Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Dmitriy Sintsov]

* Chris Lewis  [Tue, 2 Mar 2010 20:30:20 -0800 
(PST)]:
> I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about
> mediawiki and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As
> someone wo runs a wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.
>
> If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very
> outdated GUI, outdated ways of doing things,for example using ftp to
> edit the settings of the wiki instead of having a direct interface 
like
> Wordpress.
MediaWiki is not like Windows; it is more like Linux. I can type 
formatted wikitext with links, lists, headers and tables faster than by 
using MS Office GUI.

MindTouch Deku has backend and frontend written in different languages - 
so, it is harder to install and probably is not suitable to cheap 
sharing hosting. it also stores data in xml format, which is not the 
best for "manual" typing.

With all recent dramatical improvement of PHP by Facebook (I've 
impressed with the translator and the xhp), PHP may move from "toy-like" 
language (as I've heard from local .net developers) to a very serious 
platform. In fact, these improvements probably are even more important 
than a long-awaiting PHP 6.0..
http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/xhp-a-new-way-to-write-php/294003943919
although a mapping of XML to wikitext can be a problem (though the 
parser uses DOM already)..
Maybe a replacement to wgOut, though.
Dmitriy

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[George Herbert]

Excellent data point.  Thanks, David.

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 11:42 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 3 March 2010 05:26, George Herbert  wrote:
>
>> If you have better stats, I'm all ears.  I am not in any way a
>> Confluence opponent, and a couple of people I respect a lot like it,
>> but I've never found an actual user out there.
>
>
> All of the BBC. It's their intranet wiki. Runs on four large Dell
> 2950s, serving ~26k users. (I was one of the sysadmins for it for a
> while.)


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Enterprise wikis (was modernizing mediawiki)

[Dmitriy Sintsov]

* Ryan Lane  [Wed, 3 Mar 2010 00:00:30 -0600]:
> > I have never met a Confluence environment in the wild; overall user
> > statistics I am aware of, and my personal experience, are that MW,
> > Twiki, and Sharepoint dominate actual usage.
> >
>
> DoD uses it for Techipedia, which is a fairly large wiki:
>
> 
http://gcn.com/articles/2009/10/12/gcn-awards-dodtechipedia-sidebar.aspx
>
> I don't see why they didn't go the MediaWiki route, like Intellipedia
> though. I suspect they wanted ACLs.
>
While reading about OpenCyc I was suprprised to find out that Halo 
Extension (which is built on top of Semantic MediaWiki) was also a part 
of that project. I wonder, whether one would want to gather a huge 
amount of Sematic triples to improve "the reasoning" of Cyc. Halo also 
has extension for ACL's now, though I haven't checked it, yet (my 
environments are not so restrictive).
Dmitriy

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[Wikitech-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump

[David Gerard]

-- Forwarded message --
From: ahmed algohary 
Date: 2 March 2010 20:42
Subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump
To: wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org


Hi,

I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
and 2010 dumps on the download page!

--
Ahmed Elgohary
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump

[Andrew Krizhanovsky]

You can take much smaller Simple English Wikipedia or Russian Wikipedia dumps :)

Best regards,
Andrew.

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:08 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: ahmed algohary 
> Date: 2 March 2010 20:42
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump
> To: wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
> So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
> and 2010 dumps on the download page!
>
> --
> Ahmed Elgohary
> ___
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about mediawiki 
> and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As someone wo runs a 
> wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.

Very sad to hear that!

> Mediawiki makes millions more than Wordpress does too

Hahahahaha, ha, hahahahahahahahaha, hahahahah, haha, hahahahahahahaha.

Ha.

Hahaha.

Let me recover, uh, hahahaha, oh, hah, thanks.

First of all, Wordpress is a platform for a commercial product, Wordpress.com, 
backed by a company, Auttomatic, which has way more funding (it closed 30M$ 
investment round two years ago) and nearly 40 employees. 
They have commercial offerings which are bringing quite some additional revenue 
they can feed into development. And of course, they have to compete with 
Google's Blogger, SixApart, Facebook, Twitter and others. 

In the large picture, Wikipedia raises money to spread knowledge, and the fact 
that people are using mediawiki in 3rd party environments is a side effect. 

> , why can't the money be put into making a modern product instead of in 
> pockets of the people who run it? I know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two 
> different purposes, but that's not the point. The point is, one is modern and 
> user friendly (Wordpress), and the other (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints:

MediaWiki is very modern product, just not on the visible side (though maybe 
usability initiative will change that). It has lots of fascinating modern 
things internally :) 
Though of course, by "in pockets of people who run it", you're definitely 
trolling here. :-(

> -Default skins are boring

They were not back in 2005 =) 

> -Very limited in being able to make the wiki look nice like you could with a 
> normal webpage.

Why would that be a priority for foundation developers? 

> -A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so simple.

'svn up' -> done! ;-) Same for Wordpress... :)

> -Better customization so people can get a wiki the way they want.

Feel free to develop it that way. 

> It should be more like the wikis on wikia,

Wikia is mediawiki with extensions. So it is modern, again? 

> except without me having to learn css and php to make those types of 
> customizations.

Why should we be facilitating _your_ needs? 

> Give me some option, some places to put widgets. Not every wiki is going to 
> be as formal as the ones on wikimedia sites.

You can put 'widgets' via extensions. If you need something more, feel free to 
develop that. 

> And don't the people at Wikimedia commons get tired of always having to make 
> changes so it actually suits their site?
> If they had some of the options from the get go, i'm sure they'd appreciate 
> it too.

Maybe. 

> -I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few 
> lines then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.

You can use WebDAV, SFTP, SCP, and your own staging environments.
On the other side, LocalSettings is the most flexible configuration method, 
that allows to manage thousands of wikis in quite small form factor. 

> -Being able to manage extensions like wordpress does.

Feel free to develop it :) 
> 
> In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of dollars from 
> donations to make this software more modern. Being stubborn in modernizing it 
> will only make this software less relevant in the future if other wiki 
> software companies are willing to do things the people at Wikimedia aren't.

The donations are for making the software more modern for Wikimedia sites. 
Funneling them to MediaWiki as an open-source software project is a byproduct. 
:-)

Domas
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> The Wikimedia Foundation makes millions more than Wordpress, but the
> Foundation is running a top 5 website.

wordpress.com is in top20 too :) 

Domas

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Tei]

On 3 March 2010 11:05, Domas Mituzas  wrote:
...
>> , why can't the money be put into making a modern product instead of in 
>> pockets of the people who run it? I know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two 
>> different purposes, but that's not the point. The point is, one is modern 
>> and user friendly (Wordpress), and the other (Mediawiki) is not. Other 
>> complaints:
>
> MediaWiki is very modern product, just not on the visible side (though maybe 
> usability initiative will change that). It has lots of fascinating modern 
> things internally :)
> Though of course, by "in pockets of people who run it", you're definitely 
> trolling here. :-(
>

I have read this very thread in a different context.  Quake engines.
Most quake engines fall short in the usability side, because are
"evolved" by tecnical people,  and some of the users ask for more ...
tecnical features.  You have (on the quake scene)  sysadmins that want
sysadmins stuff, and are more than happy to edit text files and access
the server with ssh,  and  QuakeWorld veterans that ask some
competitive fairness and features that smooth the engine, but don't
exactly make the game look better, only cleaner... and would greet any
new console command :-)  (quake has a console to change settings).

There (on Quake engine) usability is always a nice thing to have, but
seems the priorities lie elsewhere, and anything else gets into the
engines before usability.The distance of usability from Quake to
any 2010 game is giganteous. Is something I would love to fix.. but I
have tons of other ideas.

I feel It takes a enormeous effort to move a proyect managed by
programmers and sysadmins for programmers and sysadmins to be
palatable by mere desktop users.  The good news is that sysadmins and
programmers are desktop users too, so will love a sexier interface,
and more usability.


-- 
--
ℱin del ℳensaje.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Tim Landscheidt]

Marco Schuster  wrote:

> [...]
>>> -I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few 
>>> lines then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern 
>>> internet.

>> Get a host that supports SSH. Use VI, Emacs, nano, pico, etc.
> HAHAHA, sorry but this way of thinking is stone-age. Who are we to
> require our users to get more expensive hosting AND knowledge of
> VI/Emacs (a newbie most likely won't have HEARD of ssh, vi and emacs!)
> just for being able to modify the core settings of a wiki without
> having the FTP extra work? Come on, it's so easy to make a web-based
> settings editor. Mighta even be lots easier to just move all settings
> stuff except MySQL data into the DB.

If it's so easy,
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Configuration_database>
awaits your patches :-).

Tim


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[David Gerard]

On 3 March 2010 08:45, George Herbert  wrote:

> Excellent data point.  Thanks, David.


It's hard to get sensible estimations of the spread of proprietary
server software - it doesn't generate the same amount of publicity,
press, forums etc. that open source does. (This leads to "notability"
problems when trying to document it on en:wp, for example.) The data
is largely regarded as confidential corporate information by the
developing company.


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[David Gerard]

On 3 March 2010 10:19, Tei  wrote:

> I feel It takes a enormeous effort to move a proyect managed by
> programmers and sysadmins for programmers and sysadmins to be
> palatable by mere desktop users.  The good news is that sysadmins and
> programmers are desktop users too, so will love a sexier interface,
> and more usability.


MediaWiki is server software and its audience is sysadmins.

That said, for anyone with a reasonably recent Linux distro who is OK
with the command line, it's incredibly easy to install. (Even on
CentOS 4, if you put in some more recent packages of stuff.)

I have no idea if there's a nice Windows package friendly enough for
the low-to-medium-tier NT admins (those who watch progress bars for a
living), but that would be nice. They're not going to get away from
the command line and text configuration files, though.

(GUIfying LocalSettings.php is a bad, bad idea. There's enough bad
GUIs where someone just turned every possible text option into two
hundred radio-button options. A good GUI beats a command line ... a
command line beats a bad GUI.)

I would also dispute using WordPress as the gold standard example of
command-line-free administration ... I run WordPress happily on my own
blogs, and the one-click upgrade is very easy and slick, but I just
wouldn't be able to do what I want to do with it without considerable
command-line fiddling and PHP code hacking. WordPress lets you do
anything you want, much as MediaWiki does, but it similarly does not
restrain you from shooting yourself in the foot (as I have done
frequently).


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Chad]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 6:35 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 3 March 2010 10:19, Tei  wrote:
>
>> I feel It takes a enormeous effort to move a proyect managed by
>> programmers and sysadmins for programmers and sysadmins to be
>> palatable by mere desktop users.  The good news is that sysadmins and
>> programmers are desktop users too, so will love a sexier interface,
>> and more usability.
>
>
> MediaWiki is server software and its audience is sysadmins.
>
> That said, for anyone with a reasonably recent Linux distro who is OK
> with the command line, it's incredibly easy to install. (Even on
> CentOS 4, if you put in some more recent packages of stuff.)
>

Of course. This is who MediaWiki has been targeted at thus far: people
with at least basic competency with a command line and configuration in
text files. Does it work? Yes, and very well. But is it the most user friendly
solution? Certainly not. Cleaning up the installation/upgrade is being
targeted for the 1.17 release, if all goes well. Keep in mind that this will
probably have less practical use for Wikimedia: this is being designed with
third parties in mind.

> I have no idea if there's a nice Windows package friendly enough for
> the low-to-medium-tier NT admins (those who watch progress bars for a
> living), but that would be nice. They're not going to get away from
> the command line and text configuration files, though.
>

XAMPP. It takes a whopping 5 minutes to download and install. Gives
you Apache/mySQL/PHP all ready to go at C:\xampp. It really cannot
get any easier than this. If you can't install this, I wouldn't even trust
you to run my WordPress.

> (GUIfying LocalSettings.php is a bad, bad idea. There's enough bad
> GUIs where someone just turned every possible text option into two
> hundred radio-button options. A good GUI beats a command line ... a
> command line beats a bad GUI.)
>

Some things could probably be moved out of LocalSettings. The
Configure extension did some things right, some things wrong. I'd like to
see our configuration management eventually handled in a standardized
way (rather than just tacking on more $wgVars in GlobalSettings), which
would open up the possibility for GUI-based configuration of some portions
of MediaWiki

> I would also dispute using WordPress as the gold standard example of
> command-line-free administration ... I run WordPress happily on my own
> blogs, and the one-click upgrade is very easy and slick, but I just
> wouldn't be able to do what I want to do with it without considerable
> command-line fiddling and PHP code hacking. WordPress lets you do
> anything you want, much as MediaWiki does, but it similarly does not
> restrain you from shooting yourself in the foot (as I have done
> frequently).
>
>
> - d.
>
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True. I think the ideal goal is keeping MediaWiki flexible enough where
it suits the needs of Wikimedia (lest we never forget: they're the primary
customer). Easy hacking makes it easy for them and easy for developers.
Can we make the really common things (changing sitename, upload
settings, path configuration, permissions, interwiki links) slightly less
daunting though? Certainly.

-Chad

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Chris Lewis  wrote:
> I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about mediawiki 
> and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As someone wo runs a 
> wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.
>
> If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very
> outdated GUI,

There are many, many, many skins available.

> outdated ways of doing things,
> for example using ftp to edit the settings of the wiki instead of having a

FTP ??!?   No. It's just a file.   Configuration files are considered
pretty reasonable and reliable by a lot of people. ::shrugs::


In any case…  It's Free Software, submit patches.


Cheers.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Tisza Gergő]

Chad  gmail.com> writes:

> > I have no idea if there's a nice Windows package friendly enough for
> > the low-to-medium-tier NT admins (those who watch progress bars for a
> > living), but that would be nice. They're not going to get away from
> > the command line and text configuration files, though.
> >
> 
> XAMPP. It takes a whopping 5 minutes to download and install. Gives
> you Apache/mySQL/PHP all ready to go at C:\xampp. It really cannot
> get any easier than this. If you can't install this, I wouldn't even trust
> you to run my WordPress.

There is also a single-file installer for MediaWiki + AMP stack (
http://bitnami.org/stack/mediawiki ) for people who really can't do anything
more difficult than clicking "OK" buttons.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Tisza Gergő]

Ryan Lane  gmail.com> writes:

> I'd like to mention that from a security perspective, I like the fact
> that by default MediaWiki does not allow Wordpress style upgrades and
> code modifications. MediaWiki exploits may lead to vandalism, but
> Wordpress exploits generally lead to shell or root access, and
> compromise of all of your other applications.

While this is certainly true for updates and PHP-enabled skin files, a web-based
configuration panel is actually much more secure than editing a PHP-based
settings file through FTP. There is a multitude of malware out there which can
steal FTP passwords by infecting your computer, or your router, or any nearby
computer if you use unsecured wifi access. (Sure, you could use SFTP or
something equivalent, but how many people actually do? And how many webhosts
provide it?) The most common stuff such as allowing uploads or enabling
extensions should be accessible through a GUI for both usability and security
reasons.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Platonides]

fl wrote:
> I would disagree. The Wikimedia software has been released under an open
> source license: While the WMF certainly has no obligation to improve the
> software, they most definately have an obligation to release the source
> code to third-parties.
>
> --
> fl

Wrong. They do it, and it's consistent with their mission, but they have 
no obligation to do that. They could even have MediaWiki be closed 
source software.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Platonides]

Chris Lewis wrote:
> I hope I am emailing this to the right group.
It is.

> My concern was about mediawiki and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated 
> methods. As someone wo runs a wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.

Maybe you should list your frustrations? It maybe a problem on 
interfaces/documentation rather than mediawiki itself being difficult.


> If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very outdated 
> GUI, outdated ways of doing things,
 >for example using ftp to edit the settings of the wiki instead of 
having a direct interface like Wordpress.

There's the experimental
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Configurator


> Mediawiki makes millions more than Wordpress does too, why can't the
 > money be put into making a modern product instead of in pockets of the
 > people who run it? I know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two different
 > purposes, but that's not the point.
 > In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of
 > dollars from donations to make this software more modern.


The Wikimedia Foundation gets money to run its sites. That's mostly 
salaries, servers and bandwidth, not mediawiki software.

You can view http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports

> The point is, one is modern and user friendly (Wordpress), and the other 
> (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints:
> -Default skins are boring

Feel free to offer skins to add by default (the skin design will change 
soon).

> -Very limited in being able to make the wiki look nice like you could with a 
> normal webpage.
Sorry??
It allows admins to style the site however they want.

Have you seen www.csszengarden.com? It's all CSS.

 > -Better customization so people can get a wiki the way they want. It
 > should be more like the wikis on wikia, except without me having to
 > learn css and php to make those types of customizations. Give me some
 > option, some places to put widgets. Not every wiki is going to be as
 > formal as the ones on wikimedia sites.

Many of those customizations are CSS in the lower layer.
As a user you can completely change the way you see almost everything, 
without having to bug the sysadmins.
Also note that using Extension:Gadgets you can install the widgets / 
appearance designed from other users with a checkbox in your preferences.

How are normal webpages easier to "make look nice"?


 > And don't the people at
 > Wikimedia commons get tired of always having to make changes so it
 > actually suits their site? If they had some of the options from the
 > get go, i'm sure they'd appreciate it too.

Please document that change you want done.
Wikimedia Commons has many javascript customizations, but it's also 
because it's easier to "fix" problems with a javascript than developing 
a php fix and waiting for it to go live.

> -A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so simple.

Updating mediawii isn't hard.
And Wordpress have also had more (and worse) vulnerabilities.

> -I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few 
> lines then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.
> -Being able to manage extensions like wordpress does.

You should still use ftp to copy the extension there, it's not a big 
problem to configure it at the same time.


 > Being stubborn in modernizing it will only make this software less
 > relevant in the future if other wiki software companies are willing to do
 > things the people at Wikimedia aren't.
>
> Thank you



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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Paul Houle]

Chris Lewis wrote:
> I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about mediawiki 
> and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As someone wo runs a 
> wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.
>
>   
For one thing,  I'd say that mediawiki aims for a particular market 
position.

Mediawiki is designed to support very large wikis,  i.e.  3M pages 
on one of the most trafficked web sites on Earth.

For a large-scale site,  there's going to be a lot of administration 
work to be done,  so it doesn't matter if the system is difficult to set 
up and configure.

Wordpress,  on the other hand,  set out with the mission of being 
the 'cheap and cheerful' program that would dominate the market for 
blogging software.  Everything about Wordpress is designed to make it 
easy to set up a Wordpress site quickly and configure it easily.  
Wordpress does scale OK to fairly large blogs and high traffic if you 
SuperCache it.

If you want a wiki that's easier to set up and administer,  I'd 
consider forking or starting out from scratch.  (In the latter case you 
get complete control of configuration management,  which is key)



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Re: [Wikitech-l] hiphop progress

[Jared Williams]

 

> -Original Message-
> From: wikitech-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org 
> [mailto:wikitech-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
> Domas Mituzas
> Sent: 01 March 2010 10:11
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] hiphop progress
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> > Most of the code in MediaWiki works just fine with it 
> (since most of 
> > it is mundane) but things like dynamically including certain
files, 
> > declaring classes, eval() and so on are all out.
> 
> There're two types of includes in MediaWiki, ones I fixed for 
> AutoLoader and ones I didn't - HPHP has all classes loaded, 
> so AutoLoader is redundant. 
> Generally, every include that just defines classes/functions 
> is fine with HPHP, it is just some of MediaWiki's startup 
> logic (Setup/WebStart) that depends on files included in 
> certain order, so we have to make sure HipHop understands 
> those includes.
> There was some different behavior with file including - in 
> Zend you can say require("File.php"), and it will try current 
> script's directory, but if you do require("../File.php") - it will 
> 
> We don't have any eval() at the moment, and actually there's 
> a mode when eval() works, people are just scared too much of it. 
> We had some double class definitions (depending on whether 
> certain components are available), as well as double function 
> definitions ( ProfilerStub vs Profiler )
> 
> One of major problems is simply still not complete function 
> set, that we'd need:
> 
> * session - though we could sure work around it by setting up 
> our own Session abstraction, team at facebook is already busy 
> implementing full support
> * xdiff, mhash - the only two calls to it are from 
> DiffHistoryBlob - so getting the feature to work is mandatory 
> for production, not needed for testing :)

Mhash been obsoleted by the hash extension, and HipHop has the hash
extension (looking at the src).

I think mhash is implemented as a wrapper onto the hash extension for
a while. (http://svn.php.net/viewvc?view=revision&revision=269961)

assert(hash('adler32', 'foo', true) === mhash(MHASH_ADLER32, 'foo'));

Jared


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Re: [Wikitech-l] hiphop progress

[Domas Mituzas]

Jared,

> assert(hash('adler32', 'foo', true) === mhash(MHASH_ADLER32, 'foo'));

Thanks! Would get to that eventually, I guess. Still, there's xdiff and few 
other things.

Domas
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[David Gerard]

On 3 March 2010 15:06, Paul Houle  wrote:

>    For a large-scale site,  there's going to be a lot of administration
> work to be done,  so it doesn't matter if the system is difficult to set
> up and configure.


As it turns out, MediaWiki isn't really hard at all :-)


>    Wordpress,  on the other hand,  set out with the mission of being
> the 'cheap and cheerful' program that would dominate the market for
> blogging software.  Everything about Wordpress is designed to make it
> easy to set up a Wordpress site quickly and configure it easily.
> Wordpress does scale OK to fairly large blogs and high traffic if you
> SuperCache it.


Multi-user WordPress is a bit arsier. Comparable faff to MediaWiki setup.


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Enterprise wikis (was modernizing mediawiki)

[Daniel Kinzler]

Ryan Lane schrieb:
> Wikimedia uses confluence too
> (https://confluence.toolserver.org/pages/listpages-dirview.action?key=main).
> I found that funny when that was posted in another thread :).

It's deprecated and will be taken down soon. the information from confluence has
been migrated to the main toolserver wiki.

As a case in point, the reason for using it was indeed access restrictions - and
the fact that we got a license for free. I turned out to be combersome to have
info spread across two wikis (with different syntax), and people didn't like to
use it, because, well, we are all used to mediawiki.

We found that namespace-based access restrictions (implemented using the
Lockdown extension) are sufficient for our needs.

-- daniel

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump

[Platonides]

It also helps using pages-articles or the stubs when you can.

FWIW I have a enwiki-20070716-pages-meta-history (3,3G) available.

Andrew Krizhanovsky wrote:
> You can take much smaller Simple English Wikipedia or Russian Wikipedia dumps 
> :)
>
> Best regards,
> Andrew.
>
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:08 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: ahmed algohary
>> Date: 2 March 2010 20:42
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump
>> To: wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
>> So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
>> and 2010 dumps on the download page!
>>
>> --
>> Ahmed Elgohary


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Robert Stojnic]

> pockets of the people who run it? I know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two 
> different purposes, but that's not the point. The point is, one is modern and 
> user friendly (Wordpress), and the other (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints:
>   

There is a great difference in business models there. Wordpress and 
confluence make their money out of third-party applications, WMF makes 
it money out of donations to keep the Wikipedia going. It would be at 
best irresponsible to use this money for sole purpose of making the 
software more useful for 3d parties.. If the 3rd parties are willing to 
pay a developer or donate money to make MediaWiki more user friendly 
(like has happened with the usability initiative) that is fine, but do 
not ask core developers or even volunteers to put any work into this.

Cheers, r.


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Chris Lewis  wrote:
> If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very outdated 
> GUI, outdated ways of doing things,for example using ftp to edit the settings 
> of the wiki instead of having a direct interface like Wordpress. Mediawiki 
> makes millions more than Wordpress does too, why can't the money be put into 
> making a modern product instead of in pockets of the people who run it?

Wordpress is funded by a for-profit corporation, while MediaWiki is
funded by a not-for-profit charity, so I think you have that
backwards.  :)

> In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of dollars from 
> donations to make this software more modern. Being stubborn in modernizing it 
> will only make this software less relevant in the future if other wiki 
> software companies are willing to do things the people at Wikimedia aren't.

That's fine.  MediaWiki is designed for use by Wikimedia, and is an
excellent tool for that task.  Wikimedia doesn't need most of the
features you asked for, so MediaWiki doesn't have them.  It's great
that other people use our software -- that's why we release it -- but
if they can find some other package that's better suited to their
needs, good for them.

Of course, if you or anyone else would be interested in becoming a
MediaWiki developer for the purpose of improving its admin experience
for small users, that would be great.  No one much has stepped forward
to do that, though, so it hasn't gotten done.

Wikimedia is not a "wiki software company", by the way.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Marco Schuster]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:30 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 3 March 2010 15:06, Paul Houle  wrote:
>
>>    For a large-scale site,  there's going to be a lot of administration
>> work to be done,  so it doesn't matter if the system is difficult to set
>> up and configure.
>
>
> As it turns out, MediaWiki isn't really hard at all :-)
>
>
>>    Wordpress,  on the other hand,  set out with the mission of being
>> the 'cheap and cheerful' program that would dominate the market for
>> blogging software.  Everything about Wordpress is designed to make it
>> easy to set up a Wordpress site quickly and configure it easily.
>> Wordpress does scale OK to fairly large blogs and high traffic if you
>> SuperCache it.
>
>
> Multi-user WordPress is a bit arsier. Comparable faff to MediaWiki setup.
apt-get install wordpress, and let dpkg handle the rest. it's really easy.

marco

-- 
VMSoft GbR
Nabburger Str. 15
81737 München
Geschäftsführer: Marco Schuster, Volker Hemmert
http://vmsoft-gbr.de

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Dmitriy Sintsov]

* Marco Schuster  [Wed, 3 Mar 2010 
19:22:35 +0100]:
> > Multi-user WordPress is a bit arsier. Comparable faff to MediaWiki
> setup.
> apt-get install wordpress, and let dpkg handle the rest. it's really
> easy.
>
WordPress wasn't the gemstone of code about 2 years ago I've checked it. 
MediaWiki was a clear winner, don't know about current WordPress code, 
though.

MediaWiki can also be installed via the packages. It only gives an 
illusion of "easiness", which only undervalues real work needed to 
configure for example a farm of it (once I've had a farm where the 
language code wasn't dns 3rd level but base rewrite path: 
site.org/ru/Page, site.org/en/Page and so on). Create templates, your 
skins, extensions and so on.
Dmitriy

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Re: [Wikitech-l] hiphop progress

[Tim Starling]

Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Jared,
> 
>> assert(hash('adler32', 'foo', true) === mhash(MHASH_ADLER32, 'foo'));
> 
> Thanks! Would get to that eventually, I guess. Still, there's xdiff and few 
> other things.

xdiff is only needed for recompression. For page views, there is a
pure-PHP port of the "patch" part.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[David Gerard]

On 3 March 2010 18:59, Dmitriy Sintsov  wrote:

> WordPress wasn't the gemstone of code about 2 years ago I've checked it.
> MediaWiki was a clear winner, don't know about current WordPress code,
> though.


It's by far the least-worst blogging engine. It does REALLY REALLY
HELP to know your way around a command line, even though you don't
need it a *lot*.

The WordPress 'Sploit Of The Week gets a bit tiresome, too.


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Nimish Gautam]

Chiming in on this a little late, but, basically:

Yeah, mediawiki isn't that easy to administer. Unfortunately, people 
administering MediaWiki installs are only one type of user that we have 
to worry about and resources (as always) are limited. Right now, we're 
focusing a concentrated effort on making things easier for editors 
(users generating content), BUT I think administrators are an important 
group because I hear stories all the time about how administrators for 
intranet wikis get requests from people in their company for a better 
way to do X or Y, and they have to write it themselves.

I'd love it if there were some easy way to get these administrators who 
have had to come up with hacks to share what their issues were, what 
their solutions were, and maybe even push their changes back upstream =) 
Do people here generally feel this would be a good resource to have? 
And, more importantly, that it would be used?


On 3/2/10 8:30 PM, Chris Lewis wrote:
> I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about mediawiki 
> and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As someone wo runs a 
> wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.
>
> If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very outdated 
> GUI, outdated ways of doing things,for example using ftp to edit the settings 
> of the wiki instead of having a direct interface like Wordpress. Mediawiki 
> makes millions more than Wordpress does too, why can't the money be put into 
> making a modern product instead of in pockets of the people who run it? I 
> know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two different purposes, but that's not the 
> point. The point is, one is modern and user friendly (Wordpress), and the 
> other (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints:
> -Default skins are boring
> -Very limited in being able to make the wiki look nice like you could with a 
> normal webpage.
> -A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so simple.
> -Better customization so people can get a wiki the way they want. It should 
> be more like the wikis on wikia, except without me having to learn css and 
> php to make those types of customizations. Give me some option, some places 
> to put widgets. Not every wiki is going to be as formal as the ones on 
> wikimedia sites. And don't the people at Wikimedia commons get tired of 
> always having to make changes so it actually suits their site? If they had 
> some of the options from the get go, i'm sure they'd appreciate it too.
> -I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few 
> lines then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.
> -Being able to manage extensions like wordpress does.
>
> In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of dollars from 
> donations to make this software more modern. Being stubborn in modernizing it 
> will only make this software less relevant in the future if other wiki 
> software companies are willing to do things the people at Wikimedia aren't.
>
> Thank you
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Dmitriy Sintsov  wrote:
> WordPress wasn't the gemstone of code about 2 years ago I've checked it.
> MediaWiki was a clear winner, don't know about current WordPress code,
> though.

Please, let's not start attacking other projects here.  There's no
call for such unconstructive denigration.

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Nimish Gautam  wrote:
> I'd love it if there were some easy way to get these administrators who
> have had to come up with hacks to share what their issues were, what
> their solutions were, and maybe even push their changes back upstream =)
> Do people here generally feel this would be a good resource to have?
> And, more importantly, that it would be used?

I feel that the issue here is pretty simple.  Anyone who can write a
patch for MediaWiki is probably pretty comfortable with having to use
SSH all the time to administer their wiki, so no one is going to add
this kind of feature because they personally want it.  Projects that
have easy-to-use admin interfaces tend to get them for one of two
reasons:

1) Someone is making money off the software's use by average people,
and is willing to pay developers to make the software easier to use
because it will turn a profit for them.

2) Some people really want to see the software succeed for
non-financial reasons, so they're willing to put in extra effort to
make it easier to use even if it doesn't directly benefit them.

(1) is unlikely to happen for us (I'd imagine it's the reason
WordPress is easy to use, though).  (2) hasn't happened because most
of us care mainly about Wikipedia or the wikis we administer, and
aren't overly concerned with third parties who aren't savvy enough to
use a command line.  It does happen for some other free software whose
raison d'etre is widespread use.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Dmitriy Sintsov]

* David Gerard  [Wed, 3 Mar 2010 19:24:15 +]:
> It's by far the least-worst blogging engine. It does REALLY REALLY
> HELP to know your way around a command line, even though you don't
> need it a *lot*.
>
Mostly a basic things will be enough, not really a bash guru.

> The WordPress 'Sploit Of The Week gets a bit tiresome, too.
>
What's the point of using WordPress, can't you blog in MediaWiki? I 
don't see much difference, except that MediaWiki code was better 
structured back then.
Dmitriy

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[David Gerard]

On 3 March 2010 19:58, Dmitriy Sintsov  wrote:

> What's the point of using WordPress, can't you blog in MediaWiki? I
> don't see much difference, except that MediaWiki code was better
> structured back then.


You can blog using a text editor and an FTP client too, but WordPress
does lots of little things that save work for you :-)


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Dmitriy Sintsov]

* David Gerard  [Wed, 3 Mar 2010 20:02:29 +]:
> You can blog using a text editor and an FTP client too, but WordPress
> does lots of little things that save work for you :-)
>
Semantic MediaWiki also easily builds various lists depending on 
properties of article, RSS feeds and so on.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Help with addition of a contacts database

[Danese Cooper]

Would we not just run an ldap server?  Its an open standard, afterall.  
How do you envision using a contact database?

D

On 3/2/10 5:47 PM, Makelesi Kora-Gonelevu wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I've been asked to add a contacts database to a mediawiki site so that users
> can search for contacts. It will be a simple database. I have no idea how to
> start this. Do i just create a contacts database on the mysql server? And
> then add a search box?
>
> I'm very new to MediaWiki but enjoying every minute of using it.
>
> Thanks Mak.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Help with addition of a contacts database

[Ryan Lane]

Notice that if you use LDAP for this (which really is a good idea),
you can pull the info into the wiki using the External Data extension:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:External_Data#.23get_ldap_data_-_retrieve_data_from_LDAP_directory

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Danese Cooper  wrote:
> Would we not just run an ldap server?  Its an open standard, afterall.
> How do you envision using a contact database?
>
> D
>
> On 3/2/10 5:47 PM, Makelesi Kora-Gonelevu wrote:
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> I've been asked to add a contacts database to a mediawiki site so that users
>> can search for contacts. It will be a simple database. I have no idea how to
>> start this. Do i just create a contacts database on the mysql server? And
>> then add a search box?
>>
>> I'm very new to MediaWiki but enjoying every minute of using it.
>>
>> Thanks Mak.
>> ___
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Paul Houle]

Marco Schuster wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:30 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>   
>> On 3 March 2010 15:06, Paul Houle  wrote:
>>
>> 
>>>For a large-scale site,  there's going to be a lot of administration
>>> work to be done,  so it doesn't matter if the system is difficult to set
>>> up and configure.
>>>   
>> As it turns out, MediaWiki isn't really hard at all :-)
>> 
I dunno.

Maybe I'm a total dolt,  but the easiest way I've found to change 
the template in mediawiki is to write a wrapper that gets to spit it's 
output into an outputbuffer,  extracts the content from the default 
template,  then inserts it in a new template.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Help with addition of a contacts database

[Makelesi Kora-Gonelevu]

Thanks Ryan and Danese

I'll have a look at the LDAP and let you know if i have any questions.

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> Notice that if you use LDAP for this (which really is a good idea),
> you can pull the info into the wiki using the External Data extension:
>
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:External_Data#.23get_ldap_data_-_retrieve_data_from_LDAP_directory
>
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Danese Cooper 
> wrote:
> > Would we not just run an ldap server?  Its an open standard, afterall.
> > How do you envision using a contact database?
> >
> > D
> >
> > On 3/2/10 5:47 PM, Makelesi Kora-Gonelevu wrote:
> >> Hi everyone
> >>
> >> I've been asked to add a contacts database to a mediawiki site so that
> users
> >> can search for contacts. It will be a simple database. I have no idea
> how to
> >> start this. Do i just create a contacts database on the mysql server?
> And
> >> then add a search box?
> >>
> >> I'm very new to MediaWiki but enjoying every minute of using it.
> >>
> >> Thanks Mak.
> >> ___
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> >>
> >
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Help with addition of a contacts database

[Platonides]

Danese Cooper wrote:
> Would we not just run an ldap server?  Its an open standard, afterall.
> How do you envision using a contact database?
>
> D

It's nice to see you here Danese :)


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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[fl]

On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:31 pm, Platonides wrote:
> fl wrote:
>>  I would disagree. The Wikimedia software has been released under an 
>> open
>>  source license: While the WMF certainly has no obligation to improve 
>> the
>>  software, they most definately have an obligation to release the 
>> source
>>  code to third-parties.
>
> Wrong. They do it, and it's consistent with their mission, but they 
> have
> no obligation to do that. They could even have MediaWiki be closed
> source software.

No, they can't. As far as I am aware, MediaWiki is released under the 
GNU General Public License[1], which stipulates, among other things, the 
requirement to release a program's source code to the public and to 
release any derived changes under the same license[2].

If the WMF were to try and convert MediaWiki to a closed source project, 
they would be liable to legal actions against them.

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Version
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

--
fl

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump

[Stephen Bain]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 7:42 AM, ahmed algohary  wrote:
>
> I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
> So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
> and 2010 dumps on the download page!

I was wondering about the old dumps recently for another reason (to
get old links data, not to get a small file). Dumps pages older than
about the last six months (for example:
) display a message
saying that the files are offline for maintenance. Is this accurate?
If so, is there any news on the progress of the maintenance?

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.b...@gmail.com

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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Sergey Chernyshev]

I'd like to chime into the discussion and point out that there is a huge
community around extensions and features that are not used by Wikimedia
foundation - Semantic MediaWiki & co and OpenID to name a few.

These extensions are maintained by 3rd party developers and many of them,
including myself don't have Wikimedia interests as their primary goal.

I run quite a few wikis based on MediaWiki and even though I personally
don't need "Wordpress" easiness and comfortable with creating build
environments using SVN externals and stuff like that, I'm always working
toward general ease of use and Widgets extension I wrote, OpenID picker
contributions as well as some SMW changes I made were always targeted at
users outside of Wikimedia.

So I'd like Wikimedia crowd to acknowledge outside community and their
needs. Don't get me wrong - you guys built a great product and some aspects
of it like internationalization wiki or extensibility or APIs are quite
unique, but Open Source requires open mind with things.

At the same time, I'd like to say that Domas and others are exactly right
about different interests with different parties - if you need something, go
ahead and build it. I spent quite a lot of time coding away things that were
needed for my business and for my personal projects and it's fair. Nobody in
Open Source world is obligated to code for you! Not in Wordpress world
either - they, for that matter had quite lousy software for quite a while
until they did more work on fixing it and it only happened because they have
a commercial enterprise that has different interests then Wikimedia
foundation.

All that being said, I think there is a great opportunity for MW to get even
larger piece of corporate knowledge management market and if you or somebody
else wants to go there and make your money on it, go ahead - companies like
Yaron's WikiWorks, for example will be happy to work with you on it - they
live and breath Mediawikis. Just don't expect that somebody will do work for
you for free only because Wikimedia foundation is non-for-profit and their
projects don't charge money. We all need to eat and software developers are
expansive, especially good ones, especially those who can do both complex
and user friendly software. Don't insult people by saying that they didn't
make something you need, they already spend time that they could've spent on
their families.

Thank you,

Sergey


--
Sergey Chernyshev
http://www.sergeychernyshev.com/


On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 5:34 PM, fl  wrote:

>
> On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:31 pm, Platonides wrote:
> > fl wrote:
> >>  I would disagree. The Wikimedia software has been released under an
> >> open
> >>  source license: While the WMF certainly has no obligation to improve
> >> the
> >>  software, they most definately have an obligation to release the
> >> source
> >>  code to third-parties.
> >
> > Wrong. They do it, and it's consistent with their mission, but they
> > have
> > no obligation to do that. They could even have MediaWiki be closed
> > source software.
>
> No, they can't. As far as I am aware, MediaWiki is released under the
> GNU General Public License[1], which stipulates, among other things, the
> requirement to release a program's source code to the public and to
> release any derived changes under the same license[2].
>
> If the WMF were to try and convert MediaWiki to a closed source project,
> they would be liable to legal actions against them.
>
> [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Version
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
>
> --
> fl
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Platonides]

fl wrote:
> No, they can't. As far as I am aware, MediaWiki is released under the
> GNU General Public License[1], which stipulates, among other things, the
> requirement to release a program's source code to the public and to
> release any derived changes under the same license[2].
>
> If the WMF were to try and convert MediaWiki to a closed source project,
> they would be liable to legal actions against them.

That requirement is only valid if they distribute the changed version 
(and only for people which get that version). They could improve 
mediawiki and keep the changes to themselves.

There are many reasons that would be a really bad idea. But from a 
strictly legal POV, they can do it.

For a license which requires releasing the code to people browsing the 
site, see the Affero GPL.




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Re: [Wikitech-l] modernizing mediawiki

[Yaron Koren]

I'm in somewhat of a unique position to comment on this, since I both do
MediaWiki extension development, and run a MediaWiki consulting company
(shameless plug: wikiworks.com) - so I personally have a financial interest
in making MediaWiki more popular and more easy-to-use. I also tend to hear a
lot about the specific frustrations people have with MediaWiki, which has
led to my development of certain extensions, like Admin Links, which defines
a page meant to serve as a "control panel" for administrators:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Admin_Links

Troll-like as the original email was, :) it brought up some fairly common
complaints. The basic answer to these is that they are, in fact, being
addressed: as a few people noted, the usability initiative has already
created a much nicer skin, Vector; and a planned project for the upcoming
Google Summer of Code is to provide a way to install and manage extensions
via the web browser, the way WordPress does it. A few extensions, like
Configure, also allow for a web-based substitute for editing
LocalSettings.php, though they could stand some improvement.

Finally, on the more general subject of Wikimedia's relationship to
MediaWiki: I do think it would be nice if Wikimedia, and outside MediaWiki
developers, were more aware of, and more positive about, MediaWiki's
popularity in the outside world. It's used very heavily as an enterprise
wiki around the world, and I think for good reason: it's robust, stable,
very feature-rich, heavily translated, and when used with the set of
extensions around Semantic MediaWiki I think it's in a class of its own. I
just think a better answer when people ask about problems with MediaWiki is
to say "I don't know", or "I think someone's working on that", rather than
"MediaWiki is intended for use by Wikimedia projects, and if you have a
problem using it, you should switch to another wiki application." First, for
many uses there is no better wiki software, especially not for the cost; and
second, there are a lot of people, especially among extension developers but
also in general, who are trying to improve MediaWiki as a
corporate/organizational application. I just think it would be nice if more
people celebrated MediaWiki's popularity, instead of ignoring or trying to
discourage it. :)

-Yaron
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia 2007 dump

[Tomasz Finc]

Stephen Bain wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 7:42 AM, ahmed algohary  wrote:
>> I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
>> So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
>> and 2010 dumps on the download page!
> 
> I was wondering about the old dumps recently for another reason (to
> get old links data, not to get a small file). Dumps pages older than
> about the last six months (for example:
> ) display a message
> saying that the files are offline for maintenance. Is this accurate?
> If so, is there any news on the progress of the maintenance?
> 

Sadly that old 2007 dump is no longer on our storage server :(

But! Come next week we should have a nice and shiny new version of it. 
But it will certainly be huge.

That maintenance page is left over from a storage array failure and just 
needs to be removed.

--tomasz

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Re: [Wikitech-l] enwiki complete page edit history

[Tomasz Finc]

The last successful was way before 2009 and sadly doesn't exist on the 
wikimedia servers.

Trust me .. as soon as this runs is done were going to stamp it, copy 
it, put it into a safe, and mirror it everywhere.

We're not going to let that file get away.

--tomasz

Jamie Morken wrote:
> This is a repost, Tomasz please get back to me about this.
> 
> cheers,
> Jamie
> 
> 
>> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:25:50 +0100
>> From: Tomasz Finc 
>> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] enwiki complete page edit history
> 
>> Do you mean that the failed runs aren't web linked? If so then 
>> I'd 
>> rather not point people to corrupted files.
> 
> Hi Tomasz,
> 
> I
> don't think there are any (failed or successful) weblinked
> "pages-meta-history.xml.bz2" or "pages-meta-history.xml.7z" files for
> the enwiki on the wikimedia download server.  I think there must be a
> successful enwiki "pages-meta-history" from 2009 floating around
> somewhere, I think that the last successful dump (guessing Sept 2009?)
> should always be linked for download.  If you have a copy of the latest
> successful build of "pages-meta-history" (.bz2 or .7z) for enwiki I'd
> appreciate it if you posted a link, thanks
> 
> cheers,
> Jamie
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Help with addition of a contacts database

[Danese Cooper]

Thanks.  You'll be seeing me more as I manage to divest from obligations 
established prior to my joining WMF.  I'll be on IRC more as well.  
Happy to be here.

D

On 3/3/10 2:22 PM, Platonides wrote:
> Danese Cooper wrote:
>
>> Would we not just run an ldap server?  Its an open standard, afterall.
>> How do you envision using a contact database?
>>
>> D
>>  
> It's nice to see you here Danese :)
>
>
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