list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Developer poll results

body:
Possibly more readable on wiki :-)
here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results#Results_for_the_poll

Greetings :-)

---------

1 Results for the poll

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in
development of MediaWiki or maintenance of the
Wikimedia servers?

12 people answered directly to the poll I had
additional partial answers from 5 more people on irc,
ranging from 1 sentence to 1 hour discussion.

Some people did not answer to all questions, or on the
contrary went to greeeeeat lengths :-) I tried to sum
up very much for the public report. I also removed all
what appeared to me possibly an ambarassing answer in
public. I left names when it does appear to me public
information unlikely to be problematic to distribute.

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific
activities you have done (maintenance of servers,
performance improvement, development of features,
debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

MMA: Feature development.

EMO: maintenance of servers, performance improvement,
development of features, debug, interface, "hotline"
etc.

Timwi : minor (bug fixes)

EZA : Programming:

    * International Statistics
    * TomeRaider version (which is pretty popular).
This was a major undertaking as I wanted to get it
right (different versions for Pocket PC, Palm and
EPOC, homegrown math formula rendering engine,
extensive unicode support, patching up invalid html
where ever possible, etc)

EasyTimeline most recent project, still some loose
ends (UTF-8 soon, unicode font support for ja: zh: etc
later this year). Some Wikipedias have already
embraced it, Germans made 40 timelines in a month.

TST : code, but most of my time server administration
and helpdesk work on #mediawiki.

Looxix

    * Bug repport and sorting.
    * Search recise information for bug repport.
    * Test if a bug is really solved.
    * Interface translation

TAW : Developement: math system and some other
changes, some bugfixing. Some administration, mostly
for Polish Wikipedia, Polish Wiktionary, and Kashub
Wikipedia. I'm doing technical support on Polish
Wikipedia. Plus geographical plugin

X13 : performance improvement, development of features

Tom : Some bugfixes for Mediawiki, two or three bots
for pywikipediabot, the webshop and high IRC activity.

GWI : Concept, installation, maintenance of squid
servers, MW/Squid integration,
development/implementation of apache load balancing,
writing/maintaining log analysis software, #mediawiki
support, Monobook skin system, parser performance
testing and back-to-regex after tokenizer performance
problems, user/site-wide style system, xhtmlization of
the parser, HTML tidy integration for xhtml
compliance, bug fixes etc

Hashar : Developped a few features, lot of bugfixing,
code optimization, code organisation. :

Dammit : Mostly database stuff, porting to PostgreSQL,
some debugging, some fixes :

JeLuF : bug fixing, thumbnail features, code cleanup,
single login :-), sysadmining the server farm

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but
currently are not?

    * parser speedup and performance (wiki syntax
description): 3
    * database schema redesign to allow for faster
queries and to have a consistent CUR and OLD table
scheme, important for directly linking to specific
revisions which currently is only possible in the OLD
table : 4
    * systematic review of all database queries for
performance and scalability : 1
    * db performance (undefined) : 3

    * full internationalization of mediawiki (i.e.
multiple languages in one installation, both in terms
of content and UI; completely redesign interlanguage
links to avoid massive redundancy between wikis) : 1
    * per user langage setting (allowing to access
en.wikipedia.org with a french interface for ex).: 1
    * Clean up of LanguageXX.php files to store all
translateable text in the MediaWiki: namespace for
example is needed for user-selectable UI language : 1

    * image sharing across projects : 1
    * single sign-on (Wikimedia Commons) : 2
    * redesign file uploading and image pages; current
image page system is unintuitive and redundant
(captions duplicated on pages and in text) : 1
    * To have (more or less) public rsync for the
images and bring up new projects like wikicommons or
Wikipedia for deaf : 1
    * instead of storing every revision of every page,
store incremental diffs with interleaved complete
revisions as CVS and other version control systems do
in order to decrease storage space by an order of
magnitude or two : 1

    * redesign discussion system from the ground up so
that talk pages, mailing lists and forum can be
synthesized into one system : 1
    * implement web of trust system in order to allow
for user-based filtering of RC : 1
    * Switching to UTF8 all projects : 1
    * real-time fundraising system for all Wikimedia
sites : 1

    * Opening up WikiMedia source base by improving
documentation (in source code, but also overall design
spec) : 1
    * Easy mirroring worldwide for safer data : 1

    * Clean refactoring and rewrite : 1
    * Fixing bugs from sourceforge bug list : 1
    * structuring/prioritising feature requests : 1

    * None : 1
    * Very hard to know : 1

Are there any tasks that you would like to get
involved with but have not yet done so?

    * Parser speedup : MMA
    * external editor / WYSIWYG support : EMO
    * make template syntax consistent and fix bugs :
EMO
    * "watch newly created articles" : EMO
    * per page bans : EMO
    * cookie-based blocking : EMO
    * search in page histories : EMO
    * protected page redesign... : EMO
    * Database redesign : Timwi
    * New database shema : Has
    * Server administration : Dam
    * Bugzilla : Timwi
    * Finish geographical module : TAW
    * Yes, but not described : Tom

Others want to be less involved or declared already
too busy.

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with
those tasks?

Among answers listed, lack of time is a hit.

Some mention

    * lack of money (and indicate they would be
motivated by money)
    * need to gain trust from peers to have more
access
    * one mentions limited access rights

Is there anyone that you would like to be more
involved with certain tasks? If so, which tasks?

    * EMO : Brion for the database redesign
    * Many developers in writing plugins and
extensions as in Moin, not reallypossible in MW
currently. Needs a really modular framework that's
held together by events or similar : GWI
    * Everyone in the dev / sysop team do that on
their spare time as a hobby. I am not sure we want to
force anyone to be more involved. : Has

Some of the answers given were removed.

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?

I thought it best to summarize opinions gave on this,
since it went from the hardcore developers to the
current newbies :-)

Globally, most recent people did not feel that easy to
join, though there are some variations. The bad points
mentionned are

    * welcoming newbies is not a priority
    * source code, patches posted by newbies tend to
be ignored or do not receive attention.
    * it is not easy to send patches
    * mediawiki is specific to one site, so makes it
harder to experiment,
    * a complicated and little documented code
    * lack of modularity of the software, making it
difficult for a newbie to work on a independent issue
    * lack of documentation
    * lack of guidance
    * there is an unsufficient system design document.
    * confused bugbase, which makes it difficult for
newbies to define what should be done or could be done
    * poorly advertised, poorly structured and poorly
prioritized to do list (new features and feature
enhancement)

However, most mention that they were helped by
knowledgeable developpers, that being given CVS write
access was highly appreciated and joining irc very
helpful.

It is also mentionned that making it harder for
newbies is also safer for the application.

Some mention they chose standalone projects on
purpose.

what do you think would help new developers to "get
in"?

    * Code more readable and software more modular so
that other applications use it
    * Bugzilla, so that developers without CVS access
can give their patches
    * Better advertised, structured and prioritized to
do list.
    * Better documentation of sources (could give much
credit for a newbie willing to start doing this, and
be much informative to them) :
    * A more complete system design document
    * IRC to answer questions and build the trust
    * that the developer provides good code
    * More information and guidance on what needs to
be done
    * More general wikipackage for mediawiki to be
used by other sites :
    * Clean, short code and a good plugin architecture
as in Moin, event subsystem to further modularize the
thing (currently being worked on in Moin)

Was there anything in particular that you found helped
you to join in?

    * CVS access : 2
    * Wikitech : 1
    * IRC : 4
    * Knowledge of english : 1
    * Php: Has

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

    * Yes : 7
    * Not really : 1

Do you feel your work is undervalued or
under-recognized?

    * No : 6
    * Think that it is likely new developers feel
unrecognised : 1
    * I do not really care : 1
    * Yes a bit : 1
    * I don't care, I just do it for me, if it's
improving the project then
    * it got value and will be recognized somehow : 1

If you are now less involved with the development team
than you were previously, what made you decrease your
contribution there?

    * Lack of time :
    * Proposed features were discussed to death on
mailing lists :
    * Time and money :
    * Other external essential activities :
    * I need to decrease participation, because my
real life suffers from it
    * Holidays
    * Waste of time on messy code, which may not have
a future. Little appreciation. Need to earn money
(student) :
    * Summer time ! Not really willing to pass 10Hours
per day behind the screen when it's sunny outside :o)
:
    * Dayjob and personal life, Wikimedia distracts me
:

What is the best reward for your good work, or what
way would you prefer to be rewarded?

    * Quoting irc: <someone> thanks hashar for your
help !
    * People using my work, and enjoying it :
    * People using the work :
    * Money would be helpful :
    * People enjoying me, and working with me,
discussing my work and feeling good friends :
    * Being able to brag at how much money I made from
the task : Timwi
    * Appreciation (mails or comments not being about
bug report or criticism are especially helpful) ):
    * Appreciation, as long as other more essential
needs do not come in front :
    * When something that needs to be done is done :
(money and appreciation are not very important)
    * Recogntion (developer of the week) :
    * Perhaps honoring from the Foundation, good in CV
:
    * Money and naming/recognizing the contributions
on a dev page and in the release notes, similar to the
linux kernel release notes :
    * Wikipedia running (and food when I need it) .

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 E.

    * 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)

    * A : 5 (1 mentions sysadmin/DBA)
    * B : 4 (2 mentions sysadmin) - but money could be
better spend on servers
    * C : 2 (1 says would force hierarchy and decrease
motivation)
    * D : 1
    * E: 1 (a developer)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one
off contract for a specific task, such as the
development of a feature.

    * A 3 (one indicates that we should have a good
committee to decide what is important to do)
    * B :3 (call for tender)
    * D : 5
    * D/E : 1 (bad for volunteer culture, plus jalousy
for those where no bounty are placed)

On irc,

    * 2 more opinions were neutral
    * 4 more opinions were slightly opposed.

One suggests here that the next bug / request tracker
will have a vote feature, users can vote for bugs they
want to get fixed this way developpers will be able to
focus on user most wanted fixes

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.

    * A : 0
    * B : 4
    * C : 3 (some because they do not care) (1 :
usually poorly informed decision. Would prefer a more
general wikipedian of the month (editor and moderator
included) (1 does not want that for him)
    * D : 2 (underrecognition and loss of motivation
of non winners)
    * E : 2 (no prioritization, plus tension among
developers, boring, because it would be brion4ever) !

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.

    * A : 0
    * B : 4
    * C : 3 (2 just did not care)
    * D : 2
    * E : 3 (1 elitist)

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.

    * A : 3 (1 yes ! The community will then be able
to know more about the guys behind mediawiki. I really
strongly support that. It could even be part of the
wikimediafoundation page :o)
    * B : 3
    * C : 4 (why not, but little impact expected - but
liberal access. With contributions list)
    * D : 0
    * E : 1 (I can use user page)

6. Professional training to some of the developers if
the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced
price training.

    * A : 0
    * B : 2
    * C : 3
    * D : 3 (hard to implement - usually self
training, courses are expensive ? would prefer self
allowance for book purchase or online registration -
already available on the net))
    * E : 3

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.

    * A : 0
    * B : 3 (probably not very helpful, but worth
trying. No side effect)
    * C : 7 (probably wont have much effect -
    * D : 2 (normal people would not understand)
    * C : 1
    * E : 1 (audience is too small)

A comment reflecting others: the more the software
will be used the more peoples will be interested in
developping it. Just focus on announcing that
wikipedia is using the freely available MediaWiki
software giving examples of other use (such as
wikitravel). That will attract new users of the
software thus leading to more developpers

8. A meet-up for developers to work together
occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers
paid by the foundation :-))

    * A : 5 (very appreciated. 1 is not sure it would
help, but would be nice - 2 are worried about Tim and
Brion issue, 1 strongly support the paid round of
beer)
    * B : 5 (but 1 fear it would be expensive)
    * C : 0
    * D : 0
    * E : 1 (this 1 is german...)

9. A b ig clean up of the development pages on Meta,
and clearer paths to help new developers to "jump in".

    * A : 3 (1 especially extended documentation for
the software)
    * B : 6
    * C : 1
    * D : 0
    * E : 1 (do not delete anything, but clearer paths
would be good)

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...

    * A : 3
    * A/B : 1
    * B : 4 (1 but not nomination -> voluntary
proposition)
    * C : 5 (would not help much, could generate
tension)
    * D : 1 (could lead to tensions)

One said not dedicated organisers, but dev should
learn to handle : task management tool for example

Others

MMA : When discussion about a feature to be
implemented starts, set an 'end date' for the
discussion :

EMO : "Bounty system" is really misleading, what is
needed is an open call for tender system where a
steering committee appointed or elected by the
foundation in cooperation with the dev team makes a
list of high priority tasks, and developers can then
declare under which conditions they would be willing
to complete these tasks, e.g.

    * "I would be willing to do this for free, but
only by November 2005"
    * "I would be willing to do this at a rate of
$20/hour"
    * "I would be willing to do this for $500/month"

The committee would then negotiate the best possible
contracts/agreements with the developers.

1 said : developers (though very busy and under
pressure) should make an effort to answer questions
and inform (servers status, servers stopped for
maintenance tasks, new features, ...)

TAW : mediawiki should be used by more users. More
users=more developers

GWI : Name a tech/user contact person (similar to
organizer above, but not quite the same) that would
communicate things from #mediawiki to the users (takes
a lot of time otherwise), bundle requests, explains
rationales behind design decisions etc

GWI : Release notes as above :

Would you be interested to make a living directly or
undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

    * Why not, but I?ll do the job anyway : 1
    * Yes : 3
    * Why not, but no strong position : 1
    * I would regret that this happen : 1
    * No : 1
    * Not directly : 1
    * No : 1 (should be kept volunteer)
    * Yes : 1 (trying with the wikireaders)
    * Yes : but task based or time based : 1
    * No, I am lacking a lot of experience in
development : 1

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do
you think would be most helpful?

    * One sysadmin, one secretary : EMO
    * Sysadmin : EZA
    * Sysadmin/DBA : TAW
    * Someone taking care of things for which no one
is interested (clean up code, bug report, feature
request). New features should be left to volunteers. :
MMA
    * On call sysadmin : X13
    * 24/7 sysadmin : Tom
    * A sysadmin or developer with moderation
abilities. Senior experienced person.
    * No need for staff : Has
    * Sysadmin : Dammit
    * Illustrators : TST
    * Legal advisor : LOO

Do you think staff should be hired internally or
externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or
someone who is not a participant)

    * Internally : 6
    * Externally : 6

Why externally : general answer is "to avoid tensions"

Why internally : general answer is "we have the
capabilities among us"

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider
applying for a development position?

    * No : 6
    * Yes : 1 (but no move to USA)
    * Why not, but the Foundation currently has much
more pressing needs (hence, long term thought) : 1
    * Why not : 1
    * Yes : 1 (for task based such as bounties)
    * Yes, Sysadmin : 1

Erik did not answer.

How would you summarize your view on the proposed
bounty system? Strongly support / support/ neutral/
opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

    * Strongly support his proposal but is unclear
whether we are talking about his system below, so did
not answer following questions : EMO
    * Strong support : 1
    * Support : 1 (strongly his system, but would
support any type of system. Would prefer developer
community to set priorities, but board decision would
be fine)
    * Support : 1
    * Neutral : 2
    * Neutral : 1 (irc)
    * neutral/opposed : 1
    * neutral/opposed : 4 (irc)
    * Opposed : 1
    * Strongly opposed : 2

If opposed, please briefly indicate why

    * Will introduce competition, so pressure, hence
remove the fun : 1
    * Loss of the gift culture : 3
    * I know not of any project where it worked : 2
    * at least, until other options have been tested

Consider that the steering committee would have a
major impace on any success : 1

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you
try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

    * Yes, but for tasks I was planning to do anyway :
1
    * Yes : 3
    * Probably not, unless I planned to do it anyway
(could be faster) : 2
    * Not specifically : 1
    * No : 1
    * Undecided : 2

On irc,

    * Probably yes : 3
    * Undecided : 2

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased
or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

    * Increase a lot : 1
    * No change : 1
    * Undecided : 1
    * No : 3
    * Will appy to the bounty only if he agree with
the general development direction  : 1
    * Certainly not increase : 1
    * Possibly decrease : 1

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its
implementation cause you to decrease your level of
contribution?

    * Increase : 1
    * Probably no difference right now, possibly
decrease in the long term : 1
    * No change : 2
    * Undecided : 2
    * Irrelevant : 1

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well
suited to a bounty system.

    * Redundant fixes/updates :
    * Enhancements like having one installation for
many wikis or even *Installing and custimizing
mediawiki for other projects :
    * Parser rewrite/speed optimization, feature
rewrites/porting, caching, network filesystem RAID
implementation, Differential storage :
    * Caching algorithms.
    * Parser performance.
    * Automated interfaces :
    * full internationalization of mediawiki (i.e.
multiple languages in one installation, both in terms
of content and UI; completely redesign interlanguage
links to avoid massive redundancy between wikis) :
    * database schema redesign to allow for faster
queries and to have a consistent CUR and OLD table
scheme, important for directly linking to specific
revisions which currently is only possible in the OLD
table :
    * real-time fundraising system for all Wikimedia
sites :
    * systematic review of all database queries for
performance and scalability :
    * redesign discussion system from the ground up so
that talk pages, mailing lists and forum can be
synthesized into one system :
    * image sharing across projects :
    * and single sign-on (Wikimedia Commons) :
    * redesign file uploading and image pages; current
image page system is unintuitive and redundant
(captions duplicated on pages and in text)
    * instead of storing every revision of every page,
store incremental diffs with interleaved complete
revisions as CVS and other version control systems do
in order to decrease storage space by an order of
magnitude or two :
    * implement web of trust system in order to allow
for user-based filtering of RC :

Others consider it is not good for anything, does not
work, have no opinion or are not informed enough to
say.

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?

    * No answer : several
    * Should be decided by the developer community or
board : 1
    * WMF should offer a price to attract developers
from underdeveloped countries : 1
    * Given the amount of time and our budget, it
would be just a symbolic reward : 1
    * Waste of money, as it does not work : 1
    * Depends of type of task : 1
    * 5-10 euros : 1
    * Depends, roughly between 5-15 dollars per hour :
1
    * Depends : 1

What do you think would be the largest benefit of
implementing a bounty system?

    * Getting stuff done that are not done :
    * Increase motivation :
    * Central steering of priorities :
    * Amount of contributions will be up
    * Motivation and a point for externals who want
special features :
    * Will steer development in a certain direction  :
    * None

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by
a bounty system?

    * abusing the system
    * competing with unfair methods :
    * leaving because of (felt or real) pressure to
work :
    * not joining because the development is no longer
"free" :
    * joining soley because of the money; then better
hire someone for real
    * People leaving, but no one consider doing that,
so this is not an issue :
    * Loss of the gift culture :
    * Having developpers focusing only on largely paid
tasks forgetting the lowest one :
    * Decrease in quality of contribution :
    * Disruption of the community
    * Loss of volunteer feeling, competition :
    * No answer :
    * Can drive people away if they do not agree with
the development route

Do you have your own pay pal account?

    * Yes : MMA, EZA
    * No : Timwi, but intend to
    * No answer : EMO (ant : but I think he does)
    * No : LOO
    * No : Taw
    * Yes : X13
    * Yes, Tom
    * Yes : GWI
    * Yes : Has
    * No : Dammit

Would you be interested in having a little bio about
you and your achievement on WMF site ?

    * No : 2
    * No : 1 (a link to my user page)
    * Yes : 7

Some wish that all dev are listed. Some just want the
name listed with a link to their page

Would you be interested in having a link on the site
whereby users could donate money to you via this
account

    * Yes :6
    * No : 1 Put a "give to wikimedia foundation" link
instead :o)

One mention the link should be for all developers with
a paypal

One mentions that small sums is better than WMF giving
huge sums and exterting implied central control of
work

Would you be interested in receiving professional
training ?

    * Yes : 3
    * No : 8

One mentions it would be hard to implement. Others
consider themselves welltrained or that training is
available on the net.

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the
Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

    * Money : 5
    * Books or online subscription : EZA
    * Hardware : 2
    * Money or donated hardware : 1
    * Money (perhaps to give it back to the
foundation) : 1

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?

    * No really : 2
    * Bugzilla, then fixing bugs : Timwi
    * No. Already spending too much time on it :-) :
EZA
    * A new bug tracker : Has
    * Sort the bug tracker : LOO
    * Development : X13
    * Documentation : Tom
    * Writing clean code for next generation software
for Wikimedia : GWI

A task management thing wich allow several sub task
per task ex:

    * Task #1 : documentation writing
          o sub-task #1 : installation under windows
          o sub-task #2 : skin documentation
    * Task #2 : database shema
          o sub-task #1 : new proposition
          o sub-task #2 : MediaWiki code migration
          o sub-task #3 : migration tools
          o sub-task #4 : code testing (Has)

Documentation should be my commitment (answer
technical questions on info at wikipedia.de) : Tom

Answer questions on #wikimedia. (sorry... I lost the
name of this one :-()
[edit]

2 Comments

A few words (because I cant help...)

About getting newcomers

The idea of a press release oriented toward technical
issues was generally not perceived useful

    * not enough audience for this topic
    * Most developers consider the issue is not to get
*more* developers, but to have those currently around
more involved and more efficient.

However, several wish that the mediawiki code be more
modular, for the software to be used by other sites,
which would attract new developers.

This suggest as well that more advertisment of the
software itself be done.

About welcoming newcomers

What about

    * setting up a sort of official committee (ie,
that a couple of names are officially listed as people
willing to guide new people)
    * improving the welcome page (how to become a
mediawiki hacker - which could be more informative)
    * very quickly orient newbies to irc
    * set a page listing all developers, and
explaining what they did on the soft or the hard, so
as to help newcomers figure out who to contact and to
who talk to for a specific idea
    * fix the absolutely frightening
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports

Here is the future key page :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker

It could have a link toward

    * the bug list (cleaned up)
    * a list of planned features (really planned
features, with status of development)
    * some ideas of tasks which need to be done (hey,
look at the update here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks)

About guiding newcomers

I would like to mention one thing about guidance. In a
project such as Wikipedia, it is best to be bold if
one want things to proceed. And it is those who dared
being bold or who had a strong opinion on what they
wanted to do who had little problem getting
integrated. On the other hand, some developers would
prefer more guidance, and apparently, those feel
unwelcome. I would dare to suggest that since we are
different and will always stay different with regards
to such personal pecularities, it would be best that
some developers take the time to think of tasks they
can suggest to those willing to get more guidance.
Toward newbies, it would be good that some developers
take the time to nurture the newbies a bit more till
those are able to manage things alone. Teaching always
take a bit of personal time, there is a fear of
responsability to commit the code of another one, but
it is beneficial in the long term to have yet another
one in the team. Unfortunately, it is not everyone who
likes to do that...anyway...

About recognition

I would like to set two pages listing many of you

    * one page on meta would explain in details what
you have been doing in the soft. It could really be a
technical page, meant more to help internal people
know you better, contact you, thank you when they like
a feature and no not who worked on it specifically. It
might be a page of exchange between all of us
    * one page on wikimedia. I would like that some
have the possibility to put a short bio of them,
perhaps quickly explain what they did (less tech
details please), possibly put links to a personnal web
site, add a paypal link so that they could receive
financial appreciation. Anyway, the point might also
be to help you perhaps to get a job if needed, or to
impress your mom, just as you wish.

About money

I think there are two issues at hand here.

First, we could perhaps organise the gathering of a
general amount of money which could be used to finance
general costs of developers, such as travel costs for
a meeting in Germany. This is little controversial and
there was thought given on the topic. I think more
will be said on the matter latter.

Second, money in exchange of tasks. This would be
money directly paid by the Foundation to thank some
developers for their work.
The board is willing to give it a try. I can't say we
embrace the concept entirely (I guess none of us is on
the strong oppose nor on the strong support). So, we
are willing to do a trial period, and this for a
limited number of tasks. I would recommand that

    * a proper committee of developer is set, with a
large group to discuss and a smaller one to take
decision
    * that each suggestion made above is considered,
explained in decent words (for non developers to
understand), if interesting : estimated in terms of
time of development (with possibly financial
suggestions) and that developers interested in the
task are identified. It would be nice as well, that
validation of the task is planned and estimated. Well,
this is all your job, but we ain't give money on
smoke.

At the end of the trial period, we will estimate the
benefits and the drawbacks. These will not be only
technical, but social as well, and the opinion of the
whole community is welcome. We wait for a feedback,
now, during the trial as well as at the end of the
trial. We will not proceed along the trial if there is
serious opposition from the community on the whole
:-). We consider there are possible benefits as well
as dangers in the whole idea, so we wish to insist
that this is only a temporary decision.

Thank you all for your participation :-)

Anthere 16:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Developer poll results


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Developer poll results


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Really? I was under the impression it should become a repository for
> free images and multimedia files.
>
> Or do you mean playing with the interface? We can do that too.

I mean that the Commons should host data that is shared by various Wikimedia
projects. Storing a single copy of all taxobox and element data (just two
examples) would be a great use of the Commons.

-- mav

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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> The Tree of Life project's aim has always been to write about all
> species. I think that ambitious aim has been part of the reason for its
> success in becoming the largest wikiproject (tens of thousands of
> articles), with the most contributors.

I fully support this, as I think it is an absolutely excellent thing
to be doing.

> I am personally disappointed that you want to put a stop to that -
> presumably coming up with some guideline so that *some* species are
> allowed articles, but not all.

Huh?  Why would we put a stop to that?  Why would we come up with
guidelines to prohibit some species from wikipedia?  I do not support
any such thing.

> It also rides against the overwhelming consensus of this thread, as
> mentioned in my other post. Whatever their position on wikispecies,
> on-one has suggested crippling wikipedia.

Especially not me!  I wonder if you misunderstood something I said,
because I absolutely agree that Wikipedia and the Tree of Life project
should have a very ambitious goal of every species.

If anything, it makes more sense to say that I think that WikiSpecies
should be "crippled" in that it should not have references to Tigger
and Jaws, because it is not a general encyclopedic reference work but
a specialized database.  But I don't accept that this amounts to
"crippling" anymore than wiktionary is crippled by our insisting that
a dictionary is not an encyclopedia.

--Jimbo


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Tabular data in Wikipedia (Wikispecies
	->	Wikicommons)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>We also have the same database design problems with interlanguage links, user
>accounts, and logins.
>
>
>
So we should fix these. Create a single database that contains
* interlanguage links (for all languages)
* user accounts/logins
* raw data for species/elements/whatever

Interlanguage links would have to be extracted and removed from the
articles and put into an extra textbox on editing, which IMHO would be
an improvement.

Local user accounts can stay as they are, but have a "user_global_id"
field that, when non-zero, uses the global instead of the local one.
User accounts with the same name *and* password can be automatically
merged into a global account once.

Raw data would at least need these fields
* type (species, element, etc.)
* ID (latin species name, for example)
* key
* value

Personally, I would include the wikicommons project into that design, so
we have a central database for images and multimedia at the same place.

Magnus


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject:
Wiki-login [was: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Tabular data in Wikipedia
	(Wikispecies->	Wikicommons)]

body:
So, can I simply have one login, and access every wiki-project, and every
language wiki, without having to re-register for every single one?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Magnus Manske
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 4:31 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Tabular data in Wikipedia (Wikispecies->
Wikicommons)

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>We also have the same database design problems with interlanguage
>links, user accounts, and logins.
>
>
>
So we should fix these. Create a single database that contains
* interlanguage links (for all languages)
* user accounts/logins
* raw data for species/elements/whatever

Interlanguage links would have to be extracted and removed from the articles
and put into an extra textbox on editing, which IMHO would be an
improvement.

Local user accounts can stay as they are, but have a "user_global_id"
field that, when non-zero, uses the global instead of the local one.
User accounts with the same name *and* password can be automatically merged
into a global account once.

Raw data would at least need these fields
* type (species, element, etc.)
* ID (latin species name, for example)
* key
* value

Personally, I would include the wikicommons project into that design, so we
have a central database for images and multimedia at the same place.

Magnus
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body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> To pick a more typical example at random from Josh Grosse's recent
> contributions page - how should wikimedia treat ''Naegleria fowleri''?

In a fully comprehensive and encyclopedic manner including adherence
to NPOV and links to relevant other areas of knowledge that may
interest the reader.

If Naegleria fowleri makes an appearance on The Simpsons as a dancing
mailman from Perth, Australia, we should discuss that in the
encyclopedia article, although such a fact ought to be omitted from a
scientific reference work.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.  Wikispecies is a species directory;
these are not the same thing.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Link placeholder problems

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The link placeholders are causing lots of problems in 1.4: links that do
> not appear in the body text end up with the placeholder comments but are
> never replaced with the actual links.
>
> For example, the user name in the subtitle for Special:Contributions.
> This may be behind http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/206 also.
>
> This is kind of a problem. Do we need a way to turn the placeholdering
> on and off, or should we have distinct makeLink* functions for making
> placeholder links?

The sequence of events should be:

* Text is added to the buffer, including placeholder comments
* OutputPage::output is called
   - Placeholders are processed
   - Placeholders are turned off using $sk->postParseLinkColour(false)
   - Control is passed to $sk->outputPage()
      - Navigation links are constructed by calling Skin::makeLink() and
        outputting them directly, no more post-processing is done

Anything else is a bug, most likely introduced after I did my initial
testing of this feature.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
I understand Mav's reservations, even though I'm for a wikispecies.  Why
don't we simply have a trial w-species on that wikispecies.org site, try out
a few interface designs, and back-end stuff, and see if it'll work?  That
way, it won't be a wikiproject, but it will still exist and let people use
it, see if it's popular/used enough, and if it gets the go-ahead from
Media-Wiki, move whatever was done over to Media-Wiki.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 5:07 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

> --- Benedikt Mandl <benedikt.mandl at gmx.at> wrote:
> > The defined target refered to the question whether wikispecies
> > should
> cover
> > all species that were described or not. It would be wonderful if
> > this
> was
> > possible, but yet it is too big of a project to define - others have
> done
> > that before and failed (see the busted http://www.all-species.org/).
> >
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
> OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed.

Great - then let's have a look why "ALL species" failed:
1.) They started with a lot of noise, collected a lot of money and several
people as full term staff
2.) They rented offices as head quarters and hired experts to do some
programming for a search engine
3.) They wasted money on meetings, conventions and media events without
realising that they were - due to their organisational structure - totally
dependent on financial confidence
4.) The donations decreased after the dot-com crash
5.) Their targets were simply insane - a website for every existing species
within a human generation sounds nice in "New Scientist", but lacks of
feasibility
6.) They busted - much ado about nothing

I don't see any mistake that Wikispecies would make in a similar manner.
Another thing we can learn from www.all-species.org: there is a whole list
of the most eminent taxonomists, all of them supporting the idea of a
central database of species, indicating an urgent need for that. They all
took on the patronage (whatever that means in "ALL species" terms). Mav: HOW
MANY OF THEM DO YOU THINK SUPPORT A GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA? How many of them
already support the ToL in public?

We need a seperat approach to the species project in addition to wikipedia.
This is the only way to attract specialist authors and users. Mav, you made
it clear that you don't like wikispecies. Many other people disagree with
you and I think you should respect their wish for a wikispecies without
coming up with inappropriate brabbling about a "war".

Benedikt

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subject: Tree of Life [was: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!]

body:
I went to the Tree of Life page - thanks for the link, btw.  I thought it
was a Wiki project, and thus housed on a wiki-site (wikitol.com or something
like that).  It's nice, but a wikispecies would, I think, be easier to
navigate.  That's simply how I've seen the wikis to be.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 7:09 AM
To: wpmail at pcbartlett.com; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

> 1) A review of similar projects on the web. Particularly:
> -- ITIS is a US government database - is it public domain. Would it be
> usable?
> -- What happened to the data from the crippled allspecies project?
> Could it be released and used?
> -- Tolweb? Who is behind it? How are they doing? Would they welcome
> co-operation?

An evalutation of that was already done to some extend. I know ITIS and its
European equivalent IPNI, both very good ressources and probably supportive.
Species2000 is based on other species bases who certainly got money at least
in some cases for providing their data. ALL species released nothing apart
from big noise and therefore, I would personally not expect much more than
addresses with people who might support us. They still maintain an office
via the Californian Academy of Sciences, but don't do much. I will check
out Tolweb. So far, I'd say that Fishbase.org is the most advanced database
in a similar manner as WikiSpecies should be.
>
> 2) Funding. A db devoted to species is much more likely to be eligible
> for certain funding than a general project. E.g. tolweb is basically
> funded by NSF grants (http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/funding.html).
> Could/should wikispecies take advantage in a way that wikipedia
> hasn't/can't?

Funding: I created a list of potential supporters, covering government
grants, private foundations, museums, universities and individuals who might
provide us with funding. The problem is, that several projects were based on
donations and public funding and didn't take off properly (ALL species,
Species2000). All successful bases (IPNI, fishbase.org) were at least
started as non-commercial, more than less public directories. I dont want to
release the list, as I don't think that funding will be neccessary to get
started - and a pain to get unless we have something to show.
>
> 3) Target audience. The target audience should be scientists and the
> information contained should be scientific. This will attract
> scientists to the project. Otherwise it overlaps with the current WP
> project too much.
>
Yes and no - in combination with wikipedia and wiktionary I am sure that
WikiSpecies will become a valuable and accepted ressource for many non-
professional users as well. See fishbase: it is scientific, done by
scientist, but highly aprreciated by divers, nature lovers, marinists and
even aquarium-fetishists.

> 4) A commitment to develop the WikiDB module as mentioned by Tim
> Starling. I don't think using plain MediaWiki would be good enough for
> wikispecies - implementing in terms of categories and templates would
> be a bit hackish for the purposes required. A proper db would reduce
> the overlap with WPToL.
>
> 5) A commitment that the information would be GDFL compatible.
>
Most of taxonomic data is open and public anyway.

Thank you for the input. I am looking forward on more feedback and support.
Best,

Benedikt

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body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Jimbo - *all* the info at
> http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Carcharodon&speciesname=carcharias
> should be in our corresponding Wikipedia article (along with the other stuff
> you mention).

Absolutely.

> *Why* in the world would we want to
> 1) Not have that info in Wikipedia but have it it a separate project

I don't think anyone has suggested that we should not have such
information in Wikipedia.  We should.

> 2) Have it in both places and thus have to maintain it in both places

This is clearly a point against WikiSpecies, but I don't find it a
very compelling point.  The kind of scientific information in
WikiSpecies does not change that rapidly for most species, and in any
event, it will be very simple for contributors to copy from one
resource to the other...

It is important to understand that we don't control the question of
whether or not WikiSpecies will exist.  It will.  We can either do it
in-house, in which case the task of updating from one to the other can
be greatly simplified by software and common culture (i.e. Wikispecies
contributors will be Wikimedians, we will all know each other, we can
find common solutions).

> There is zero reason to have a specialized project when specialized
> info is already most welcome in Wikipedia (usually in the form of
> summaries that lead to more detailed treatments on separate
> articles).

We have testimony from biologists who are eager to work on the project
that they would find it useful.  Presumably, they understand that a
general purpose encyclopedia will cover much of the same ground and
more besides.  It's just a different _kind_ of work, with a different
_purpose_ and a different _audience_.

> Every example I've seen about what the entries in this proposed fork
> will consist of could be incorporated into one of more current (or
> in the case of Wikimedia Commons) planned Wikimedia projects.

Is wiktionary a fork because the content in wiktionary could be
incorporated into wikipedia?  I don't see how.  It's a different sort
of work, and it is valuable *even if* we could legitimately have a
full encyclopedia article about every word in every language,
including such information as etymology, pronunciations, etc.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Technical problems with images originating on Mac
	OS X	on UTF-8 Wikipedia

body:
Peter Jacobi wrote:
> Since switching de.wikipedia to UTF-8 a problem with image uploads
>  from Mac OS X surfaced. The Mac OS X filesystem, IMHO contrary to
> most other ones, stores the filenames in decomposed Unicode.

This seems to be a problem specific to how Safari handles the names on
upload; other browsers normalise the name properly when sending, but of
course we should be more careful with input.

Follow-ups to http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/215 please.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

body:
According to the article [[meta:mailinglist]] the purpose of the
Wikipedia-I mailing list is: "for issues concerning more than one
Wikipedia, but not concerning the sister-projects".

Therefore I fail to see why the ToL, which is an en: resource, would
serve as reason _not_ to start WikiSpecies. When people think that it
takes away from the ToL, they fail to consider that the effort that goes
into WikiSpecies may not be effort that does not go into en: but that it
may take effort away from nl: or de: or fr:

They fail to remember that the first taxobox with the {{regnum}},
{{species}} syntax was brought to you in [[nl:Pos]] and translated for
you as [[en:Ruffe]]. The point being that the potential for better
cooperation with other wikipedia was brought to the en:ToL. When it was
asked to discuss the look and feel of the Taxobox to make it pallatable
for the de:, fr:, nl: and other wikipedia, the answer was NO, see our
history we do not want that, democratic decision.

One argument used is that: forking is not wanted. The argument that a
server with loads of diskspace exists that can be used to host something
like WikiSpecies will propably only get a "well that is ok, because it
is outside wikimedia, nothing to do with us".

Conclusion:
*The arguments against are en: based have little or no relevance to
other wikipedia and are, because of its purpose, of litle relevance to
this list.
*WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
mailing list to decide what is going to happen.
*The danger of forking outside Wikimedia is real, this to happen is the
worst case scenario, because it will mean that a potentially valuable
resource will be lost to all wikipedia not just to en:.
*When a fork happens, ask yourself did it have to do with you, and are
you comfortable with it?

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Benedikt Mandl

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
> --- Benedikt Mandl <benedikt.mandl at gmx.at> wrote:
> > The defined target refered to the question whether wikispecies should
> cover
> > all species that were described or not. It would be wonderful if this
> was
> > possible, but yet it is too big of a project to define - others have
> done
> > that before and failed (see the busted http://www.all-species.org/).
> >
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
> OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed.

Great - then let's have a look why "ALL species" failed:
1.) They started with a lot of noise, collected a lot of money and several
people as full term staff
2.) They rented offices as head quarters and hired experts to do some
programming for a search engine
3.) They wasted money on meetings, conventions and media events without
realising that they were - due to their organisational structure - totally
dependent on financial confidence
4.) The donations decreased after the dot-com crash
5.) Their targets were simply insane - a website for every existing species
within a human generation sounds nice in "New Scientist", but lacks of
feasibility
6.) They busted - much ado about nothing

I don't see any mistake that Wikispecies would make in a similar manner.
Another thing we can learn from www.all-species.org: there is a whole list
of the most eminent taxonomists, all of them supporting the idea of a
central database of species, indicating an urgent need for that. They all
took on the patronage (whatever that means in "ALL species" terms). Mav: HOW
MANY OF THEM DO YOU THINK SUPPORT A GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA? How many of them
already support the ToL in public?

We need a seperat approach to the species project in addition to wikipedia.
This is the only way to attract specialist authors and users. Mav, you made
it clear that you don't like wikispecies. Many other people disagree with
you and I think you should respect their wish for a wikispecies without
coming up with inappropriate brabbling about a "war".

Benedikt

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Mike Halterman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mintguy RFC

body:
I figure if the television naming order was important enough, he'd let other people have their collective say and then the voting would show it either way. He's just cutting off his nose to spite his face.

-Mike H

Eugene Gill <minty at keergill.wanadoo.co.uk> wrote:

I think Netohlic's recent behaviour is beneath contempt. Not this spurious RFC,
I can live with that. But his disgraceful behaviour in overuling most other
peoples wishes on the television naming convention page and claiming a
consensus that doesn't exist. It is just totally out of order. But as I am now
the subject of this RFC I don't feel I can rectify the situation without
drawing more fire.

Mintguy

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from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] Energywiki - new sister project (off of home page)

body:
> >
> > If I wanted to get a new sister project started off of the home page,
> > who would I talk to? What would I do? The project I have in mind doesn't exactly
> > fit any of the categories listed, yet I feel it would be a useful addition.
> >
> > so - do I write a proposal? Discuss it on this mailing list? Go through meta-wiki?
> > Or some other method?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ed
>
> You could elaborate on your proposed sister project here on the
> mailing. I'm personally curious what you have in mind and I'm sure if
> we knew more about it we could better direct you to someone.

ok, here goes.. (I'll keep it brief)

I'm pretty dismayed about the energy situation out there, and in particular,
how popular literature has distorted the energy picture for either
economic or political agendas.

Hence, I'm trying to create a 'comprehensive energy picture' that is as
free as agendas as possible. The idea is to get the 'big ideas and numbers'
and put them in a format that makes it easy for the average educated
reader to understand, and give ideas to mitigate the upcoming disruption
as much as possible. Then, to distribute them as *wide* as possible -
the goal is to make it a focal point for people's discussion, and cover
energy issues from all perspectives.

I've talked to a hell of a lot of energy analysts in various disciplines, and
have come to the conclusion that the best way to do this would be via wiki.
The project would consist of two parts:

    1) an open, public wiki that is in the form of hierarchical discussion pages
       which sort out basic facts and principles.

    2) paper publication(s) based on the first wiki, also in wiki form (I'm in the
       process of writing a wiki based on the mediawiki schema which provides
       services like pagination, typesetting and index support. When its ready
       I'll release it under the GPL).

The second one(s) would be endorsed, supported, and if possible edited by
as recognizable names as possibly can be found - hopefully due to the large
public reach of wiki, we could get someone or someones *very* recognizable.
Anything to make the public at large listen.

Anyway, comments are welcome, but right now what I'd like to do is create an
outline for #1 online - basically dump my brain of all the research
that I've done, and make a framework for further research. Could I get a
public wiki-space - separate from the home pages and other sister projects -
to start with?

Ed

(
ps - ultimately, this project could encompass other topics - like education,
health care, etc... call it 'policywiki' or 'wikipol'.

But to me, energy is by *far* the most important and IMO deserves an icon by itself
off the main page. Energy issues could seriously derail us - anyone who has
heard of Hubbert's peak and then looked at American energy policy knows that.

We are so seriously out of whack with reality that its bound to hit us. Its just
a question of how hard.
)


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

body:
VfD is not broken, as is proven by the numbers of people who use it.  What's broken is the idea that anything and everything goes on Wikipedia.

RickK

Anthony DiPierro <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, even though the class assignment required that the articles
created by the students meet Wikipedia
> requirements, now that most of them have been listed on VfD, the
instructor is trying to claim that they do meet our
> requirements. It seems if the vast majority of the articles have made it
to VfD, then not only has the majority of the class
> failed the assignment, but the instructor doesn't understand the nature of
Wikipedia. If the majority of a class fails an
> assignment, that has to say something about the instructor, as well.

> RickK

Says something about how well we explain our requirements as well. Or in
this case, how well we agree on our requirements. Most of the articles
listed *did* meet our requirements. VfD is broken. It probably never
worked in the first place.

Anthony
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

body:
Thank you very much for your reply Benedikt.

Hopefully most of the issues are getting in the open now.

If, by some dint of magic, I were left in charge of deciding whether
wikispecies became a wikimedia project, here are the things I would want
to see/know about. (Some of this is just a collection of other comments
in this thread)

1) A review of similar projects on the web. Particularly:
-- ITIS is a US government database - is it public domain. Would it be
usable?
-- What happened to the data from the crippled allspecies project? Could
it be released and used?
-- Tolweb? Who is behind it? How are they doing? Would they welcome
co-operation?

2) Funding. A db devoted to species is much more likely to be eligible
for certain funding than a general project. E.g. tolweb is basically
funded by NSF grants (http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/funding.html).
Could/should wikispecies take advantage in a way that wikipedia
hasn't/can't?

3) Target audience. The target audience should be scientists and the
information contained should be scientific. This will attract scientists
to the project. Otherwise it overlaps with the current WP project too much.

4) A commitment to develop the WikiDB module as mentioned by Tim
Starling. I don't think using plain MediaWiki would be good enough for
wikispecies - implementing in terms of categories and templates would be
a bit hackish for the purposes required. A proper db would reduce the
overlap with WPToL.

5) A commitment that the information would be GDFL compatible.

6) There should be a defined mechanism for importing wikispecies
information into wikipedia. I envisage the current ToL taxoboxes being
currently replaced with information imported from wikispecies using some
sort of filter. Alongside this import would sit a more waffly
description of the species and less scientific-relevant information. The
import process should be automated as possible, and preferably entirely
automatic and in real-time (though this would require an extension to
the MW software). This import should be designed to work with
non-English Wikipedias as far as is possible. It would not be acceptable
to just have links to Wikispecies. It must be more integrated to avoid
duplication of effort.

But, I'm not in charge, so the above is nothing more than just my thoughts

Pete/Pcb21

Benedikt Mandl wrote:
> Would the new project be GFDL? Would it be easy to transfer contents
> to/from Wikipedia? How would we ensure that effort is not duplicated
> between the two projects? Do you have suggestions for improvements to
> the ToL project?
>
> I understand that the information collected by the ToL project will indeed
> overlap to a big extent with the wikispecies directory, but that might turn
> out as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. As you said, the ToL
> presents information in a prosaic way as it is suitable for an encyclopedia.
> If wikispecies should become a reference for all users (including
> scientists), however, there are some points you need to consider:
>
> 1.) A clear sturcture as the one presented previously would be crucial for a
> specific (mind the play on words - specific) search; and that is imortant to
> attract professional users
>
> 2.) The sheer amount and uniformness of the bio-data would justify a
> separate access to the information
>
> 3.) A separate platform does NOT mean that wikispecies will have to be
> segregated from the wikipedia. Rather the opposite: wikispecies websites
> should use the same layout and should be accessible from wikipedia by normal
> search. More advanced users, however, would search with more detailed tools
> from the "wikispecies.org" portal.
>
> So far, the ToL is ambitous, but doesn't serve the purpose of a wikispecies
> that should be organised in taxonomic terms and trees and deal exclusively
> for biological contents.
>
> It is not meant to compete with wikipedia, but rather branch out of it
> without being a separate unit. I am looking forward to your support! By the
> way: most people who already assured me of their support were people who
> work as authors for wikipedia in bio-related subjects. Best,
>
> Benedikt
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
I've never understood the mentality that it's okay to keep trash articles around for some unknown period of time.  Months, now?!  Do you not understand what it says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?  How are we supposed to maintain even the idea that we're creating a real, useable encyclopedia if anybody is allowed to put whatever trash they want to put into it and nobody seems to be the least motivated to clean it up?

RickK

Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

> [...]

> Who cares if there's a page up for a month or so lauding the wonders
> of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center? These article all fall squarely
> in the "borderline" category. Get them cleaned up, but we don't need
> to drop everything and do it right away.

This should be tattooed on the back of each hand of every Wikipedian,
so it's visible while typing. :-)

Going by comments I've seen, I think it feeds some people's egos
to believe that they're saving WP's reputation from certain doom
by quick listing of obscure articles on VfD - but WP's reputation
is really made or broken by the quality of content in the articles
of general interest, since those are the ones that readers find.

Another thing that I see is a sense of urgency, as if all the
editing is going to come to a stop in 24 hours, and everything
needs to be perfect by then. Even some oldtimers seem to act
as if they don't really believe WP will be around next year,
the year after, and the year after that. (It will, right? :-) )

Stan

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body:
I really agree with Jens's idea here, this is an excellent idea.

RickK

Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
PS:
==Can WE learn from this?==
It's in our interest to gather more potential future contributors and
initiatives like this would have been an excellent opportunity to
"recruit".
Maybe we should think about how we can more prominently feature
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] -- Suggestion: Main Page
link "Educators - click here".
And then we should figure out what info we can write into
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] to avoid such fiascos in
the future?
Sounds good?

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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mailing List Software

body:
Does anybody know of any free or low-cost way to set up a mailing list?
My church's seminary wants me to set up and run a mailing list for its
900 alumni (based in part on the glowing recommendations I've gotten
from you all here *blush*).

Big problem: they only know Windows.

Is there anything on the Web, or is it better to have one's own mail
server, or what?

(And should I cross-post this to the Wikitech list?)

Ed Poor
Admin Emeritus
Wikipedia-EN Mailing List


from_name: Marco Krohn

body:
On Wednesday 25 August 2004 11:05, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> *WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
> mailing list to decide what is going to happen.

up to now a Wikipedia sister-project meant that its content is (mostly)
disjoint with the content of any other Wikipedia project. That means that an
article is either in A  or in B (or = exclusive or).

The proposed project "wikispecies" will have a huge overlap with existing
Wikipedia articles. Therefore using the term sister-project is IMHO wrong,
and calling it a "partial fork" is much closer to reality.

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
I don't mind the name change, though I don't like: 1-the idea that anybody can remove the tag; and 2-the two-step process.  Let's just leave it as the same process, with some name tweaking and some change to the {{vfd}} template that makes it clear that the process is going to last 5 days from X date.

RickK

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
a) Change the name of Votes for Deletion to something like Editorial Review.

I like this a lot, as I like the entire process suggested by Dpsmith a lot. It is a step toward greter quality control without being a radical departure from our Wiki norms. I heartily second the entire proposal.

Danny
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body:
Marco Krohn wrote:

>On Wednesday 25 August 2004 11:05, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>
>>*WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
>>mailing list to decide what is going to happen.
>>
>>
>
>up to now a Wikipedia sister-project meant that its content is (mostly)
>disjoint with the content of any other Wikipedia project. That means that an
>article is either in A  or in B (or = exclusive or).
>
>The proposed project "wikispecies" will have a huge overlap with existing
>Wikipedia articles. Therefore using the term sister-project is IMHO wrong,
>and calling it a "partial fork" is much closer to reality.
>
>best regards,
>  Marco
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
Which wikipedia articles are you talking about? en:articles de:articles
? Should nl: articles not be written because they have an overlap with
de: or en:? WikiSpecies will if anything provide a resource for all
wikipedia.

Thanks,
  GerardM


body:
 I wouldn't mind having the current wiki catergory system expanded to
include (for biology) the various taxonomic categories of a life-form
(Kingdom, Phylum, Sub-phylum....Genus, Species).  That would (I think) allow
someone to search for a creature or article based on its scientific name.  I
don't, however see it as dividing the biology base, but rather, allowing
them to create a basic directory, which the wikipedia expounds upon, with
links from the wikispecies article on, say, felis domesticus [having basic
scientific information], linking to the wikipedia article for more prosaic
style, distribution around the world, role in mythology, cat-worship in
ancient Egypt, etc.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 11:57 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

[[snip]]

> When fully developed, a wikispecies directory will be a delightful
> resource work as a standalone *and* a nice foundation for *some*
> encyclopedia articles.  But the two are not identical.

Our current category system could be extended to create such a directory
*within* Wikipedia. Dividing our biology contributor base between two
separate projects that have a great deal of overlap is a HUGE mistake.

-- Daniel

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from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>But I'd like to offer another interpretation - there is no confidence
>these suspicious edits will be found or caught later. And that can bug
>certain types of people. Of all the mechanisms Wikipedia has for
>tracking changes and edits, perhaps the weakest is how to allow new
>entires to linger for a specified period and grow, and then come back
>to evaluate later. For many, "check it later" means "check it never."
>
>
I think this is definitely true, and not just because people misperceive
that they have to act now.  Things get caught on recent changes and new
articles, but if they don't get caught there, they often essentially
never get caught.  When using the "random pages" feature (as I do quite
a bit), I've run into complete junk, sometimes outright vandalism (like
"bob is gay") that has been there since _2002_.

Cleanup is supposed to address some of this problem, but I'm not
qualified to say whether it's worked or not.

-Mark


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pcw, cathedrals, and the bizarre

body:
> From: Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

> Now maybe User:Pcw was
> just a bit unfamiliar with the entire copyleft, open-source-philosophy,
> Bazaar-and-Cathedral, Free Documentation and community collaboration
> thing.

I couldn't stand the suspense so I emailed him, and pcw at flyzone.com confirms
that he, Wikipedia User:Pcw, and the the Peter Wayner who wrote the books
list at http://www.wayner.org/books are indeed, as I surmised, all the same
person.

His book, "Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut
the High-Tech Titans" can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons
license.

It is 351 pages long.

A good deal of its subject matter is subtleties in the respective approaches
of Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond. One index entry is:

"Cathedral and the Bazaar, The? (Raymond), 107?11, 112?13, 172, 221.

:-)


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Which wikipedia articles are you talking about? en:articles de:articles
> ? Should nl: articles not be written because they have an overlap with
> de: or en:? WikiSpecies will if anything provide a resource for all
> wikipedia.
Sister projects are Wikipedia-Wikisource-Wikiquote-Wikibooks-Wictionary.
The different languages have nothing to do with sister projects, every
one of the project may be available in different languages.

The Wikispecies has overlap with both the Wikipedia and Wikisource
project. The problems I see so far:
- The plain language description, photos, range maps, taxonomic
classification are territory covered by Wikipedia
- The original description of the taxon like the one you posted in
another thread, as well as a (complete) list of references would not fit
into a the Wikipedia, such better fit into something like Wikisource
- For obscure taxons the Wikispecies article would only contain such
source information, in Wikipedia it'd be something like a stub without
any hope of growing (until someone researches that taxon), thus it'd
clutter the database and might be better as a redirect to the
upper-level taxon.
- Something similar applies to one-child taxons like living fossils,
where a species is is only one of a family. All the upper level taxons
only have the taxonomic data as contents.
- And we have the searching enhancements which are specially needed for
the taxnomic database to be useful for professional use. It might be
possible to generalize them to make them usable outside the
ToL-articles, so no harm in creating them in Wikipedia as well.
- At least in some languages it has fixed common names assigned to a
species (or higher taxons). Yet in Wikipedia we can only use those for
interwiki links once it already has the target article - an ugly way to
put them into the article before would be interwiki-links hidden by
HTML-comments.

I second Mavs concerns about forking, yet including all of the
Wikispecies contents (as I understand it) into Wikipedia would be
stretching the rules as well. One possible (but not really beautiful)
way I could see is to put the source and database stuff into the
separate Wikispecies, but put the plain text stuff and basic in
Wikipedia - and of course closely link the two.

However I am not sure if this discussion in the mailing list is really
the best place - meta might be better. Not all ToL contributors,
especially not those from the other languages, are ready the mailing list.

[[User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>This issue with Darmouth brings into the present a something I've thought
>about concerning Wikipedia for some time.
>
>On the one side, there is a real concern for the quality of content, which
>is clearly under attack from many quarters. Wackos who believe that it is
>electrical radiation that imposes the speed of light as the ultimate limit
>of acceleration, who insist that the Wikipedian philosphy of accepting all
>POVs means that we have to include their own "unique" POV; people who are
>obsessed at defending their national pride by insisting that a fellow
>citizen actually invented the toaster; the trolls who enjoy stirring the
>pot by seing just how plausible they can make an unreasonable argument
>sound; & countless individuals who believe that the act of reverting any
>edit trumps any argument, no matter how well argued.
>
I generally agree with this assessment, but something is missing here in
the context of the Dartmouth controversy.  These disputes tend to fall
into a number of consistent themes.  This one did not involve wacko
science or political partisanship.  Instead it was an issue of whether
the articles were important enough to include in Wikipedia.  There were
a significant number of articles involved, presumably one from each
class member.  The person leading the deletion squad may have engaged in
discussions with one of the students.  (I don't know for sure that he
did),  From there he sought to apply that discussion to all the others
who may not have had a fair chance to defend their articles.

What is important is much more difficult to define.  With wacko science
it is fairly easy to point to an underlying fallacy in the proponent's
thinking.  With political dissension there are often two (at least)
clearly identifiable and opposing points of view.  What are the
objective criteria for determining what is important?  Dartmouth is one
college in a relatively unpopulous state of the United States.  The
number of people to whom this material is personally important is bound
to be small.  It will be even smaller for the high schools that some
have sought to include.  It will still be small for the university that
has the highest enrollment in the world.

The "Wiki is not paper" principle favours a much broader interpretation
of important.  We are not restricted by the physical limitations of a
paper encyclopedia.  We can afford to bring importance to a more local
level.

>Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if that
>person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider her/him/it a
>troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on VfD & revert all of
>her/his/its edits as "vandalism".
>
The first question that should precede the cry of "vandalism" should be,
"Is this person acting in good faith?"  It's understandable that a lot
of the common vandalism will come from IP numbers, and that we should
continue to view those contributions with some suspicion, but that's not
an excuse for failing to read their articles objectively.

>On the other side, there is the low barrier of entry to Wikipedia that
>Academia lacks -- allowing the well-read amateur to add vital new information
>that might not make it into other fora because it does not have (1) the
>right credentials attached; (2) observe the right prevalent orthodoxy; or
>(3) simply needs a little more coaching -- which an isolated amateur or
>"info-nerd" won't find any other way. There is something admittedly daunting
>about Academia & profesional research that intimidates beginners -- who
>too often discover that the professionals realy aren't that professional
>in terms of resources, behavior, or analysis.
>
The low barrier is one of our most valuable features, and probably the
feature most responsible for Wikipedia's phenomenal growth.

I have shared your view of "professionals" since long before I ever
heard of Wikipedia.  We may have set our sights on the academics, but
they are not the only problematical professionals.  The intimidation is
far more widespread, and what we are doing is only the beginning of this
revolution.  I am amazed and amused when I see someone on this list
prefacing his comments about copyright with "but IANAL".

>However Wikipedia, by its "less than perfect, but better than it was
>before" approach helps to demolish this elitist misconception.
>
>One of the vital dynamics to Wikipedia is fact that to make any edit stick,
>one has to be willing to engage in a conversation about it. One has to not
>only convince an audience that a given POV is plausible, but that the
>person advocating it is credible & reasonable. Unfortunately, not all who
>come to add to Wikipedia are willing to engage in a conversation about their
>contributions (nationalists being a prime example of this reluctance, but
>everyone is guilty of this reluctance at one time or another), but hopefully
>those of us who understand the importance of this dynamic will continue to
>advocate it, & keep Wikipedia vibrant despite all of the pressures against
>it.
>
I accept that dynamic, but it needs to be bilateral.  Even if we assume
that the newbie has grasped the mechanics of Wikipedia to the point
where he knows how talk pages function, he needs to be made to feel that
his ideas are treated with respect.  There's a big difference between
enterring a discussion as equals on the article's talk page in a one on
one conversation, and the immediate need to defend one's views on a VfD
page.  Before the newbie knows what's happening he is already facing a
half-dozen votes to delete his article, many of which are accompanied by
rude comments that trivialize his efforts.  He knows nothing about the
status and influence of the voters beyond the fact that they have been
around longer than he has.  Sysops in particular need the patience to
realize that they may have gone over the same arguments many times with
many people, but that this is the first time that they have done it with
this particular individual.

>And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this ideal
>is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be taught to the
>rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV, we should be
>willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a fair & beneficial
>exchange between them.
>
Ideally yes, but there is still a significant segment of Western
Civilization that has yet to learn this.  Those who use their membership
in a Western Civilization as an argument in support of their POV have
not learned it.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

body:
> 1) A review of similar projects on the web. Particularly:
> -- ITIS is a US government database - is it public domain. Would it be
> usable?
> -- What happened to the data from the crippled allspecies project? Could
> it be released and used?
> -- Tolweb? Who is behind it? How are they doing? Would they welcome
> co-operation?

An evalutation of that was already done to some extend. I know ITIS and
its European equivalent IPNI, both very good ressources and probably
supportive. Species2000 is based on other species bases who certainly got
money at least in some cases for providing their data. ALL species
released nothing apart from big noise and therefore, I would personally
not expect much more than addresses with people who might support us. They
still maintain an office via the Californian Academy of Sciences, but
don't do much. I will check  out Tolweb. So far, I'd say that Fishbase.org
is the most advanced database in a similar manner as WikiSpecies should
be.
>
> 2) Funding. A db devoted to species is much more likely to be eligible
> for certain funding than a general project. E.g. tolweb is basically
> funded by NSF grants (http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/funding.html).
> Could/should wikispecies take advantage in a way that wikipedia
> hasn't/can't?

Funding: I created a list of potential supporters, covering government
grants, private foundations, museums, universities and individuals who
might provide us with funding. The problem is, that several projects were
based on donations and public funding and didn't take off properly (ALL
species, Species2000). All successful bases (IPNI, fishbase.org) were at
least started as non-commercial, more than less public directories. I dont
want to release the list, as I don't think that funding will be neccessary
to get started - and a pain to get unless we have something to show.
>
> 3) Target audience. The target audience should be scientists and the
> information contained should be scientific. This will attract scientists
> to the project. Otherwise it overlaps with the current WP project too
> much.
>
Yes and no - in combination with wikipedia and wiktionary I am sure that
WikiSpecies will become a valuable and accepted ressource for many non-
professional users as well. See fishbase: it is scientific, done by
scientist, but highly aprreciated by divers, nature lovers, marinists and
even aquarium-fetishists.

> 4) A commitment to develop the WikiDB module as mentioned by Tim
> Starling. I don't think using plain MediaWiki would be good enough for
> wikispecies - implementing in terms of categories and templates would be
> a bit hackish for the purposes required. A proper db would reduce the
> overlap with WPToL.
>
> 5) A commitment that the information would be GDFL compatible.
>
Most of taxonomic data is open and public anyway.

Thank you for the input. I am looking forward on more feedback and
support. Best,

Benedikt

--
NEU: Bis zu 10 GB Speicher f?r e-mails & Dateien!
1 GB bereits bei GMX FreeMail http://www.gmx.net/de/go/mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Taxoboxes.

body:
To make the Taxobox language-independent, why not use Latin?  Isn't that
what is the standard?  Anything making the taxobox easier is welcome.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 12:34 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Taxoboxes.

One of the better longtime contributors on nl:wikipedia
[[nl:Gebruiker:Roepers]] mentioned today that he is not willing to spend
time anymore on taxoboxes. The time needed to create them takes too long and
he said that somebody else can do it. If this does not happen he will not
mind.

The reasons he gives are:
"* There is no agreement among taxonomists about what is correct. It is hard
to express these descrepancies.
 *Creating a taxobox is hard even for people with experience  *They take up
much room and they replace text.
 *New Taxobox technology continues to be created, the old ones are not
upgraded to the latest version  *Creating a taxobox is dreary work and, who
is interested in them anyway."

Copying a taxobox from en: to nl: takes a lot of time. It would be best to
have one taxobox that serves us all.

What is needed to create a truly standard Taxobox?

The Taxobox has to be language independent.
The Taxobox has to be acceptable to multiple wikipedia The diverse wikipedia
have to be willing to work together to create this standard Taxobox.

At this moment in time people turn there back on ToL things in other
wikipedia because things are not as easy as they can be.
At the same time we cry wolf because valuable resources may end up somewhere
else.

My challenge to all wikipedia people interested in biology and the ToL:
make taxoboxes so easy that it is just a matter of picking things up and
dropping them in the appropriate place. Make it usable for great people like
Roepers !!

Thanks,
   GerardM

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from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dartmouth follies

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> But I'd like to offer another interpretation - there is no confidence
> these suspicious edits will be found or caught later. And that can bug
> certain types of people. Of all the mechanisms Wikipedia has for
> tracking changes and edits, perhaps the weakest is how to allow new
> entires to linger for a specified period and grow, and then come back
> to evaluate later. For many, "check it later" means "check it never."

Perhaps we need a "Reminder" feature in Mediawiki. I.e. like the
watchlist, but for the future. You could mark an article as "remind me
in X days" and after a week you'll have a notification of it (like the
"you've got new messages" we have already)

Regards,
Stephan
[[User:Stw]]


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] WikiDB (was Re: Tabular data in Wikipedia
	(Wikispecies -> Wikicommons))

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> I think there is a growing sentiment that people do not want to fork
> Wikipedia to create Wikispecies.  This makes a lot of sense.  However, there
> is something important that is needed for Wikispecies which Wikipedia does
> not provide: efficient access of tabular data.

I was thinking along similar lines a couple of months ago, when
considering the needs of Wikiquote, and to a lesser extent Wiktionary.
The basic plan I came up with was:

* Each record is an arbitrary list of key-value pairs.
* User-designed edit forms and search forms constrain data entry to
particular fields
* User-designed display templates are used to format the data and
integrate it with other parts of the wiki
* Each field has an index, to allow fast searching and report generation.
* Indexes may be sparse, with most records not containing a given field.
I believe this can be efficiently handled by creating a separate table
for each key, on demand at runtime.

The technical design is subject to constraints such as:
* Robust against frivolous or malicious addition of new fields to a
small number of records
* Peer review and the reverting of any change must be easy
* Capable of efficiently storing a number of different schemas
(represented by different data entry, search and display forms) in the
one database.

Challenges which still have to be addressed include:
* Possibility of slow insert times
* Malicious or accidental destruction of fields which are commonly used
for indexed retrieval -- this may make records hard to find and revert.

Far be it from me to co-opt such a generic term as "WikiDB", I would
call this *a* WikiDB module for MediaWiki. The applications for such a
package would be extraordinarily broad. All that we need now is for me
(or someone else) to get motivated and write it.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

body:
The following was sent to me by Nikola Smolenski (thank you very much!).
I'm forwarding it to this list hopeing that someone can suggest the
proper way to get this into the CVS.

thanks, daniel.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Advancing the concept of categories
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:08:50 +0200
From: Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu>
To: Daniel Kinzler <daniel at brightbyte.de>
References: <20040824053338.75B8519503A4 at mail.wikimedia.org>
<412B7282.30307 at brightbyte.de>

Hi David!

On Tuesday 24 August 2004 18:53, Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> In the german WP, we have massive problems devising a consistent and
> useful pattern for categorisation. After some trying and discussiong, it
> seems that the software laks some features that would make categories a
> truly powerful tool of structuring the WP. So my question is how hard it
> would be to implement those features. Here are the once I personally
> (and quite a few others, too) feel are the most important:
>
> * Search over cross-sections of categories, an a sensible syntax for
> linking to such sections.

I have made a patch which does this, and Timwi did some improvement on
it, but
it is not commited for reasons unknown to me. See "Multiple categories"
thread at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/thread.html

The patch makes cross-sections by separating categories with / , for
example
Category:City/Germany gives a list of all cities in Germany. Someone
reported
that there are several (about 10 on all Wikipedias) categories which have /
in the name so perhaps there should be a vote on Meta about this (should
these categories be renamed or should some other separator be used and
which
one; Timwi suggested // ).

I really don't know how to convince someone with CVS access to commit this
patch. Perhaps a feature request should be made at wikizilla and voted for.

> * a concept of implicite membership in categories, such that members of
> a sub-categorie are automatically members of the parent-categorie(s)
> (transitive covers). For category-display, this should be optional. For
> cross sections, this should be the default behaviour.
>
> * A disctinction between a categorie being a subcategory, or just
> belonging to another categorie, just as Articles do.
>
> would it be feasable to put this features into the software? What would
> be the problems? how soom could we have such features?

It could probably be done, and I could do it, but I surely won't before the
first one is implemented.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
As someone who has done Wikipedia assignments for classes, I'll vouch
for the fact that it is notoriously hard to grade. Who did what, and
how do you measure it against what others have done? If it's a
pass/fail assignment that's one thing, but otherwise, it's very
complicated.

Also, putting in tags into the general article for the use of a single
class is not only nonscalable, but pretty disruptive. :)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:45:17 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 25 Aug 2004, at 02:50, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
> >  The instructor
> > commented that he didn't know how you could give an objective grade to
> > "improving an article."
>
> He doesn't know the history tool then.
> What's wrong with using something like this:
>
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
> title=Gray%27s_Anatomy&diff=5327961&oldid=5248468
>
> That's making it pretty obvious what to grade, IMHO.
>
> Yes, admittedly, if there are many edits by other's in between, then it
> might become difficult. -- But how about this:
> Instruct students to stick the {{inuse}} tagon the article they've
> chosen to improve (see [[Template:Inuse]]).
> IMPORTANT: Also instruct them not to leave that on there longer than a
> day!
>
> (Other then that, they could use the preview function and commit all in
> one go. Might be difficult though if they are using a certain thing
> called "MSIE", where with certain versions, if you press ESC within a
> text box it blanks the entire thing irrevocably). It might be better to
> have them use an external editor then, but that doesn't protect them
> from edit conflicts.
> So clearly the previous option is MUCH better.)
>
> - Jens [[User:Ropers]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Mav is right about wikispecies, and I propose also that we should say his
logic should apply to wiktionary.  We don't need a wiktionary, since all
that information is in the wikipedia already.  It's a duplication of
efforts, and dilutes our efforts and contributors's time.  Let's get rid of
it.

James

PS - I'm joking

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 1:30 PM
To: wpmail at pcbartlett.com; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> The Tree of Life project's aim has always been to write about all
> species. I think that ambitious aim has been part of the reason for
> its success in becoming the largest wikiproject (tens of thousands of
> articles), with the most contributors.

I fully support this, as I think it is an absolutely excellent thing to be
doing.

> I am personally disappointed that you want to put a stop to that -
> presumably coming up with some guideline so that *some* species are
> allowed articles, but not all.

Huh?  Why would we put a stop to that?  Why would we come up with guidelines
to prohibit some species from wikipedia?  I do not support any such thing.

> It also rides against the overwhelming consensus of this thread, as
> mentioned in my other post. Whatever their position on wikispecies,
> on-one has suggested crippling wikipedia.

Especially not me!  I wonder if you misunderstood something I said, because
I absolutely agree that Wikipedia and the Tree of Life project should have a
very ambitious goal of every species.

If anything, it makes more sense to say that I think that WikiSpecies should
be "crippled" in that it should not have references to Tigger and Jaws,
because it is not a general encyclopedic reference work but a specialized
database.  But I don't accept that this amounts to "crippling" anymore than
wiktionary is crippled by our insisting that a dictionary is not an
encyclopedia.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Mav is right about wikispecies, and I propose also that we should say his
> logic should apply to wiktionary.  We don't need a wiktionary, since all
> that information is in the wikipedia already.  It's a duplication of
> efforts, and dilutes our efforts and contributors's time.  Let's get rid of
> it.

That is a total strawman since Wiktionary defines *all* words or *all*
languages. There are only a small handful of words in Wikipedia that have
articles about them but they are *not* dictionary definitions, they are
encyclopedia articles.

Any other weak arguments?

-- Marv

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