Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
Man, Gerard is thinking about new methods to fork (in an easy way) single articles, sets of articles or complete wikipedias, and people reply about setting up servers/mediawiki/importing_databases and other geeky weekend parties. That is why there is no successful forks. Forking Wikipedia is _hard_. People need a button to create a branch of an article or sets of articles, and be allowed to re-write and work in the way they want. Of course, the resulting articles can't be saved/showed close to the Wikipedia articles, but in a new plataform. It would be an interesting experiment. 2011/8/12 David Gerard > [posted to foundation-l and wikitech-l, thread fork of a discussion > elsewhere] > > > THESIS: Our inadvertent monopoly is *bad*. We need to make it easy to > fork the projects, so as to preserve them. > > This is the single point of failure problem. The reasons for it having > happened are obvious, but it's still a problem. Blog posts (please > excuse me linking these yet again): > > * http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/ > * http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2011/01/19/single-point-of-failure/ > > I dream of the encyclopedia being meaningfully backed up. This will > require technical attention specifically to making the projects - > particularly that huge encyclopedia in English - meaningfully > forkable. > > Yes, we should be making ourselves forkable. That way people don't > *have* to trust us. > > We're digital natives - we know the most effective way to keep > something safe is to make sure there's lots of copies around. > > How easy is it to set up a copy of English Wikipedia - all text, all > pictures, all software, all extensions and customisations to the > software? What bits are hard? If a sizable chunk of the community > wanted to fork, how can we make it *easy* for them to do so? > > And I ask all this knowing that we don't have the paid tech resources > to look into it - tech is a huge chunk of the WMF budget and we're > still flat-out just keeping the lights on. But I do think it needs > serious consideration for long-term preservation of all this work. > > > - d. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 4:53 AM, emijrp wrote: > Man, Gerard is thinking about new methods to fork (in an easy way) single > articles, sets of articles or complete wikipedias, and people reply about > setting up servers/mediawiki/importing_databases and other geeky weekend > parties. That is why there is no successful forks. Forking Wikipedia is > _hard_. > > People need a button to create a branch of an article or sets of articles, > and be allowed to re-write and work in the way they want. Of course, the > resulting articles can't be saved/showed close to the Wikipedia articles, > but in a new plataform. It would be an interesting experiment. Something like this.. ? http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Proposal:PersonalWikiTool -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
Yes, that tool looks similar to the idea I wrote. Other approaches may be possible too. 2011/8/13 John Vandenberg > On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 4:53 AM, emijrp wrote: > > Man, Gerard is thinking about new methods to fork (in an easy way) single > > articles, sets of articles or complete wikipedias, and people reply about > > setting up servers/mediawiki/importing_databases and other geeky weekend > > parties. That is why there is no successful forks. Forking Wikipedia is > > _hard_. > > > > People need a button to create a branch of an article or sets of > articles, > > and be allowed to re-write and work in the way they want. Of course, the > > resulting articles can't be saved/showed close to the Wikipedia articles, > > but in a new plataform. It would be an interesting experiment. > > Something like this.. ? > > http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Proposal:PersonalWikiTool > > -- > John Vandenberg > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
Hi all, 've read most of the previous mails so far. I'd like to clear some confusion (just in case). Please do correct me if I'm wrong and got caught by the confusion myself: The thread is about one of the following: * .. the ability to clone a MediaWiki install and upload it to your own domain to continue making edits, writing articles etc. * .. getting better dumps of Wikimedia wikis in particular (ie. Wikipedia) * .. being able to install MediaWiki easier or even online (like new wikis on Wikia.com) * .. making it easy for developers to fork the MediaWiki source code repository. -- Krinkle ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
On 14 August 2011 13:46, Krinkle wrote: > The thread is about one of the following: > * .. the ability to clone a MediaWiki install and upload it to your own domain > to continue making edits, writing articles etc. > * .. getting better dumps of Wikimedia wikis in particular (ie. Wikipedia) > * .. being able to install MediaWiki easier or even online (like new wikis on > Wikia.com) > * .. making it easy for developers to fork the MediaWiki source code > repository. I was thinking of content and community forks specifically. MediaWiki is ridiculously easy to set up and install. Setting up a copy to fully function like Wikipedia is somewhat more difficult. Forking the MediaWiki codebase is not hard, but probably not a good idea. (The two cases I can think of are Citizendium and Wikia, and both now work with and on the mainline and put their local stuff in an extension.) - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
2011/8/14 Krinkle > Hi all, > > 've read most of the previous mails so far. I'd like to clear some > confusion > (just in case). Please do correct me if I'm wrong and got caught > by the confusion myself: > > The thread is about one of the following: > * .. the ability to clone a MediaWiki install and upload it to your own > domain > to continue making edits, writing articles etc. > Installing MediaWiki for you is easy for geeks. The only solution for newbies is using wikifarms. > * .. getting better dumps of Wikimedia wikis in particular (ie. Wikipedia) > A ten years old on-going task. > * .. being able to install MediaWiki easier or even online (like new wikis > on > Wikia.com) > MediaWiki developers issue. > * .. making it easy for developers to fork the MediaWiki source code > repository. > > Trivial. Any developer can set up a repository with a source code snapshot. Gerard in the first post was speaking about 1) forks, 2) digital preserving Forking single articles is easy, you just copy/paste (with histories you have to use import/export). Forking a set of articles is just a bit more difficult. Forking the whole Wikipedia is _hard_, you need a good infrastructure and skills. Digital preserving is a big problem in computer science. It is not solved yet, but if you make backups frequently and in several places, you have a high security to save the data. To fork you need first the data being preserved, and this links with the dumps generation problem above. I think people is getting nervous with Wikipedia (and me too), in the same way people is getting worried with Google having control of all your online life (Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google+, etc). If Google closes your account, your online life vanishes. If Google dies, your online life too. Of course you can export all your e-mail, contacts, etc, but you lose the @gmail.com address, all links in search engines to your data is broken, etc. Google has a good policy about exporting data, most Internet services don't. The mankind is compiling all human knowledge in an encyclopedia, which is hosted in faulty metal plates spinning thousand times per minute, managed by faulty humans and located only in one or two locations in the world (Florida, the land of hurricanes and San Francisco, the land of earthquakes). Making fun of Wikipedia is so 2007. Playing with Wikipedia is so 2001. Losing knowledge is so 48 BC. This is the most important mission human race has ever achieve. Regards, emijrp -- > Krinkle > ___ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
On 08/15/2011 06:29 PM, emijrp wrote: > The mankind is compiling all human knowledge in an encyclopedia, which is > hosted in faulty metal plates spinning thousand times per minute, managed by > faulty humans and located only in one or two locations in the world > (Florida, the land of hurricanes and San Francisco, the land of > earthquakes). Reminder: Florida, northern California, and Virginia. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects/Data_Center_Virginia & http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/01/engineering-june-2011-report/ -- Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
