Re: [WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On 18/12/10 07:18, Joseph Reagle wrote: On Thursday, December 16, 2010, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: I have the first 10K edits up reconstructed in their various pages at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~reagle/wp-redux/ I fixed some of the encoding issues. The DB dump contained different encodings. So, the encoding of each diff in the dump is independently now guessed using Python's CharDet (Universal Encoding Detector) library. I don't think this is the right approach. The server would have sent a MIME type of text/html, which means that it's effectively CP1252. Perhaps some broken browsers also submitted edits with some other character encoding. But everyone would have seen mojibake at the time, and so mojibake is what we should show in the archive. Any such issues would have been fixed by subsequent edits, and those edits won't make sense if you correct the encoding in the original edit. I've uploaded my latest attempt at converting the backup to XML: http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-2001-08-xml.7z The archive contains an invalid XML file, with control characters preserved, and a valid XML file, with control characters filtered. There's also a log file detailing the outstanding issues. The script is in Subversion. -- Tim Starling ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010, Tim Starling wrote: I don't think this is the right approach. The server would have sent a MIME type of text/html, which means that it's effectively CP1252. Yes, you are right, sticking with CP1252 does seem better. I've just updated 10K and many fewer diffs are dropped and the characters display correctly in my Web browser (such as the København article Martin Pedersen noted.) http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~reagle/wp-redux/ I've uploaded my latest attempt at converting the backup to XML: http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-2001-08-xml.7z I had a brief look, and I hope it will be useful as an intermediate transition for importing into a wiki, but I'm gonna stick with the original diff_log file for now since I've wasted so much time getting the line feeds and encoding issues sussed out, I don't want to add another layer of XML issues just yet. :-) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
Since Wikipedia grew and became more ambitious in its scope, there have been predictions of its downfall, many of them giving an estimate for the timescale of its demise. If you hunt around you may find a prediction by me that Wikipedia was unlikely to survive much beyond 2010 because I thought it would decline in populatrity. Since then Wikipedia has cemented itself into the fabric of modern culture and become particularly useful in academia, where its strengths and limitations are now well understood. Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm Wikipedia, it appears, was destined to die within four years--by December 5, 2010, because it would be involved in an unwinnable war with marketers, Since it's Christmas, the new year is coming, and we'll soon be bouncing out of that into a celebration of Wikipedia's first decade, perhaps now it the time to look back at the predictions of Wikipedia's demise. What are your favorite predictions of Wikideath? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
I thought I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch seeks to shut down Wikipedia because of its free information threat to his and other similar media empires. -MuZemike On 12/21/2010 1:58 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote: Since Wikipedia grew and became more ambitious in its scope, there have been predictions of its downfall, many of them giving an estimate for the timescale of its demise. If you hunt around you may find a prediction by me that Wikipedia was unlikely to survive much beyond 2010 because I thought it would decline in populatrity. Since then Wikipedia has cemented itself into the fabric of modern culture and become particularly useful in academia, where its strengths and limitations are now well understood. Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm Wikipedia, it appears, was destined to die within four years--by December 5, 2010, because it would be involved in an unwinnable war with marketers, Since it's Christmas, the new year is coming, and we'll soon be bouncing out of that into a celebration of Wikipedia's first decade, perhaps now it the time to look back at the predictions of Wikipedia's demise. What are your favorite predictions of Wikideath? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this:
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
Yes, I've been thinking that it would be neat to have an online debate or
something over this, as I write in the conclusion of the book:
Wikipedia's status as an encyclopedia was debated from the start, even by its
founders, and continues to be thought suspect by critics, particularly when a
new scandal erupts as they seem to do every so often. This then prompts much
discussion. In fact, the community has discussed every conceivable aspect of
its identity and work. As I noted at the beginning of this book, this
conversation is frequently exasperating and often humorous, but we now know
it is also rather pragmatic and governed by good faith norms. Indeed,
Wikipedia is an exemplar of the reflective character of open content
communities. And just when arguments that Wikipedia would never amount to
anything ceased, new arguments about its imminent death took their place.
Based on research showing that Wikipedia contribution is slowing, journalist
Stephen Foley asks, is Wikipedia cracking up? \acite{Foley2009siw} In 2005,
law professor Eric Goldman predicted Wikipedia would fail in 2010 (i.e.,
close access or become spam ridden), repeated the prediction in 2006, and in
2009 made the claim at a conference \acite{Goldman2006wwf,Anderson2009dww}.
(If you can still edit Wikipedia when you read this book, it is safe to
conclude that he was wrong.)
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
This is a dangerous thread. It is certainly the case that Wikipedia has exceeded all expectations (not least of those who set it up) and confounded the naysayers, Jeremiahs, and doom merchants. No doubt there's some justification in digging up falsified eschatological visions and gloating with hindsight at their folly. However, there's a problem here - and the problem is the great monstrous beast of complacency. For if we say, we endured even all this - and so with righteousness we will survive the ages, even unto the end, then we are in danger of creating a myth of invulnerability, based on the preservation of the wiki-saints, which can only serve to prevent us heeding genuine prophets of future dangers. Beware the true apocalypse. Let Him That Thinketh He Standeth Take Heed Lest He Fall It would be far more profitable (or prophet-able) to seek to divine the undoubted demons ahead, that we might remain strong unto the end. If I dare to be a seer, I worry about software that looks increasingly 2004 in a Facebook world. And I'd be interested to wonder what other nightmares of the future keep the Wiki-saints in fear and trembling. -Original Message- From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of MuZemike Sent: 21 December 2010 20:05 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia I thought I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch seeks to shut down Wikipedia because of its free information threat to his and other similar media empires. -MuZemike On 12/21/2010 1:58 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote: Since Wikipedia grew and became more ambitious in its scope, there have been predictions of its downfall, many of them giving an estimate for the timescale of its demise. If you hunt around you may find a prediction by me that Wikipedia was unlikely to survive much beyond 2010 because I thought it would decline in populatrity. Since then Wikipedia has cemented itself into the fabric of modern culture and become particularly useful in academia, where its strengths and limitations are now well understood. Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm Wikipedia, it appears, was destined to die within four years--by December 5, 2010, because it would be involved in an unwinnable war with marketers, Since it's Christmas, the new year is coming, and we'll soon be bouncing out of that into a celebration of Wikipedia's first decade, perhaps now it the time to look back at the predictions of Wikipedia's demise. What are your favorite predictions of Wikideath? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:36 PM, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: [...] If I dare to be a seer, I worry about software that looks increasingly 2004 in a Facebook world. Let me focus that a bit, if you don't mind - Craigslist looks like 1997; other than the occasional image change for the logo, Google's main search page and its results look like about 2000 still (and not much different, to me, than AltaVista did shortly after it launched, though it's subtly better in many ways). Yahoo has a lot more modern interface design than its competitors; it must be successful, right? I believe that from a user (reader) point of view, Wikipedia is suitably capable from an interface standpoint. From a user (editor) point of view, there is a distinct remaining lack of WYSIWIG and steep learning curve. Our existing editor base are used to it, but I always wonder if we're not losing significant potential contributors from the Facebook generation who aren't willing to put up with learning our syntax. General worry? No. Discouraged potential contributor worry? Yes. And I'd be interested to wonder what other nightmares of the future keep the Wiki-saints in fear and trembling. Community actually hitting a consensus management barrier, though I predict we'd muddle through a representative system of some sort if push came to shove. Someone (else) doing a WYSIWIG, sematic / fact based competitor with at least equal participant community access and a dump of our database as a seed point, with a way for them to do AI-scanned update management from the Wikipedia pages. Expanding - Wikipedia is several things - an online encyclopedia (the actual article content, images, etc), a software system for managing that content, and a community that does the management. What's functionally critical are the content and the community, though the software is an enabler. If people could walk across the street to NextPedia and have a really snazzy UI experience to updating the shared content and still have the supportive and managing functions of the community... Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On 21 December 2010 19:58, Tony Sidaway tonysida...@gmail.com wrote: Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm Wikipedia, it appears, was destined to die within four years--by December 5, 2010, because it would be involved in an unwinnable war with marketers, Yes. Has anyone been in touch with Mr Goldman and asked for an update? Or, rather, has anyone not? - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On 21 December 2010 20:51, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me. It's annoying, because we need competitors. Being a monopoly is not good for us and is not good for the mission. Here's something I sent to foundation-l yesterday (no responses so far): -- Forwarded message -- From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Date: 20 December 2010 20:59 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Tendrl to Knowino To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org On 20 December 2010 19:47, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a general consensus about achieving a monopoly as a good goal. Is this part of some public strategy? Is this the position of WMF? Of chapters? I thought I heard some weeks ago on that mail list that diversity is good. That competitors are healthy. Could we have a clarification of positions about this? I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsically a good thing. The big win would be to make proper free content licenses - preferably public domain, CC-by, CC-by-sa, as they're the most common - the *normal* way to distribute educational and academic materials. Because that would fulfill the Foundation mission statement - Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. - without us having to do every bit of it. And really, that mission statement cannot be attained unless we make free content *normal and expected*, and everyone else joins in. Furthermore, being *the* encyclopedia is mostly a headache for us. Wikipedia wasn't started with the aim of running a hugely popular website, whose popularity has gone beyond merely famous, beyond merely mainstream, to being part of the assumed background. We're an institution now - part of the scenery. This has made every day for the last eight years a very special wtf moment technically. It means we can't run an encyclopedia out of Jimbo's spare change any more and need to run fundraisers, to remind the world that this institution is actually a rather small-to-medium-sized charity. (I think reaching this state was predictable. I said a few years ago that in ten years, the only encyclopedia would be Wikipedia or something directly derived from Wikipedia. I think this is the case, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.) So I'd say, no - monopoly isn't a goal for us, it's something that's happened. We need to encourage everyone else to take on the goal of our mission with their own educational, scientific, academic etc materials. We can't change the world all on our own. The next question is what to do about this. Deliberately crippling Wikipedia would be silly, of course. But encouraging the propagation of proper free content licences - which is somewhat more restrictive than what our most excellent friends at Creative Commons do, though they're an ideal organisation to work with on it - directly helps our mission, for example. As I said, I can't speak for anyone else, but if anyone here disagrees I'm open to correction on any of the above. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
Pride matters, arrogance is harmful. What we have achieved is to demonstrate that legitimate, free, open, collaborative knowledge is to be taken seriously, and some knowhow about its creation and maintenance. That's not a reason for arrogance and does not mean we are best or have some kind of guarantee for future. Commercially, enterprises often flourish in an ecosystem of similar enterprises or related needs. Those lacking competitors and alternatives tend over years and decades to become lazy, inefficient, and complacent. Those with others around have the best the rest of the world can devise to measure up to, compare with, and provoke improvement. Like others have said, we need others around. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but for the future. FT2 On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 9:12 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 December 2010 20:51, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me. It's annoying, because we need competitors. Being a monopoly is not good for us and is not good for the mission. Here's something I sent to foundation-l yesterday (no responses so far): -- Forwarded message -- From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Date: 20 December 2010 20:59 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Tendrl to Knowino To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org On 20 December 2010 19:47, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a general consensus about achieving a monopoly as a good goal. Is this part of some public strategy? Is this the position of WMF? Of chapters? I thought I heard some weeks ago on that mail list that diversity is good. That competitors are healthy. Could we have a clarification of positions about this? I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsically a good thing. The big win would be to make proper free content licenses - preferably public domain, CC-by, CC-by-sa, as they're the most common - the *normal* way to distribute educational and academic materials. Because that would fulfill the Foundation mission statement - Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. - without us having to do every bit of it. And really, that mission statement cannot be attained unless we make free content *normal and expected*, and everyone else joins in. Furthermore, being *the* encyclopedia is mostly a headache for us. Wikipedia wasn't started with the aim of running a hugely popular website, whose popularity has gone beyond merely famous, beyond merely mainstream, to being part of the assumed background. We're an institution now - part of the scenery. This has made every day for the last eight years a very special wtf moment technically. It means we can't run an encyclopedia out of Jimbo's spare change any more and need to run fundraisers, to remind the world that this institution is actually a rather small-to-medium-sized charity. (I think reaching this state was predictable. I said a few years ago that in ten years, the only encyclopedia would be Wikipedia or something directly derived from Wikipedia. I think this is the case, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.) So I'd say, no - monopoly isn't a goal for us, it's something that's happened. We need to encourage everyone else to take on the goal of our mission with their own educational, scientific, academic etc materials. We can't change the world all on our own. The next question is what to do about this. Deliberately crippling Wikipedia would be silly, of course. But encouraging the propagation of proper free content licences - which is somewhat more restrictive than what our most excellent friends at Creative Commons do, though they're an ideal organisation to work with on it - directly helps our mission, for example. As I said, I can't speak for anyone else, but if anyone here disagrees I'm open to correction on any of the above. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 1:47 PM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: Pride matters, arrogance is harmful. What we have achieved is to demonstrate that legitimate, free, open, collaborative knowledge is to be taken seriously, and some knowhow about its creation and maintenance. That's not a reason for arrogance and does not mean we are best or have some kind of guarantee for future. Commercially, enterprises often flourish in an ecosystem of similar enterprises or related needs. Those lacking competitors and alternatives tend over years and decades to become lazy, inefficient, and complacent. Those with others around have the best the rest of the world can devise to measure up to, compare with, and provoke improvement. Like others have said, we need others around. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but for the future. There are two schools of thought here - One, that competition is always great and effective. Two, that sometimes a natural monopoly develops of some sort, and that for the time that the paradigm remains valid there's really only one player of note. The Internet sees examples of both types of activity. Google has search competitors, by dint of Yahoo not having gone bankrupt quite yet and Microsoft having thrown Bing in as the default search engine for the OS of choice for 90% plus of the computers sold today (plus a lot of phones). A lot of people want it to be in Category One, but it seems to be at least marginally a Category Two case. Craigslist killed a whole paradigm (classified ads in print newspapers) and has not evolved any useful competition. Ebay took the rest of that market, and invented a new market, and has not had any credible competitor. Both are Category Two. Amazon invented its field, but has active competition (Borders, BN at least). Clearly Category One. The Internet Archive has no (public) competition. Nobody's even interested. The social network website arena has had intense competition, which is settling down into a Category Two monopoly around Facebook. Twitter fused SMS with broadcast and has not evolved any competition; Category Two again. Skype is only one of many internet phone services now. For nonprofit / public service organizations, there's an ulterior motive in any case. Two, actually... The exterior ulterior motive is helping other people, and the not-so-secret personal or interior ulterior motive, that people enjoy being seen as contributors and participants, it's an ego boost. Neither of those ulterior motives is like the motives for a business, which are primarily to make money (preserve and gain market share and margins). We have analogs to market share and margins but they're not the same. Because they're not the same, some of the inertial resistance to change is different and operates in different mechanisms. Wikipedia remakes itself regularly, though there are longterm participants, rules, and goals. We change the software, editing standards, our IP license, community membership and active editors set, community participation and rules. We actively and moderately skeptically review all the policy and core values in the community. Because of that, I think we're more effective at responding to pressure to change than a typical business. In some ways we aren't - we lack leadership in many senses of the word, though we have leaders who people listen to and who focus discussion and debate. But we aren't institutionally opposed to changing things to make them better. We don't need an external competitor to tell us that we have problems, to the degree businesses often do. I won't pretend that we're really good at it; the community is analagous to herding cats in many ways, and people are resistant to change at times and in some ways. But I think we're better enough, in some key ways. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On competition: In terms of on-line encyclopedias Wikipedia has no effective competition. If you sit to research, you'll look at Wikipedia. If you want to contribute it will be Wikipedia. But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due largely to their being more grown up social networking phenomena than there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the myspacers have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once might have been Wikipedia contributors? As Facebook adds bells and whistles and Wikipedia's interface becomes more tired and (relatively) less friendly to new users - does this continue? How much is the Foundation investing in software development? I was appalled last year to discover that the flagship of flagged revisions had been entrusted to some guy named Aaron who was doing it between exams! How do you ever hope to keep up if that's the level of commitment to development? (No disrespect to Aaron who was probably working his butt off!) On ability to adapt: I could not disagree more with GWH here. I think en.wp greatest weakness is that it is largely leaderless, and tied to a consensus model that simply doesn't allow for change much at all. To quote myself (a real sign of vanity) Wikipedia isn't governed by the thoughtful or the informed - it is governed by anyone who turns up. ... There are a larger group who are too immature or lazy to think straight. And then there are all those who recognise something must be done, but perpetually oppose the something that's being proposed in favour of a better idea. The mechanism is rather like using a chatshow phone-in to manage the intricacies of a federal budget - it does not work for issues that need time, thought, responsibility and attention. I doubt this problem can be fixed - since it needs structural change to decision making - which is impossible for precisely the same reasons. Scott -Original Message- From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George Herbert Sent: 21 December 2010 22:09 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia There are two schools of thought here - One, that competition is always great and effective. Two, that sometimes a natural monopoly develops of some sort, and that for the time that the paradigm remains valid there's really only one player of note. The Internet sees examples of both types of activity. Google has search competitors, by dint of Yahoo not having gone bankrupt quite yet and Microsoft having thrown Bing in as the default search engine for the OS of choice for 90% plus of the computers sold today (plus a lot of phones). A lot of people want it to be in Category One, but it seems to be at least marginally a Category Two case. Craigslist killed a whole paradigm (classified ads in print newspapers) and has not evolved any useful competition. Ebay took the rest of that market, and invented a new market, and has not had any credible competitor. Both are Category Two. Amazon invented its field, but has active competition (Borders, BN at least). Clearly Category One. The Internet Archive has no (public) competition. Nobody's even interested. The social network website arena has had intense competition, which is settling down into a Category Two monopoly around Facebook. Twitter fused SMS with broadcast and has not evolved any competition; Category Two again. Skype is only one of many internet phone services now. For nonprofit / public service organizations, there's an ulterior motive in any case. Two, actually... The exterior ulterior motive is helping other people, and the not-so-secret personal or interior ulterior motive, that people enjoy being seen as contributors and participants, it's an ego boost. Neither of those ulterior motives is like the motives for a business, which are primarily to make money (preserve and gain market share and margins). We have analogs to market share and margins but they're not the same. Because they're not the same, some of the inertial resistance to change is different and operates in different mechanisms. Wikipedia remakes itself regularly, though there are longterm participants, rules, and goals. We change the software, editing standards, our IP license, community membership and active editors set, community participation and rules. We actively and moderately skeptically review all the policy and core values in the community. Because of that, I think we're more effective at responding to pressure to change than a typical business. In some ways we aren't - we lack leadership in many senses of the
Re: [WikiEN-l] Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia by Reagle (MIT, 2010)
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:19 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysida...@gmail.com wrote: Joseph Reagle's book on Wikipedia culture reviewed by Cory Doctorow http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/20/good-faith-collabora.html Could be useful if you still haven't worked out what to get the internet nerd in your life for Christmas. I note with interest this conclusion: Ultimately, Reagle offers a compelling case that Wikipedia's most fascinating and unprecedented aspect isn't the encyclopedia itself -- rather, it's the collaborative culture that underpins it: brawling, self-reflexive, funny, serious, and full-tilt committed to the project, even if it means setting aside personal differences. Reagle's position as a scholar and a member of the community makes him uniquely situated to describe this culture. The implicit commentary on changes in en over the last few years is too obvious to spell out. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due largely to their being more grown up social networking phenomena than there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the myspacers have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once might have been Wikipedia contributors? I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to be left undone because people are wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using Facebook and Twitter. :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On 21 December 2010 23:55, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books I was chatting with User:Ciphergoth the other week about getting people involved in stuff. He occasionally asks people if you see a typo in Wikipedia, do you fix it? And people *just don't do that*. This is something that needs remedying. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due largely to their being more grown up social networking phenomena than there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the myspacers have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once might have been Wikipedia contributors? I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to be left undone because people are wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using Facebook and Twitter. :-) My god, this is getting serious. Maybe we should ban cafes. And bars. And these movie theater things... And what's this all about with this Television thing, now, it's clearly just wrongheaded... Actual work, and the average portion of actual work that people do on a volunteer basis, isn't changing much. How people socialize is, but people are social animals. We do that. We're wired to do it. We're supposed to do it. Anyone who thinks that 14 hour workdays 7 days a week is preferable to the usual 8x5 is welcome to their obsession, but will stand alone. The work product of normal humans that don't socialize enough drops off, according to numerous professional studies over many decades. There's a reason most workweeks are targeted at 40 hrs. That's the maximum you can get out of average information workers before they drop overall output. We get a slice. It's not an insignificant slice. We can do better with utilizing it, but we're doing pretty damn well all things considered. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 December 2010 23:55, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books I was chatting with User:Ciphergoth the other week about getting people involved in stuff. He occasionally asks people if you see a typo in Wikipedia, do you fix it? And people *just don't do that*. This is something that needs remedying. A) Yes, people should feel free to just fix it; not enough do. B) Many studies indicate that our core contributors are large chunks of the total content add process, and we need to not lose track of that, while simultaneously encouraging anons to just fix typos and the like. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:58 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I was chatting with User:Ciphergoth the other week about getting people involved in stuff. He occasionally asks people if you see a typo in Wikipedia, do you fix it? And people *just don't do that*. This is something that needs remedying. Actually, I often see things that need fixing, but I'm in look up mode and using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding some information I'm after, and often don't have the time to even make a note to come back to the article later. If I see things that need fixing when I'm in Wikipedian mode, I do fix things then (but even then, there is a trade-off between temp fix now, or detailed fix that will take more time). It comes back to that trade-off in time spent doing other things. Has anyone ever suggested a way for people to highlight a mistake and click to bring it to someone else's attention? But without logging any IP address. I suppose that sort of system would get overwhelmed by trolls very quickly. Maybe an off-wiki system to allow people using Wikipedia to generate a note for themselves on corrections to make later on? I'm also convinced that the generation that has grown up able to correct things on wikis or editable bulletin boards after they've posted them, are more prone to posting typos in the less flexible media, such as e-mail and non-editable bulletin boards. The number of times I've clicked send and spotted a typo and cursed my inability to make an instant edit to correct it! Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: I've uploaded my latest attempt at converting the backup to XML: http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-2001-08-xml.7z The archive contains an invalid XML file, with control characters preserved, and a valid XML file, with control characters filtered. Which control characters? Aren't control characters allowed in XML 1.1? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
I think viewing competition from the standpoint of competition for people's time can be very useful. There has been some data that's pointed to how Internet users as a whole have been shifting their time towards social networks (namely Facebook) and gaming at the expense of other sites/activities [1]. A few months ago, I ran some quick numbers using ComScore data to show how the allocation of user's time online is shifting. I posted the information on my talk page on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Howief The ComScore numbers (read [2] for a overview of the benefits and limitations of their data) show that time on Facebook has increased by 48% in the past year while overall time spent online has increased only 5.6%. Many other sites within the top 10 are either flat or declining with respect to user time. This data is far from telling us anything conclusive about impact on editing. For starters, it's a measurement of internet users as a whole which, for Wikipedia data, comprises mostly readers while we're probably more interested in editors/potential editors. But I do think the data points toward the direction of further exploration than away from it. Quantifying the effect of competition for people's time is going to be difficult, but if anyone wants to help in that effort, please drop a note on my talk page. Howie [1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/ [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore_data_on_Wikimedia#Discussion_of_comScore_.26_Wikimedia On 12/21/10 3:55 PM, Carcharoth wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wikidoc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet. He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due largely to their being more grown up social networking phenomena than there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the myspacers have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once might have been Wikipedia contributors? I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to be left undone because people are wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using Facebook and Twitter. :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On 22/12/10 11:43, Anthony wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: I've uploaded my latest attempt at converting the backup to XML: http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-2001-08-xml.7z The archive contains an invalid XML file, with control characters preserved, and a valid XML file, with control characters filtered. Which control characters? Aren't control characters allowed in XML 1.1? I did: tr -d '\000-\010\013-\037' In XML 1.1: Definition: A character is an atomic unit of text as specified by ISO/IEC 10646:2000 [ISO/IEC 10646]. Legal characters are tab, carriage return, line feed, and the legal characters of Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. Char ::= #x9 | #xA | #xD | [#x20-#xD7FF] | [#xE000-#xFFFD] | [#x1-#x10]/* any Unicode character, excluding the surrogate blocks, FFFE, and . */ Without this change, importDump.php gives a fatal error. -- Tim Starling ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to be left undone because people are wasting their time on Wikipedia I argue precisely the opposite. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to happen that wouldn't otherwise because we open source lots of information from closed source articles? A lot of the articles are based on summarising information culled from paid-for sources. These sources are not generally available to people outside certain closed groups of people, at least, not without paying money, and except for recent works, who ever does that? Carcharoth -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the internet in general has more potential for people to waste their time than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to be left undone because people are wasting their time on Wikipedia I argue precisely the opposite. How many scientific theorems and great books and works of art are going to happen that wouldn't otherwise because we open source lots of information from closed source articles? A lot of the articles are based on summarising information culled from paid-for sources. These sources are not generally available to people outside certain closed groups of people, at least, not without paying money, and except for recent works, who ever does that? Agreed. But I would still urge students (later years of secondary school and at university) to not let Wikipedia and other user-edited sites overwhelm them. They should get the balance right between the various aspects of the information resources available to them, and engage in a mix of contributing, learning, and creating. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: Have you tried escaping them? By which I mean, using character references. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On 22/12/10 12:13, Anthony wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: In XML 1.1: Char ::= #x9 | #xA | #xD | [#x20-#xD7FF] | [#xE000-#xFFFD] | [#x1-#x10]/* any Unicode character, excluding the surrogate blocks, FFFE, and . */ Where are you reading that? At http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#charsets I read: Ah yes, that would be the XML 1.0 spec. My fault. [...] Without this change, importDump.php gives a fatal error. Have you tried escaping them? Does importDump.php work with XML 1.1, or only XML 1.0? Is the file defined as XML 1.1 or XML 1.0? If the file is designated as XML 1.1 (*), the control characters are escaped, and importDump.php still gives a fatal error, it sounds like a bug in importDump.php. I provided both versions of the XML if you want to muck around with that. I don't think there's much historical value in the control characters. Speaking of historical value, I found the argument between Lars Aronsson and Larry Sanger, which caused Lars to quit and found susning.nu. It happened on May 21. Lars had just spent several days writing dictionary-like articles, and he wrote [[Short words]] to organise the effort. At 12:48, Larry complained about this on [[LA2]], and at 12:53, he created [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]], which was clearly an attack on what Lars was doing. At 12:54, Lars announced that he was leaving, as a comment on [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]. There were several responses. On July 24, Larry erased all the comments from [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]], and on July 28, he rewrote the original text, toning down the language. Before I found this backup, the earliest version we had of this policy page was from August 17. -- Tim Starling ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: I provided both versions of the XML if you want to muck around with that. I don't think there's much historical value in the control characters. Probably not. I was reminded again today that XML 1.1 (for a reason I'm still not quite sure of) never really gained all that widespread of support. Speaking of historical value, I found the argument between Lars Aronsson and Larry Sanger, which caused Lars to quit and found susning.nu. It happened on May 21. Lars had just spent several days writing dictionary-like articles, and he wrote [[Short words]] to organise the effort. At 12:48, Larry complained about this on [[LA2]], and at 12:53, he created [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]], which was clearly an attack on what Lars was doing. At 12:54, Lars announced that he was leaving, as a comment on [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]. There were several responses. On July 24, Larry erased all the comments from [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]], and on July 28, he rewrote the original text, toning down the language. Before I found this backup, the earliest version we had of this policy page was from August 17. Interesting. I came to accept the Wikipedia is not a dictionary guideline/policy pretty soon after reading that page - and much to my dismay I find it to be fairly widely ignored when it comes to etymology, usage, and profanity. I'm interested in seeing what the original and/or newly rewritten language had to say about it. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
On 22 December 2010 00:17, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Actually, I often see things that need fixing, but I'm in look up mode and using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding some information I'm after, and often don't have the time to even make a note to come back to the article later. If I see things that need fixing when I'm in Wikipedian mode, I do fix things then (but even then, there is a trade-off between temp fix now, or detailed fix that will take more time). It comes back to that trade-off in time spent doing other things. Hm. I often hit edit on a section just to fix a typo I've spotted in passing. Resisting the time-sucking qualities is, of course, a problem. But when I'm reading other wikis I'll also happily hit edit to fix a typo (if they allow IP editing). - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
