and I would be able to effectively handle them. I have elected not to expose these torrents until I got to a point where it was time to discuss it with the Foundation.
Please advise.
Jeff
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
We're looking into the possibility of setting up a planet-style feed aggregator for Wikimedia blogs. It would be nice to get some software recommendations. Specifically, we would need an aggregator that supports
- web based administration
- filtering feeds based on tags assigned to posts
It should scale well a large number of blogs & readers. It would also be nice to be able to form "groups" of blogs, but that is optional.
Any tips & reviews would be appreciated.
Erik,
I have a question regarding items of interest in this area. I have managed to download and index all of Wikiedia's images for enwiki, wikibooks, and wiktionary. I have enhanced the appliance tools to the point I can download, process, translate, and extract and sync all images for any given XML dump. I also have the ability to cross reference images with "fair use" and "free" and selectively strip out images and compress them into tar.gz and bz2 files (.7z would also be possible).
I have installed ctorrent at wikigadugi but I have not as of yet created or exposed torrent downloads for all of Wikipedia's images. I do, however. have the entire library of Wikipedia's images.
Would it be useful to host and export a bit torrent with "approved" images and allow mass downloads of all image content from Wikipedia. This would not affect the main MediaWiki sites, but would allow the internet access to the image library I have compiled.
I will not expose any torrents without the approval of the Foundation, but I now have the capability to do so. I can setup DMCA procedures through WMG to address any copyright complaints from contributors and I would be able to effectively handle them. I have elected not to expose these torrents until I got to a point where it was time to discuss it with the Foundation.
Please advise.
Jeff
I currently have a data center with an 8 megabyte per second internet pipe to the internet with 70 terabytes of appliances setup running wikigadugi and hosting this library and development. I have sufficient bandwidth to support this from appliance sales and revenues for general internet access. FYI.
Jeff
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org