Open Wiki Blog Planet

05 February, 2008

Blog on Wiki Patterns

Day 1: Grassroots is Best

Day 1 - 21 Days of Wiki AdoptionGrassroots support is the best way to grow wiki use. People respond well when they see peers actively using and evangelizing it. Don’t mandate wiki use; make it available, then let people find where it’s most useful to their work:

by Stewart Mader at 05 February, 2008 05:50 PM

Said Kassem Hamideh

apologies for the multiple postings

I edit the same blog post many times a day, and to my horror, I didn't realize that it was being reposted to the aggregators as a fresh new blog multiple times day.

Sorry about that one, guys and girls.

Sincerely,
Said

by Said Kassem Hamideh at 05 February, 2008 12:22 PM

Domas Mituzas

I/O schedulers seriously revisited

The I/O scheduler problems have drawn my attention, and besides trusting empirical results, I tried to do more of benchmarking and analysis, why the heck strange things happen at Linux block layer. So, here is the story, which I found myself quite fascinating…
(more…)

by Domas Mituzas at 05 February, 2008 10:41 AM

Anthere

Wikipedia hits logs

Brion Vibber (CTO of Wikimedia Foundation) just answered to one of my questions, with interesting links. My concern was announcements such as this one, where it is reported that In August, 2007, Answers.com, a publicly traded company, announced to its shareholders that, due to a slight change in...

by Anthere at 05 February, 2008 10:04 AM

Alors finalement, Davos ?

Je commence enfin à me réveiller. La semaine passée à Davos fut assez éprouvante. Breakfast sessions tous les jours, suivies d'un mix de sessions publiques ou privées dans la journée, déjeuners et diners "de travail", et fêtes tous les soirs. Le tout entrecoupé de multiples déplacements à pied entre...

by Anthere at 05 February, 2008 08:13 AM

Brion Vibber

Super Tuesday!

California’s primary election comes up in the morning, as are those of a buttload of other states. These combine selections of the various per-party presidential candidates in preparation for the November election, as well as various vital local and state ballot measures — parks, cops, and of course Indian gaming agreements.

Unlike everybody else with a blog, I’m not going to presume to tell y’all who to vote for. :)

But I have to admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised poking about Obama’s web site. I stumbled on this speech he gave on religion in politics, which is probably the first thing a mainstream American politician’s said about religion that hasn’t made me cringe and want to run away to Canada.

Fun election fact: California has a “modified open primary“, allowing voters who haven’t registered a party affiliation to cast their votes in the primary nomination process for a party of their choice… but only among those parties which have opted into it. We briefly had a completely open primary (so you could pick *any* party), but this got shut down on constitutional issues. Currently only the American Independent and Democratic parties are opted in to the system.

by brion at 05 February, 2008 08:07 AM

Ben Yates

NYTimes on the muslim protest thing. Wikipedia comes off really well -- "polite but firm".

Also: "The site considered but rejected a compromise that would allow visitors to choose whether to view the page with images." When was this?

by Ben Yates at 05 February, 2008 07:42 AM

Pictures of the Day

Blog on Wiki Patterns

How WordPress Prologue theme is good for iPhone, Data Portability, and Enterprises

iPhone perspectiveSince you can’t copy and paste text (yet) on iPhone (necessary for getting links into blog posts unless you want to type them by hand), I think the new Prologue theme released by WordPress is a great interface for iPhone blogging. Prologue’s interface clearly encourages short, Twitter-style updates.

Furthermore, with the growing awareness of the need for Data Portability, I’d like to use Prologue to keep my status updates on my own domain, and feed them to Twitter using RSS. This might even reduce the load that seems to cause the timeout errors I see multiple times a day from Twitterrific.

In related news, Chris Brogan suggests that Prologue is a step in the right direction toward a distributed, behind-the-firewall version of Twitter. He suggests that it may be very attractive for enterprises:

I think it’s a great implementation for short messages like status and the like inside the firewall. I think it’s a great step in that direction, and as WordPress has tons of other extensions and hacks, it’s the kind of thing you can imagine getting to the other missing parts of Twitter.

by Stewart Mader at 05 February, 2008 05:53 AM

Samuel Klein

Lessig ‘4Obama’ transcription

First things first. I’m no no-holds-barred Obaman like Larry Lessig.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Boyish Orator’s style, and give him a leg up over Her Royal Cleverness, but don’t stay up nights worrying about the future difference to world peace their differential election would make (other things keep me up, even in politics), and not because I don’t think peace a devastatingly important realm for immediate change.

At any rate, Lessig taped a Barackish paean, and Ball and Prime started simulscribing in gobby. Gobby sessions exert a gravitational pull on me and soon I was transcribing myself, to exercise day-cramped hands — though I would never have listened to the piece otherwise. You can read the result of our labours.

The promise of making a set of ideas more accessible and revisitable is an infinitely better reason to divest oneself of twenty minutes of life than amusement or boredom… Which makes me wonder why we don’t see dotsub everywhere, at least among the sj crowd of one. Maybe it just needs a gobby plugin, or a way to find two friends and start transcribing in tandem. I’m even feeling the itch to ride a tandem bike or sidecar. Ach. Time for a seaweed shower.

by metasj at 05 February, 2008 04:26 AM

Gerard Meijssen

Kotava

Kotava is a constructed language, it is recognised as an ISO-639-3 language (avk), and they have started their encyclopaedic project at Europalingua.eu. They are doing really good at making sure that their language is supported well in MediaWiki; currently 76.56% of the core messages have been localised in their continuing effort.

With the recognition of Kotava in the ISO-639-3, Kotava was added to OmegaWiki as a language that can be used for editing. What I am really happy with is the way Kotava is supported. The first thing that was done is localise the user interface in Betawiki, and today I received a file with translations and definitions of the languages of the ISO-639-1.

For OmegaWiki Kotava is a great example on how to support a language. Everything that can be done has been done. When Brion makes the next release of MediaWiki we hope to upgrade to this release. The nice people at Betawiki are planning on supporting the last stable release starting with the next release. This would mean that we will be able to update the MediaWiki localisation as well as the OmegaWiki localisation.

In the mean time, I am proud that we support Kotava already this well.
Thanks,
GerardM

by GerardM at 05 February, 2008 12:32 AM

04 February, 2008

Blog on Wiki Patterns

Introducing 21 days of wiki adoption

21 Days of Wiki Adoption Your competitors are using wikis. Your customers are using wikis. So are other employees in your organization. You need to use wikis too. It’s where your future is. And I’ll show you how.

A new video will be posted here each weekday, and the entire series will be archived at ikiw.org/21days

by Stewart Mader at 04 February, 2008 11:28 PM

67 Reasons Why Outlook Sucks

Outlook 2007 Stan James of Lijit has kept a list of frustrating things about Outlook since he started using it a year ago. My favorites from experience:

  • 6. Doesn’t learn which addresses I actually use “In Outlook you must create a contact in order for it to recognize any address. I don’t want to make a “contact” for everyone I might email more than once.”
  • 13. Embedded images mysteriously enlarged or resized “When you paste in a screenshot (or any image, really), Outlook magically decides that it should scale the image up by about 130%. Is it so hard to leave pixels as pixels?”
  • 19. While an externally-launched “Compose Email” window is open, the rest of Outlook is unusable “…I try to bring up the address book. Impossible. Can’t even launch another instance of Outlook.”
  • 22. Can’t view messages as conversation “Your sent mails are kept in a seperate folder. So to reconstruct a conversation you have to switch back and forth between your inbox and the sent folder…”
  • 33. Search sucks “In many cases it simply does not find messages, even when I’ve typed in exact text or names from those mails.”
  • 37. Web client has no search functionality at all “No joke, I spent 20 minutes going through old message listings one page at a time trying to find an old email. Ridiculous. Update: Learned later that search only works in Internet Explorer.”

    This might be the most egregious thing about Outlook. We should be well past the era of trying to lock people into using one web browser. Search isn’t the only thing crippled in Outlook Web Access. When using a browser other than Internet Explorer, you can’t mark a message as unread. This was a big frustration for me since I would often briefly scan new messages, then mark unread the ones I wasn’t ready to reply to yet.

  • 51. Who wants Archiving? “Outlook wants to “Archive” my old messages, making them un-searchable and out of my normal flow. I just bought a 1 Terabyte disk for $200 and Outlook wants to erase or specially compress my email? What century are they in? Are disks so expensive in Redmond that MS Employees need to pay careful attention to how much space their email takes? Last I checked, GMail and even Hotmail give 5 gigabytes for free. Making old messages un-searchable is unforgivable.”

    Google “gets” archiving much better than Microsoft. When you archive a message, Gmail simply moves it out of the inbox, but it’s just a click away in the “All Mail” category, and search in Gmail is top notch at finding just the message you want very quickly.

These are just a few that stand out from my days using Outlook, but Stan’s list is full of other ones and I’m sure you’ll find a few that resonate with you. All the more reason(s) to reduce your email dependence and use a wiki as often as possible for collaboration!

by Stewart Mader at 04 February, 2008 07:25 PM

Does your organization have these boundaries to collaboration?

In a post on improving cognitive ability through collaboration, Dennis McDonald makes this point:

When you think about all the pressures people have to stay within the “comfort zones” of professional or disciplinary communities, though, there are many situations where going outside is actively or passively discouraged.

Does your organization (or discipline) encourage or discourage you to directly go to others with whom you want to collaborate?

Many organizations cling to the traditional notion that people who want to work together need to do so by going through their supervisor. Essentially they have to wait until their supervisor talks to the other person’s supervisor, and if the two agree that people from their teams can work together, the respective employees will get the go-ahead.

Sound crazy? It is!

Even when this exact scenario isn’t the case, many organizations are so hierarchically structured that people from different teams have very few opportunities to discover each other.

Dennis goes on to suggest that collaborative tools and social networks can break down these boundaries. I think he’s right.

Wikis, for example, give teams a place to aggregate and organize their work in a centrally accessible place. They can choose to keep certain information private and accessible only to team members (and they should, when necessary).

More importantly, they can keep some pages in their wiki space accessible to the larger organization to share information they want others to have access to. This allows someone to find information they need about a project or service without sending you an email (thus helping control inbox overflow), or calling a meeting (which costs too much time relative to the value it provides).

By having access to that information, people outside your group will better know what you do. Then they can use other tools like an internal social network to get in touch and build a relationship around common interests, projects, etc.

by Stewart Mader at 04 February, 2008 06:40 PM

Aaron Swartz

Election Slate: February 2008

Being a newly-minted California voter, I've been looking forward to my opportunity to exercise a little direct democracy tomorrow. (I'm not taking a position on whether direct democracy is a good idea, but surely if it's there one might as well take advantage of it.) I encourage you to vote as well; indeed, I encourage you to vote the same way I do:

Presidential Candidate for the Democratic Party: Barack Obama. Between Mike Gravel's inability to get more attention than a passing mention from Wikipedia and everybody else dropping out, the choice is apparently down to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary is the kind of sellout DLC centrist who cozies up to Rupert Murdoch; Barack Obama can hardly be worse. Still, he's sold out too and I vote for him under the illusion that he'll somehow revert to his community organizing, Iraq War-opposing, progressive old pre-sellout self sometime before becoming President. False hope springs eternal.

Proposition 91: No. So bad, even its supporters are asking you to vote against it.

Proposition 92: Yes. Community college is important and previous propositions have been screwing it over for years.

Proposition 93: Yes. Progressives seem to oppose term limits, on the grounds that they "shift[] more power to the governor and ensur[e] that the State Assembly and the State Senate will be filled with people who lack the experience and institutional history to fight the Sacramento lobbyists (who, of course, have no term limits)" (SFBG). I'm not so sure, but this seems like a fairly modest proposal which seems to strike a reasonable balance.

Propositions 94-97: No. The only people in favor of expanding the casinos while reducing their oversight seem to be their lobbyists.

Proposition A: Yes. Parks are nice.

Proposition B: Yes. Everyone seems to support this and if police officers want to work three more years, who am I to say no?

Proposition C: Yes. I know rationally this is an absurd proposal, but when you're there, in the privacy of the voting booth, looking at whether a geodesic dome should be built on Alcatraz Island, who's going to stop you from voting yes?

04 February, 2008 05:50 PM

Wikipedia Weekly

Episode 41: Setting the record straight

Witty Lama talks with Angela Beesley. Topics include: What's it like to have an article about yourself; Wikimania '08 is getting started and '09 in the bidding stage; the Foundation's advisory board, who they are and what they do; and clearing up some misconceptions about Wikia including no-follow, Kaltura and Search.

by Wikipedia Weekly at 04 February, 2008 04:04 PM

T. Mills Kelly

The Search Primary

Anyone living in the United States who doesn’t know that tomorrow is “Super Tuesday” — the day when voters in more than 20 states will go to the polls to cast their votes for presidential candidates in their parties — has either been in a coma or is truly able to avoid all contact with the media. I for one will be glad when this first phase of the presidential selection process will be over, if only because it will mean a break from the drumbeat of political advertising and punditry.

All the chatter about politics has gotten me to thinking about one of the most ubiquitous features of modern political discourse–discussion of poll results. Is Obama gaining in California? Is McCain fading in Missouri? Poll results often come to dominate that discourse and, seemingly, to drive the decisions of candidates on everything from where to focus their energies (and cash) to what to talk about where. The history of modern political polling is fairly well known. George Gallup created the first of what we would call “scientific” samples for his national political polls in 1935 and achieved national recognition when his American Institute of Public Opinion correctly predicted the results of the 1936 presidential elections.

One sample from news reports about his polling is from the New York Times on August 30, 1936. In a story headlined Democratic Doubt Vanishes in the South, the paper reported, “Additional evidence of Mr. Roosevelt’s strength in the area is seen in the fact that the Southern States regularly return larger pro-Roosevelt majorities than those of any other section in the American Institute of Public Opinion polls. From Kentucky’s 61 per cent to Mississippi’s 91 per cent, the entire region seems to be solidly aligned in the Democratic Party once more.” Change the names (and the political affiliation of the American South) and these sentences could have been written today.

Of late, polling organizations such as Zogby, Harris, and others have experimented with a number of new methodologies, including interactive polls, while others have promoted the use of market mechanisms to predict political results.

In a world where search engine results become destiny, what if we were to use search queries to determine political popularity? GoogleTrends allows us to do just that. Do you want to know how the Democratic primary race in California is going? On the basis of search queries (I used hillary clinton, barack obama as my query), the race is neck and neck.

Is there a predictive value here? If we take a look at the Republican race in California, what we see is that volume of search queries would predict that Ron Paul is going to win the biggest prize on Super Tuesday–a result that even his most ardent supporters would have to admit is highly unlikely. However, this result does not mean that there is no predictive value. If the two marginal candidates (in California) are eliminated from the graph and we look at only the two front runners in the Republican race, what we see is a “search primary” that has narrowed to a dead heat, just like the Democratic case.

We’ll check these data again on Wednesday to see if there might be some predictive value for a “search primary”. If so, historians may well look back at this campaign as one where new kinds of data helped shape the campaigns. Or not. For now, all we can say is “stay tuned.”

by tkelly7 at 04 February, 2008 03:44 PM

AboutUs

Featured WikPage: Journey planning with Social Networking

Travature.com is a Web2.0 startup focusing on social traveling. It combines the power of automated trip planning with expertize from community members. (View Comments)

by TedErnst at 04 February, 2008 03:39 PM

Milos Rancic

Ben Yates

About 80,000 people have petitioned Wikipedia to remove its images of Muhammad. These run the gamut from polite, respectful requests to (a very small minority) crazy threats of violence.

It's possible it could have been nipped in the bud if the top of the Muhammad article linked to a version without images (instead of to a page telling people to edit their custom server-side javascript file. sigh.).

Also, here's the on-wiki censorship request page.

by Ben Yates at 04 February, 2008 01:13 PM

Brianna Laugher

Links for 2007-02-04

  • OggSearch: Slick toolserver-based search specifically for Ogg audio and video on Commons. It also uses the plugin player so you can play directly from the results – without visiting the Commons page. Bryan = awesome. :)
  • Seems like Commons finally has a media move/rename bot. About time…
  • Durova has been working on a really cool encyclopedic image restoration project. Give her kudos, ideas and help! This kind of thing is a shining example of Wikimedia culture at its best.
  • The Signpost has a useful brief WMF overview of 2007
  • Wikitravel has announced Wikitravelpress. Congratulations to Evan and the communities he has facilitated.
  • OMG, there’s a new skin! It’s pretty nice. I’m tempted to swap…
  • Sue has started a trial of sending her reports to the Board to foundation-l as well. Awesome. See her report for late December. I have to say that since my last post about the institutional feeling at WMF being one that was closed and swirling with change, it has changed dramatically in the four odd weeks since then, largely thanks to how the Kaltura discussion was handled, this post from Sue and numerous initiatives from Florence. It’s very heartening. Although change is still very much in the air, it now feels so much more right.

by Brianna Laugher at 04 February, 2008 11:15 AM

Ben Yates

If you're going out to vote tomorrow, please support Obama. Choose the future.

Quick list of reasons:
  • Obama's detailed technology platform is pretty much perfect.
  • He is much stronger than Clinton against any republican challenger.
  • His policies are phrased so that they don't terrify republicans but still provide the same benefits as Clinton's.
  • He is capable of convincing people of things, not just tacking effectively toward the polls.
  • He is capable of disarming powerful interests (in all senses of the word), not just warring with them.
  • He is endorsed by Lessig, XKCD, and danah boyd.

Boyd:
When I was [at the World Economic Forum] in Davos, I expected everyone to be pro-Hillary and anti-Barack because of the whole "experience" thing. I was shocked to find that this was not the case at all.

Most foreign diplomats and companies thought that Barack would be much better at negotiating with foreign powers than Hillary. They all knew that the candidates would have huge advisory teams that would help them understand what was going on. Even though Hillary knew more people already, they felt as though Barack would be more effective. (And most were extremely worried about how Bill would overshadow anything with Hillary... another sad reality.)


Before Bush II, the U.S. had only once -- in its entire history -- seen the son of a former president elected himself: John Quincy Adams, in 1824, and there were 3 intervening presidents between him and his father.

Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton would be without any precedent at all, and you can rest assured that the dynastic pattern is not a coincidence. Looking objectively at other countries, a dynastic government seems -- even when democratically elected -- to indicate weak institutions, unsophisticated voters, and a cloistered and ossifying inner circle.

by Ben Yates at 04 February, 2008 02:53 AM

03 February, 2008

Domas Mituzas

Speaking at MySQL Conference again, twice

Yay, coming this year to the MySQL conference again. This time with two different talks (second got approved just few days ago) on two distinct quite generic topics:

  • Practical MySQL for web applications
  • Practical character sets

The abstracts were submitted weeks apart, so the ‘practical’ being in both is something completely accidental :) Still, I’ll try to cover problems met and solutions used in various environments and practices - both as support engineer in MySQL, as well as engineer working on wikipedia bits.

Coming to US and talking about character sets should be interesting experience. Though most English-speaking people can stick to ASCII and be happy, current attempts to produce multilingual applications lead to various unexpected performance, security and usability problems.

And of course, web applications end up introducing quite new model of managing data environments, by introducing new set of rules, and throwing away traditional OLTP approaches. It is easy to slap another label on these, call it OLRP - on-line response processing. It needs preparing data for reads more than for writes (though balance has to be maintained). It needs digesting data for immediate responses. It needs lightweight (and lightning) accesses to do the minimum work. Thats where MySQL fits nicely, if used properly.

by Domas Mituzas at 03 February, 2008 09:31 PM

Gerard Meijssen

One requirement for the Portugues Wikiversity has been met

When a subsequent project is requested for a language, one of the requirements is that the localisation for that language has to be completed. It means that all the MediaWiki messages and all the messages of the extensions used in the Wikimedia Foundation projects has to be complete.

This requirement has now been met for the Portuguese Wikiversity. Malafaya, a member of the Portuguese community finished the localisation today. He notified me, because he knew of the request for a pt/wv. He is not part of this new project but he is passionate about Wikipedia and he likes to tackle the issues where he can make a difference.

This week Betawiki migrated to a server with better specifications. The effect has been immediate, the response time has gone down and the number of messages that have been localised has increased. This is a moment where you can write about a sponsor... We found that Netcup, the ISP for BetaWiki, was willing to help us with a bigger server... It is not that they expect us to write about their hosting, but we can and we are happy to.

Thanks,
GerardM

by GerardM at 03 February, 2008 08:30 PM

Wikinews Original Reporting

Church of Scientology: '"Anonymous' will be stopped"

>>Click here for the full EXCLUSIVE story.

Claiming that "actions are being taken", a Church of Scientology representative has responded exclusively to Wikinews regarding the recent attacks on their web sites from the nebulous "Anonymous" group. In an effort to get the Church's side of the story, Wikinews freelance journalist Brian McNeil located a contact address, knowledge@lrh.org. A "Laetitia" responded, ignoring a detailed list of questions that would have given information on the damage inflicted on the Church and action taken. Instead non-specific comments about how the Church is handling the issue were given. She first started by asking if Wikinews was "part of Anonymous or are you pro-Scientology?"

"Activities of Anonymous have been reported to the Authorities and actions are being taken. Their activities are illegal and we do not approve of them. At the same time, our main work is to improve the environment, make people more able and spiritually aware. ... yes, we are taking action," said Laetitia.

Wikinews sent the e-mails from the Church to several experts on Scientology for an expert opinion on what they might have been trying to say. Although there was minimal response, Wikinews heard from the creator of Operation Clambake, which is a project formed in 1996 as a direct result of seeing the Church succeeding in removing criticism from the Internet. Wikinews also heard from another expert on Scientology and former Church member, who wishes to remain anonymous.

>>Click here for the full EXCLUSIVE story.

Also take part in the poll to the right of the blog postings.

by Jason Safoutin at 03 February, 2008 08:25 PM

Blog on Wiki Patterns

Velocity-Flexibility-Economy Theorem

Chris Brogan explains how social media can improve the velocity, flexibility and economy of your business:

We aren’t talking about the marketing department. We aren’t equipping PR professionals. This isn’t a new set of tools for launching campaigns. These are tools to improve interaction, and they are incredibly powerful and game-changing when you consider how much less impact on traditional business resources most of these solutions have.

by Stewart Mader at 03 February, 2008 06:32 PM

Brianna Laugher

If you take photos of famous people, release them as free content

Photographers of the world (that is, probably everyone who has access to read this blog), contribute to free culture by making your functional works available as free content. You could do this by uploading them to Flickr with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) or Attribution ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license, or upload them to Wikimedia Commons under one of those acceptable free licenses.

By all means, keep your artistic and creative works all-rights-reserved or with whatever other restrictions you feel are required. But by taking one extra click to make your functional works free content, you enable works like Wikipedia to slurp them up and be vastly improved.

Robert Scoble had the privilege to attend Davos, and thankfully he appreciates that privilege and has donated dozens of excellent photographs of famous, world-changing leaders into the public domain. He would have taken the photos and posted them on Flickr anyway, but thanks to his licensing choice, others can shuffle them over Wikipedia and instantly improve dozens of articles by a major factor.

Whenever you attend any kind of major even with your camera, please take the time to let others improve Wikipedia on your behalf by using a free content license!

by Brianna Laugher at 03 February, 2008 02:12 PM

How to use Gmail to manage high-traffic mailing lists

So this is probably useful for people other than Wikimedians, but it is definitely useful for Wikimedians. :) This is a HOWTO on using Gmail to manage mailing list mail, get what you actually want to read and skip the irrelevant crud.

Why Gmail?

  • Google (that is, decent) search in your mailboxes
  • Conversation threading – replies on a single subject line are grouped together, massively reducing mailbox clutter and making threads easier to follow
  • ‘Mute’ feature (more below)

No mail client I know of comes close to providing these things, but I’m happy to be corrected on that matter. Even if you don’t trust Google to store all your mail, I think it’s worth using it just for mailing list mail for these reasons.

A credible alternative is Gmane. They do decent mailing-list-to-web/news archiving, with some very useful features. For example, at the Gmane equivalent of foundation-l you can find four different types of feeds. So if you don’t want your inbox being cluttered up, you can take your pick from RSS, web-based frames view or news (for your newsreader). Gmane is seriously awesome. You can also use the Gmane website to post to the list, although it’s a little cumbersome.

The only disadvantages to it are

  • Doesn’t work for private mailing lists
  • The list you want has to be already hooked up, or you have to request it to be hooked up
  • Not as convenient for posting or search

OK, so onto Gmail. The plan is to make Gmail archive by default all the mailing list mail except for certain keywords, and put it all under a label for easy reference.


  1. Go to Settings

  2. Go to the Labels tab

  3. Enter whatever name you want for your label (maybe, “mailing lists”)

Click Save.

  • Go to the Filters tab

  • Click on “create a new filter”. We’re going to make a filter that archives everything unless it has some certain keywords.
  • In the “From” field [or maybe that should actually be the “To” field… hm…] list the domains of wherever the mailing list mail comes from. Check the welcome message you got from the mailing list when you signed up; it should be the same as that.

  • In the “doesn’t have” field, put whatever keywords of things you find interesting and if the mail has that keyword then you actually WANT to see that mail in your inbox. For example, your name or your username might be one. :) Your country or town. Topics you work on or are interested in. Etc.

  • Click “Next step”
  • Tick the option for “Skip the inbox (Archive it)”

  • And click “create filter”.
  • Now the filter is completed and you can see it listed under the Filters tab.

    Last step.

  • Go to the General tab and turn “Keyboard shortcuts” to ON. (And save.)

  • With Keyboard shortcuts you can use the best feature of Gmail since conversation-threading, that is muting. When you archive a conversation it disappears from your inbox. But if someone replies on that thread then the conversation comes back to your inbox. Mute is like permanent archive, for stupid mailing list threads that you don’t care about and that won’t die. Now they will!

    Once you’ve done this, you can access all the mailing list mail under whatever label you gave it (it will listed in a menu on the left). This is useful as your filter may be too strong and miss threads you’re interested in. So whenever you have some spare time you can look at the threads under the label, and move the interesting ones back to the inbox. That kills the muting/archiving and after that that thread will pop back into your inbox with new messages. Over time you can also tweak your filter if it is too strong or too weak.

    And possibly the best part is, as the days and months pass, you will build up a better archive within Gmail at your ready reference for searching. You will only wish you had started it in 2005…

    Thus concludes the lesson on how to use Gmail and Gmane to manage crazy-traffic mailing lists. :)

    by Brianna Laugher at 03 February, 2008 01:50 PM

    LCA Open Day


    Setting up for Open Day.
    © Paul Fenwick, licensed CC-BY-SA

    Well, Saturday was the last part of LCAOpen Day. I had a table on Wiki[mp]edia with Brian who kindly volunteered to help me out.

    We gave away:

    We gave out around 90 of each of these things, and over 120 of the leaflets.

    I looked for promo material on all the projects, but Wikipedia and Wikiversity were the only projects that had anything decent that appeared to be even remotely up-to-date. We communities really need to do some work on this…

    We also sold around 80-90 of DVDs containing the 2007 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year zip, which added up to about 1.2G of data. I should have put the 2006 archive on them too. Too late now… Anyway we sold these for $1.50, as that is what getting the discs made cost me. I will more or less get completely reimbursed for the free stuff.

    Brian brought his laptop and had a slideshow of the images on the disc running, which worked very well. I had my laptop open with Wikipedia on it.


    Wiki[mp]edia’s Open Day stand.
    © Paul Fenwick, licensed CC-BY-SA

    Talking to people was interesting. Lots of people said “I love Wikipedia, I use it all the time” to which I would immediately reply, “Have you ever edited it?” Two people said back, “I would, but I’ve never found anything wrong to correct”. That’s really interesting; not long ago, I would never expect that response.

    A couple of people had edited Wikipedia and had some anecdote to share. They got to a point where they wanted to do something and weren’t sure what to do or how to find it out, so they left it. So it was nice that Brian and I could answer some questions.

    One case was about negative material being removed from an article on a school. The guy had never bothered to pay attention to the tabs at the top of articles and had therefore never realised that each article had a “history” tab. (!!) Clearly we have to do some better PR, because this is one of the most important aspects to Wikipedia…

    Another was about missing entries on languages spoken in Indonesia. With that, I said to the guy, “Hey, let’s start the articles right now,” and so we did. :) (Because he doesn’t have an account, this way he can edit them – you need an account to start a new article, but not to edit it.) I hope he does go and improve them now. That will be cool.


    Wikipedia lightning talk.
    © Paul Fenwick, licensed CC-BY-SA

    Paul, who took this photo, talked me into giving a lightning talk on Wikipedia. This is a talk with a three minute time limit. I gave an example of an edit war via slides – color/colour/color/colour/color/colour/color/colour/color. This is nice; Australians understand how this would be a unresolvable conflict. :)At the end I gave a plug for Wikimedia Australia.

    Afterwards Brian and I had a cool drink at a cafe and discussed conferences and organisation organisation. LCA is the second example I’ve experienced of a well-run volunteer-coordinated large-scale conference (after Wikimania ’07), so I have a new set of ideas and tips filed away in the back of my mind for when we try it on for Wikimania. :)

    My current thinking goes like this:

    • 2008: try one-day or one-and-a-half-day “workshop” in Canberra? Melbourne? no real sponsorship; 75-150 attendees
    • July 2009: Wikimania Australia – 150-250 attendees; sponsorship; mix of hands-on workshop stuff + traditional conference talks (cajole someone at WMF into coming south on a holiday perhaps :))
    • 2010 bid for international Wikimania

    The workshop idea was influenced by talking to Dutch Wikipedian Ciell, who has been travelling in Australia and with whom I had dinner last Tuesday. However the tyranny of distance may still be too great for it to work here. I am not sure the community is actually large enough yet.

    by Brianna Laugher at 03 February, 2008 11:22 AM

    Gerard Meijssen

    Is localisation for plurals supported for your language?

    When you localise software, the information that is provided in a message may differ. There can be none, one or more instances involved of what the messages informs about. Depending on the numbers involved, the sentence differs and support for singular and plural is needed.

    MediaWiki supports this. However, it is not obvious how plural support should work as it differs from language to language. Welsh for instance has more then five forms of plural to consider. When you want your language to support plurals, it needs to be clearly defined how this should work and once this is done, you either post a bug to Bugzilla or ask the fine people at Betawiki to set it up for you.

    Nikerabbit has recently implemented the plural support for Lithuanian. As a reaction a bug was entered for Russian with a request for plural support. On the Betawiki tasks list there was a comment that there are many more languages that could profit... Hr, Cu, Cs, Be, Be_tarask, Sk, Sl, Sr_el, Sr_ec ...

    When plural support has been implemented, it means that a lot of messages have to be revisited to create the right text. These messages can be found on the "List of warnings" where messages with problems are indicated.

    Supporting plurals happens in two phases; first the software is adapted for a language and then all the messages with plurals have to be adapted. It is a lot of work but it sure improves the user experience :)
    Thanks,
    GerardM

    by GerardM at 03 February, 2008 09:06 AM

    Blog on Wiki Patterns

    Yes We Can

    Please vote. It’s the most important thing you can do for yourself, your family, your friends, your country, and your world. You have the power, and together, We can make change happen. Yes. we. can.

    by Stewart Mader at 03 February, 2008 07:15 AM

    Citizendium Blog

    Reactionary?

    From a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman, discussing a talk by Andrew Keen of Cult of the Amateur infamy:

    [Keen is] a fan of Citizendium, the Larry Sanger project to create a wikipedia by leveraging experts; of Google’s “wikipedia-killer”, Knol; of Jason Calcanis’s hand-rolled search engine Mahalo. These projects seem deeply reactionary to me, like they’re missing the fundamental truth of the projects that they’re copying: that the movements of a mass number of people on the internet can accomplish tasks that it’s very hard for a small group of experts to solve.

    This might be an apt criticism of Knol and Mahalo (maybe — it’s a very simplistic criticism, in any case), but it represents a total misunderstanding of the Citizendium.  It is very sad that some people still think that we are an experts-only project; we aren’t, as anyone who has investigated us the slightest bit knows.

    What Ethan and, sadly, too many outside of the CZ fold do not realize is that CZ represents a step forward, not a step backward.  I as much as anyone helped pioneer the very practice Ethan praises, of mass online movements accomplishing distributed content tasks.  I’m not about to give up on that (for chrissakes).  And CZ doesn’t.  In fact, we invite everyone to participate, as long as they are willing to follow our modest, sensible rules.  We know (indeed, we illustrate) that distributing work in a bottom-up way among an open community is the best way to run the sort of project we’re pursuing.  But we are a step forward in that we have actually set up a more sensible governance framework to pursue this project.  Part of this involves giving experts a role — not a top-down command-and-control role, of course — in the project.  But another part involves requiring people to take real-world responsibility for their contributions.  Another part involves having contributors commit to a set of principles that the community runs by.

    The result is that we are approaching 5,200 entries (with an average article length several times what Wikipedia’s was in its first year) and we continue to accelerate.  Expect not just solid growth this year (that much is a given), but great things.  I’m serious; you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    And, please.  By now, CZ is obviously no longer a “Larry Sanger project,” any more than Wikipedia can be described as a “Larry Sanger project.”  It is a CZ community project.  Did I write all those articles?  Of course not.  It bothers me when people describe the project that way, because it gives me credit for their work.  I don’t deserve that.

    But people will always insist on shoehorning facts to fit their own cynical and simplistic analyses…

    by Larry Sanger at 03 February, 2008 12:48 AM

    02 February, 2008

    Sabine Cretella

    Afrophonewikis and localzations of Mediawiki

    I just learnt from the afrophonewikis list that three African languages finished the first localisation milestone, that is: Swahili, Sesotho sa Leboa and Amharic. That is really wonderful. Thanks Gerard for letting us know.

    Well at this stage I also would like to thank those who actually did all the localization work and in particular Siebrand who is doing the organizational work, which is mainly done in the background and is key to whatever is done in terms of translation on Betawiki. Knowing how time consuming the organizational part is a special thanks to him.

    Of course: whoever feels to be able to contribute, please do so and should you know people who could eventually help: tell them. The more the message gets out the better it is for all of your communities. Something that people often forget: the communities' work is their very own success - so please: write your very own success story by contributing to your community's projects.

    by Sabine Cretella at 02 February, 2008 11:38 PM

    David Gerard

    Stay the hell out of Dubai.

    No matter how much cash they offer. It’s trying to remake itself as a tourist trap, but hasn’t quite got the concept clear. Online petition here, for what that’s worth. The British Consulate is on the case, but it’s difficult since he hasn’t been charged with anything yet. Further reading: 1, 2, 3, 4. Feel free to spread this around.

    by David Gerard at 02 February, 2008 07:38 PM

    T. Mills Kelly

    Open Up!

    The twentieth episode of Digital Campus is now up and ready for you to download. In this episode, Tom, Dan, and I discuss what the open access movement means for higher education. We also have a few critical things to say about BigThink.com, some positive things to say about PublicDomanReprints.org, and decide that as much as we think it looks cool, we’re all three going to have to pass on the MacBook Air. To find out why, give us a listen. We are very interested to hear what you think too, so be sure to leave some comments on the Digital Campus website.

    by tkelly7 at 02 February, 2008 03:56 PM

    01 February, 2008

    Gerard Meijssen

    Group statistics in time

    The Group statistics in time provide you with information about the localisation of MediaWiki. The numbers are impressive. In a year the number of languages that have a full localisation have doubled. In the last month alone 5 more languages have been completely localised.

    The most impressive news is that in just a month 25 more languages have the most often used messages localised. I expect that this will have an effect in reaching out to the readers of our wikis, I hope that we will help more of them to becoming editors and consequently be better able to bring information to more people.

    There are still bounties to be won for languages in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The first claims for Tajik, Northern Sotho and Marathi have been completed. We really want MediaWiki to be the software that is the preferred way of informing people in any language on the Internet.

    Thanks,
    GerardM

    by GerardM at 01 February, 2008 10:17 PM

    Ben Yates

    The people who brought you the 10,000-year clock are excited about Wikipedia's potential as a canonical "Futurepedia".

    Think about articles like 2020 -- "If expanded greatly the official future timeline might prove to be a useful document of what we expect."

    I hate to be the one to break it to them, but there's no way that's going to happen within Wikipedia proper. It's not verifiable. It doesn't cite authoritative sources. It's not encyclopedic. Basically, it breaks all the rules, and it'll get slapped down before it gains any steam. Wikipedia's incredible realized potential lives side by side with a lot of squandered potential.

    You're not going to win this one by fighting it out in the AfD trenches -- anyway, 1head-to-head combat isn't the wiki way. Wikipedia desperately needs to be nested inside some broader, more permissive architecture.

    by Ben Yates at 01 February, 2008 08:58 PM

    AboutUs

    Featured WikPage: MyCreditStrategy.com

    MyCreditStrategy.com is a community based educational website aimed at teaching its users how to correctly use credit cards, and specifically, balance transfers to make a profit. With sections like “General Strategy” and “Effects on Credit Score” its WikiPage itself is a valuable resource for financially minded individuals. Check it out! (View Comments)

    by TedErnst at 01 February, 2008 07:40 PM

    Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

    25 Logo Submissions

    Just a short update on the logo selection tonight. The Wikibooks logo discussion has received over 25 logo submissions so far. This is a nice milestone for the discussion, and it's also a nice measure of the level of continued interest in this process. We have not yet set a deadline for the open submissions portion of the discussion, but now that we have over 25 logo submissions, maybe it's time we start talking about when to progress to the next stage.

    Next week I will probably spam a few messages to the various village pumps and mailing lists. Even though 25 logos is a nice group to choose from, the more we get, the more likely we are to find a logo that everybody will like. We've gotten some excellent ones submitted so far, and if you haven't, you should go take a look at the current submissions.

    by Whiteknight at 01 February, 2008 03:53 PM

    Brianna Laugher

    Links for 2008-02-01

    • Open Educational Resources blogs, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, hint hint!
    • It was mentioned at the FOSS geospatial BoF this afternoon (see previous post) that the Queensland government is releasing some data sets under “all Creative Commons licenses”, according to one attendee. This is allegedly to allow maximum reuse. I rather think CC-BY alone would do the job! I was really surprised I hadn’t heard of this before so I tried to dig up more information.
      • Blog post
      • SMH: Private eyes on public data (2007-09-25): THE Queensland Government has commissioned a project exploring the possibility of adapting the [CC] licences for the entire state’s PSD [Public Sector Data].

    The Queensland Spatial Information Council seems like the appropriate government site but I don’t have the patience right now to find any document announcing any such release. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet…

    At any rate, it sounds impressively progressive for a government body!

    by Brianna Laugher at 01 February, 2008 01:36 PM

    Gerard Meijssen

    OmegaWIki in Telugu

    OmegaWiki has its fist messages localised in Telugu. To celebrate this, I made తెలుగు the word of the day. :)
    Thanks,
    GerardM

    by GerardM at 01 February, 2008 01:26 PM

    Evan Prodromou

    12 Pluviôse CCXVI

    I'm really pleased to announce here that one of the projects Maj and I have been working on for a long time has finally come to fruition. Today Wikitravel Press launched its first two Open Content printed guidebooks -- Wikitravel Chicago and Wikitravel Singapore.

    When we started Wikitravel back in 2003 (!), our sincere hope was that at some point in the future, people would be able to carry Wikitravel guidebooks with them on a trip. I think that mobile technology is excellent, and it's amazing how much you can read on a cell phone or PDA these days. But there's still something so convenient about a printed guidebook: it never runs out of batteries; you don't need an uplink to read it; you don't have to worry about it getting stolen because you flashed it out in the wrong café or restaurant.

    To be honest, I thought that one of the "traditional" guidebook publishers would step in and use Wikitravel content in their guides. But that didn't happen, and along with our partner Jani Patokallio, Maj and I decided to start a publishing company ourselves. Thus Wikitravel Press, and our first two books.

    We have a number of other books in the pipeline, and our hope is to have a few dozen available by the end of the year, and a few hundred by the end of the following year. I'm working on the Wikitravel guide to Montreal, and Maj and I are collaborating on Buenos Aires. We're taking a 6-week trip to Argentina in February/March, so this should be a great time for research.

    I heartily encourage any writers or editors who are interested in working on travel books to contact Wikitravel Press about your ideas of bringing Wikitravel content to print. I think this is a great opportunity for people who want to encourage Open Content, or who want to get into the travel writing field, or who just love the idea of wikis-to-books.

    tags: wikitravel wikitravelpress travel guidebook singapore chicago

    01 February, 2008 12:51 PM

    WiseWoman

    But it is his birthday!

    Today is WiseMan's birthday, and I am trying to work at home. The postmen keep ringing (3 and counting: public mail, private mail, parcel) and now the phone has started. - "Hi, here's Inez, is WiseMan there?" - "No, he's at work." - "When will he be home, can I call back at 6 p.m.? It's his birthday!" - "Yes, he'll be there by then. Who may I say called?" - "This is Inez from

    by Debora Weber-Wulff at 01 February, 2008 11:18 AM

    Sage Ross

    Presentism and the history of science on Wikipedia

    Christopher D. Green, a professor of psychology and philosophy at York University and president of the Society for the History of Psychology, has a strong post on the reasons academics are often turned off by Wikipedia. In the wake of my recent call to Wikipedia arms in the History of Science Society Newsletter, Green looks back on the development of the history of psychology article in the period since he expanded it by about 6,000 words (in the middle of 2007). I have a short reply on Green's blog.

    by Sage at 01 February, 2008 09:36 AM

    Sabine Cretella

    OmegaWiki and licenses ... a thought

    There are many dictionaries around and there is no real central place for them because they are under different licenses and some are proprietary.

    There is an approach to so called authoritative databases which get connected to OmegaWiki, but in some way that is problematic since you don't see the whole stuff "together" - you need to go from the community "place" to the other one and vice versa to see if there are contents.

    Like always when I do things in the house I have ideas and often can see things like a picture in my mind.

    Bèrto is changing the architecture of the Database and we will have a new version, that is OmegaWiki 2.0.

    The database design I saw is really easy to understand and so it is also easy to "imagine" new stuff.

    Now the data within the community database is licensed under CC-BY and GFDL license - Francis (Apertium) just told me in the chat that there is a really good Friulan dictionary under GPL license. So why not include this into OW? I already hear you know: but that is GPL and with that not compatible ....

    Well if I look at an expression page right now we have the lemma + the definition and sometimes various different definitions that are defined meanings. IMHO it would make sense to be able to see the contents that refer to that very same lemma from other dictionaries. The only thing needed is "tagging the entries as being part of this or that license" and therefore they are shown under a different header. You would have some thing:

    Contents available under CC-BY and GFDL double license
    Contents available under GFDL license
    Contents available under GPL license

    As long as we don't allow for the export of mixed licensed lists I don't see a problem, because the contents show up one after the other, like book titles. I am wondering if this fits in the actual database without the need to have separate ones where you then need to connect to ...

    It is just a thought not really thought out well ... but there is something in there
    ...

    by Sabine Cretella at 01 February, 2008 09:01 AM

    WiseWoman

    From "Learning Objects" to "Knowledge Bits"

    I have long been an opponent of the "Learning Objects" school of thought in E-Learning. If you take the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee definition, this is "[a]ny entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used and referenced during technology-supported learning". You pretty much get everything, including the kitchen sink, as a learning object. Many, many authors spin

    by Debora Weber-Wulff at 01 February, 2008 08:52 AM

    Dvortygirl

    May it Please the Court

    Microsoft to buy Yahoo at 62 percent premium

    But what does Yahoo have to say about it? In the wake of a tough week for Yahoo, Microsoft has tendered an unsolicited bid for Yahoo at $44.6 billion, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing price last night. Microsoft claims they will be able to cut Yahoo's costs by $1 billion, through realizing economies of scale, shared expertise and R+D, and cutting redundant networks.

    There's no word from Yahoo publicly about it, but Microsoft HAS stated that they will be "working together" with Yahoo to develop the merger, which is corporate talk for "Yahoo has already accepted, and unless you can tender a counter offer bigger than 62% premium on shares, piss off."

    So what does this mean for Wikimedia? Well, since this puts pressure on Google to monetize their assets, reduce costs, and find profitable new products, it means quite a bit. Bear with me a moment and I'll explain how.

    Google is going to have to start with cutting costs, probably by dropping applications that aren't bringing in enough revenue for their cost, and increasing their focus on the online advertising market. The online ad market is expected to double from $40 billion today to $80 billion in 2010, and Google holds the lion's share of the market.

    It also might spur renewed interest in Wikipedia, Commons and other WMF projects by Google. When you think about it, it's pretty logical. The WMF is outrageously undervalued, and a buyout from Google would not only solidify the WMF's cash flow, but it would also seriously help Google's advertising division. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I don't know if that's going to happen. For one thing, the Foundation has been pretty public that they don't want to be bought out. Now, that means about zip in the trust department, but who knows. More importantly though, there are competing interests in Wikimedia that want to see it in either their hands, or anyone's but Google's. There are people out there who really want to buy Wikipedia. Someone donated $500,000 anonymously to the fundraiser. So, whoever these competing interests are (there are varying degrees of accuracy in the speculation, so I won't go through it here) obviously don't want their money going to Google.

    In the end, I'm left completely uncertain about what will happen. I don't think we can be certain either way if this will be mean a buyout or not for Wikipedia. So keep your eyes open, and we'll follow up on this situation as it develops.

    by SWATJester at 01 February, 2008 05:59 AM

    Blog on Wiki Patterns

    Gartner: 50% of business IT purchases decided by end-users; Apple market share may double

    Gartner LogoAccording to a report published today by Gartner:

    By 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and services acquisitions made by IT. The rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of the browser interface have made computing approachable and individuals are now making decisions about technology for personal and business use.

    Accordingly, the report says, IT departments are increasingly taking this into account when making IT buying decisions. Wikis, blogs, social bookmarking tools, tagging and RSS are steadily growing in presence and importance in organizations because of the value people have found by discovering and using them outside work.

    The same report also predicts that Apple will double its current 6.1% US and Western European PC marketshare to ~12% by 2011. Now that’s good news for long term investors in the company!

    John Gruber has some good analysis:

    …if they’re right, the math is just spectacular for Apple: it’s not like Apple is expanding into the low-end budget computer market, so if they do double their share, it’ll take place entirely in the middle-to-high end of the market.

    (via AppleInsider)

    by Stewart Mader at 01 February, 2008 12:58 AM

    Brion Vibber

    Wikipedia WAP portal updated

    We’ve got a semi-experimental mobile portal for Wikipedia, based on the Hawpedia code using Hawhaw, that’s been up for a while.

    I’ve updated it to the current version of the code, which seems to handle some templates better, as well as producing proper output for iPhone viewing. :)

    Today’s fancy phones with their fancy browsers (the iPhone, Opera Mini, etc) can do a pretty good job handling the “real web” in addition to the stripped-down limited “mobile web” of yesteryear, but there are different pressures, which one should take into account when targeting mobile devices.

    Screens are small, bandwidth is low. Wikipedia articles tend to be very long and thorough, but often all you need for an off-the-cuff lookup is the first couple paragraphs. The WAP gateway splits pages into shorter chunks, so you don’t have to wait to download the entire rest of the page (or wait for the slow phone CPU to lay it out).

    Even on an iPhone capable of rendering the whole article and the MonoBook skin in all its glory, I find there’s some strong benefits to a shorter, cleaner page to do quick lookups on the go. (Especially if I’m not on Wifi!)

    The biggest problem with the Hawpedia gateway today is that it tries to do its own hacky little wiki text parser, which dies horribly at times. Many pages look fine, but others end up with massive template breakage and become unreadable.

    Long-term it may be better to do this translation at a higher level, working from the output XHTML… or else in an intermediate stage of MediaWiki’s own parser, with more semantic information still available.

    by brion at 01 February, 2008 12:55 AM

    31 January, 2008

    Gabriel Pollard (Nzgabriel)

    nzgabriel


    Popular file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is facing court action in its host country, Sweden.  The four men who run the site face charges of conspiracy to break Swedish copyright law.

    BBC has the article in full.

    by Gabriel Pollard at 31 January, 2008 11:33 PM

    Blog on Wiki Patterns

    APC’s 7 Strategies for Implementing a Successful Corporate Wiki

    Industry Week reports on the results of a study on wikis in business by the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council (APC):

    When considering use of wikis, CIOs should keep in mind that in reality, a large number of companies may already have employees using wikis for work purposes without the authority to do so. Perhaps a better question than whether unsanctioned use of wikis should be tolerated is: “How and what can be done to ensure employees use wikis productively and for the larger good?”

    It’s good to see APC suggesting that CIOs should take existing wiki use as a positive sign, and focus their energy and resources on furthering that use. I think the best approach CIOs can take when they learn of existing wiki use in their organizations is to:

    • offer to help groups make sure their wikis are secure
    • help break down any technical barriers to widespread wiki use
    • promote interconnection between wikis through things like LDAP integration
    • and reward the early adopters as a way to spread goodwill and further catalyze growth in wiki use.

    Here are seven strategies the APC report recommends for a successful corporate wiki. After each, I’ve linked to appropriate Wiki Patterns from Wikipatterns.com that can help you with each step:

    1. Integrate the wiki as one of several important tools in an organization’s IT collaboration architecture. (Corporate Directory, Critical Mass, Magnet)
    2. Understand the wiki “rules of conduct” and ensure they are monitored and enforced. (Wiki Charter)
    3. Optimize the use of wikis for collaborative knowledge creation across geographically dispersed employees, and for crossing divisional or functional boundaries, in order to gain insights from people not previously connected. (Invitation, BarnRaising)
    4. Assign a champion to each wiki and have that champion observe contributions that people make to the wiki; the champion will help foster employees who adopt the important “shaper” role within the wiki. (Champion, Maintainer)
    5. Recognize that the most difficult barrier to cross in sustaining a wiki is convincing people to edit others’ work; organizations should ask their champion and managers to help with this. (Intentional Error, Patron)
    6. Recognize that a significant value of wikis comes from embedding small software programs into the wiki that structure repetitive behavior. Some include organizing meeting minutes, rolling up project status or scheduling meetings. Ask wiki participants to keep watching for repetitive activity to evolve and enhance wiki technology. (Scaffold, WikiZenMaster)
    7. Understand wikis are best used in work cultures that encourage collaboration. Without an appropriate fit with the workplace culture, wiki technology will be of limited value in sharing knowledge, ideas and practices. (90-9-1 Theory)

    The bottom line: This is an excellent piece of research from APC, and something business wiki users, IT leadership, and CIOs should take seriously. It’s nice to see level-headed thinking that promotes the business value of wiki use!
    (via elearningpost)



    Check out my new Wikipatterns book - a how-to guide for growing wiki use in organizations with practical advice from a wiki expert.

    Here’s what people are saying about the book:

    • “Just pre-ordered this from Amazon. Looks to be a good read and an essential tool in any E2.0 evangelist’s tool kit.” - Scott Gavin
    • “I love it when this happens, a blog I’ve read for ages (devoured some would say) gets published in book format. Needless to say my copy is already ordered.” - Gordon McLean

    by Stewart Mader at 31 January, 2008 08:15 PM

    Dan G

    Paynter and Locke: what actually happened at meankids and unclebobism?

    Sorting out the time line behind the attacks on Kathy Sierra... (update: link now dead. Kathy didn't want that remaining as the last post on her blog.)

    (NB no specific death threats were made on either site discussed here. Those were made in comments on Sierra's blog. )

    First a blog called "meankids" was set up by Frank Paynter after Tara Hunt used the term to describe people attacking her in the comments of blog. Meankids was just another attack-site attempting to satire other blogs/companies - you can see a sample of their work in the google cache (don't know how long that link will be active). On this site an unnamed blogger posted an image of Kathy Sierra next to a noose. A member of the site called "Joey" then posted "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size". The same person then went on to make several sexual remarks about Sierra.

    On March 17 meankids was deleted by Paynter who later stated that he "tore the site down" after a subset of the contributors - including Chris Locke - objected to him moderating their misogynistic posts. Locke replaced meankids with "unclebobism" on wordpress.com, with the same aims. This site appeared to open on March 20, when Paynter first linked to it.

    Then, on March 24, a horrific photoshopped picture of Sierra was posted on unclebobism with underwear digitally superimposed over her head. Someone also posted disgusting sexual comments to the blog on a different post. Herrel's name wasn't used, but look at the avatar picture used on unclebobism - it's Herrel's picture. Locke, after being mailed by Sierra, claims he deleted unclebobism. But click this link - it seems that unclebobism was not deleted by Locke, but was taken down by Wordpress.com as a breach of their terms and conditions.

    What is abundantly clear is that if the originator of the pictures and threats was not either Paynter or Locke, they know who he his.

    Footnote: Painter said on March 17 "MeanKids dropped the curtain last night. The world will little note nor long remember how offensive…"

    *Herrel briefly had a post on his blog with a vague denial that he was behind the comments. A few commenters weren't particularly impressed. Herrel then deleted his entire blog.

    by Dan G at 31 January, 2008 11:03 AM

    Companies: don't blog if you can't keep it up!

    Take, for example, Adpinion. An interesting new startup where readers rate the ads they see on websites, so the adverts served to them become more and more relevant -- clever stuff.

    However Adpinion has started a blog called Button of Judgement (named after the thumbs up/thumbs down button on their ads). In three days this January they made three (good) posts, and then nadda, nothing, zip. That doesn't inspire confidence in their product! How can I trust them to maintain their service, when they can't even maintain their own blog?

    I found Adpinion through Paul Stamatiou, who writes a great nerd blog.

    by Dan G at 31 January, 2008 11:00 AM

    May it Please the Court

    New Blog: "All's Wool" by Danny Wool

    Danny Wool, former Grants Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation, and current founder and man-about-town at Veropedia, has a new blog up. While there's only a few posts, they're pretty good and insightful. Here's a clip from today's posting:

    And the results are in ...
    * 51 posts to the foundation-l mailing list about what song to play on the WMF office telephone.
    * 14 posts to the foundation-l mailing list on the WMF's values.

    If values were like candidates in the U.S. primaries, they would have long quit the race.


    It's interesting stuff. Check it out.

    by SWATJester at 31 January, 2008 08:52 AM

    Dvortygirl

    Orchid

    (So yesterday's entry doesn't sit on top forever.)

    A coworker heard that I occasionally like drawing, so he gave me an orchid, one of the ones he's raising, to draw. I figured I'd better get at it while it was actually blooming. Here's my attempt.

    by Dvortygirl at 31 January, 2008 08:46 AM

    May it Please the Court

    Wikimedia Foundation hires Veronique Kessler as CFOO

    Combining the positions of COO and CFO into one, the WMF has recently hired Veronique Kessler, formerly of the San Francisco JCC. From the announcement on Foundation-l

    Hi folks,

    I’m delighted to announce that Veronique Kessler will be the Wikimedia
    Foundation’s new Chief Financial and Operating Officer (CFOO). Veronique
    will start with us February 4.

    Veronique has 15 years of very strong managerial and financial
    experience working with a wide range of organizations. She joins us from
    the non-profit Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, where she was
    Director of Finance and, before that, Controller. Prior to JCCSF, she
    did financial consulting for clients such as Stanford University,
    brokerage firm Charles Schwab, and the venture capital and investment
    firm Berkeley International Capital Corporation. And before that, she
    was Controller for the Walden International Investment Group, financial
    reporting manager for the private investment company The Fremont Group,
    a senior accountant with the Wells Fargo bank, and a senior auditor with
    Deloitte & Touche, one of the world’s “big four” audit firms.

    Veronique is a CPA (certified public accountant), with a B.A. in
    Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has a
    strong and varied international background including work with Hong
    Kong, China, Indonesia, Taiwan and Singapore, and she speaks fluent French.

    The role of the Wikimedia Foundation’s CFOO is to oversee our financial
    and operational activities. In general, Veronique will ensure that the
    Foundation operates smoothly, effectively, and in compliance with 501(c)
    standards and generally-accepted accounting principles.

    She will report to me. The heads of business development (Kul Wadhwa)
    and fundraising (hiring in progress) will report to her, as will our
    office manager (Erica Ortega), my assistant (Cheryl Owens, formerly
    Steffen), and our accountant (currently Oleta McHenry, in St. Petersburg).

    The Chief Financial and Operating Officer is a critical position for the
    Wikimedia Foundation, and I am thrilled we have found such a
    highly-qualified person to handle this important role. Veronique's
    delighted to be joining us – she’s excited by the importance and global
    impact of our work, and is looking forward to being part of the
    open-source and free culture movement.

    Please join me in welcoming her to the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation.

    Sue Gardner
    Executive Director
    Wikimedia Foundation


    In case I didn't mention it before, this also notes the hiring of Kul Wadhwa as the head of business development, Erica Ortega as office manager, and Cheryl Owens as assistant to Sue.

    by SWATJester at 31 January, 2008 08:33 AM

    Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

    Warning Templates

    We got a message yesterday that our {{test}} template was very "mean", and that it most likely serves to scare away more well-meaning new users then it does to stop vandals. The text of the template, it was suggested, should be made more friendly so we aren't scaring away new users every time they make a test edit.

    On the face, yes. The suggestion that we should "not bite the newbies" is one that every project should take seriously, because new users bring so much to a project. The problem is not that en.wikibooks is mean to it's new users (I posit that we are actually more kind then average), but that our methods and procedures are so far different from Wikipedia's as to be almost incomparable. On Wikipedia, the {{test}} template and it's brethren are used to kindly alert a new user to a simple but well-intentioned mistake. "Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia", it says and goes on to mention the sandbox and a link to some documentation.

    On en.wikibooks, we simply don't have an analogous template to this. When a new user makes one of the common editing mistakes, we find that it's often easier to correct the mistake immediately, and give that new user a warm welcome. Our {{welcome}} template is not entirely dissimilar to Wikipedia's version of the {{test}} template. "Welcome to Wikibooks!", we say, here are the links you need to get started. When needed, we follow this up with an explanation of what they did wrong, if it's even worth mentioning. "I saw that you made a strange edit, I hope you don't mind, but I went ahead and fixed it for you. Let me know if you have any questions about this".

    New users are one thing, but vandals are another entirely. Wikipedia has several templates for all manner of warnings: {{uw-vandalism1}} to {{uw-vandalism5}}, and a similar sequence for spam, blanking, etc. A vandal could, conceivably, receive 4 warnings before they are blocked, even if it's apparent from their first edit that they have no intentions to be long-term productive members. On en.wikibooks by contrast, we have one template for all varieties of bad edits: {{test}}. It's our first, last, and only warning. "Do not make inappropriate edits to Wikibooks", it used to say (before it was made more "positive"), " Edits that you have made have been considered inappropriate or even disruptive". No sense here in differentiating between vandalism or spam, because it all falls under the category of "inappropriate or disruptive", and is simply not acceptable. We are much less tolerant of vandalism then en.wikipedia is, and many supporters of that mind-set (myself included) will be happy to point out that we have much lower levels of vandalism compared to our volume of productive edits then most other projects do.

    Now, a Wikipedian who comes to wikibooks, sees a new user and leaves them a {{test}} message is in for a rude and traumatic surprise. This demonstrates that perhaps we should rename our template to something that is more indicative of it's purpose: {{vandalism}} or {{onlywarning}}, or even {{Oh snap, son}} would probably create less confusion. I still don't see a need to even have a template for warning new users for test edits, so maybe our {{test}} could just be redirected to {{welcome}} for the same purpose.

    This should go to show everybody that the communities, methods, and procedures at different projects can be far different from each other, and you shouldn't assume that templates with the same name do the same things in other places.

    by Whiteknight at 31 January, 2008 07:26 AM

    Wikinews Original Reporting

    Wikinews International: You report the 'Anonymous' protest against Scientology

    That's right...we want you to be the reporter for the protest of 'Anonymous' VS. The Church of Scientology. Are you going to be in or near any of the follwing areas on Februry 10th 2008? If so, we want your pictures, your audio, video and interviews of the days protest:

    Please add you name and information such as whether you plan to use video, audio, still photography, or all of the above by clicking here.

    London England, UK; 11:00 a.m. local time
    (146 Queen Victoria Street moving to 68 Tottenham Court Road)

    Edinburgh Scotland, UK; 11:00 a.m. local time
    (20-23 South Bridge)

    New York, NY; 11:00 a.m. eastern time
    (Times Square; West 46th and 7th/Broadway)

    Melbourne, Australia; 2:00 p.m. local time
    (Russell St & Flinders Lane)

    Montreal, Canada; 1:00 p.m. local time
    (4489 Papineau Street)

    Houston, TX; 1:00 p.m. local time
    (2727 Fondren Rd # 1A (details))

    Los Angeles, CA; 11:00 a.m. pacific time
    Protestors meeting at 10:30am at 6801 Hollywood Blvd #257 - will proceed to undecided location

    by Jason Safoutin at 31 January, 2008 06:36 AM

    Angela Beesley

    Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2007

    I love the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest. The 2007 results were recently announced. I voted for Henri Camus’ storm at Pors-Loubous.

    Here are top 22 images. The width is proportional to the number of votes each received.

    1st place by Newton2 2nd place by Paulo Barcellos Jr. 3rd place by Ray eye
    4th place by JialiangGao 5th place by Mila Zinkova 6th place by Diliff 7th place by Lucas Löffler
    8th place by Christopher Batt 9th place by Y.S. Groen 10th place by Malene Thyssen 11th place by Henri Camus 12th place by Daniel Schwen 13th place by Malene Thyssen
    14th place by Tom Murphy VIIVariationen von online poker. 15th place by DemonDeLuxe 16th place by Luca Galuzzi 17th place by Ikiwaner 18th place by James Gathany 19th place by Beckmannjan 20th place by Derek Ramsey 21st place by Ricardo Liberato 22nd place by benjamint444

    Hover over the image for attribution, or click the image for full details. See also my post on the previous year’s contest.

    by Angela Beesley at 31 January, 2008 03:40 AM

    End of 2007

    Thinking of writing a blog post about the Wikimedia Commons picture of the year contest reminded me I had an unpublished draft post about 2007. Like my end of 2006 post, here’s a summary of what happened last year.

    January

    Psychonaut's ferret in a hat. Photo by Chris McKenna. Released under the GFDL and cc-by-sa
    Snow in the garden late 2006/early 2007. Photo by Tim the first time he saw snow

    I celebrated New Year at my sister’s house in England, with my family and Tim.

    Essjay joined Wikia’s community team on January 7th. Tim and I went to a London Wikipedia meetup on the 9th.

    February

    Angela, Terry, Jimmy, Gil - on the party bus

    I went to San Mateo for the first Wikia staff meeting in the new office. It was my first time in San Francisco. The number of people there was amazing - 36 compared to 6 the previous February. Of everything that happened there, the thing that sticks most in my mind is the “party bus” - something I just can’t sum up on my blog. Quite incredible. Drunk staff, getting more drunk while on a bus that has a disco ball. Cigars on the no-smoking bus, people climbing out of the sunroof, wheelchairs, weird people in the bar, falling off a giant chair… and there’s another one of these coming up in March!

    Fountain in Birmingham

    I got back to England and took Tim to Birmingham for valentine’s day. Perhaps not the most romantic city in the world, but I have fond memories of it since I went to uni there.

    Wikia was listed as one of CNN’s 25 startups to watch.

    A cute article in The Age mentions that Tim and I met through Wikipedia.

    March

    Wikia and Wikipedia had more press attention than usual this month.

    The photo of me at my parent's house that appeared in The Times (not available under a free license)

    The Times had an interview with me, claiming my “world has certainly been changed by Wikipedia.” Very true. I also spoke on a radio station in Melbourne on TV in a BBC World interview later in month. A lot of the press was sadly about Essjay, who resigned from Wikia on March 4th.

    Datrio, then a board member of Wikimedia Poland, moved from Wikia’s tech staff to community staff, and provided a vital connection between the two. Catherine Munro, who joined Wikipedia a week before I did, joined Wikia on March 15th, at least in part to replace Essjay.

    April

    Tim and I with the Girl Geeks

    In April, I took part in a panel at the British Association for American Studies conference in Leicester.

    I attended a Wiki Wednesday and spoke at a Girl Geek dinner in London.

    May

    I went to Canada for the first time in May for the RecentChangesCamp in Montreal, en route to New York for Wikia’s product summit.

    Shun Fukuzawa joined Wikia’s as our first representative in Japan. Jabber founder Jeremie Miller joined Wikia to work on Wikia Search.

    June

    In June I visited Wikia’s Polish office for the first time.

    July

    Grand Hotel, Taipei
    I attended another Wiki Wednesday in London and then went to Taipei for Wikimania.

    August

    I celebrated my 30th birthday in Taipei. I have vague memories of Wikia staff dancing on tables.


    September

    A quick visit to the Wikia offices in Poland and San Mateo and then finally back in Australia.

    Eastern Gray Kangaroo - click to zoom

    I saw wild kangaroos for the first time. There were around 100 of them in the Morisset Hospital grounds!

    I spoke at Web Directions South in Sydney and attended Webjam.

    October

    In October, Tim went to Florida and I went to Melbourne. I spoke at a Digital Culture Forum at ACMI.

    I packed up our old flat in Melbourne so we could finally move to Sydney; something we’d been planning to do since July 2006. We moved to Hornsby Heights. There are fast trains from Hornsby into the center of Sydney, and it’s far enough out of the city that we can afford to rent a two-bedroom house rather than a flat. There is an amazing variety of wildlife here as you can see from the photos on my wiki.

    November

    Wiki-Wiki bus (a wiki you can't edit). Photo by zordroyd. cc-by-sa

    Back in Sydney, I spoke at the International Association of Business Communicators.

    I’ve not blogged much this year, but my wiki is slightly more active. In November, I added the ‘Wikis you can’t edit‘ page (it’s not what you think) and started to collect photos of things I see in the yard. So far the page includes wallabies, snakes, spiders, kookaburras, parrots, cuckoos, skinks, blue-tongued lizards, peahens, cockatoos, leeches, crickets, and other insects. They’re not great photos but an interesting reminder of what I’ve seen since moving to Sydney.

    DecemberCarpet Python, Queensland

    I spoke at the Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World in Sydney.

    Tim and I flew to Queensland to spend Christmas with his family. It’s the first time I’ve been away without my laptop. I had to amuse myself by watching the carpet python on the rafters outside instead!

    After Christmas, we went to the Woodford Folk Festival. It rained constantly and was extremely muddy. In the 20 minutes the sun came out, I managed to get sunburnt and bitten by a green ant. Despite that, it was very enjoyable, and a much needed break, since it was the first time since Wikia started that I’ve actually taken an entire week off!

    by Angela Beesley at 31 January, 2008 03:39 AM

    30 January, 2008

    Blog on Wiki Patterns

    Wiley Publishing Releases First Practical How-to Guide for Wikis

    The press release for the Wikipatterns book is now out on BusinessWire and PRWeb. One site that picked up the release is DayLife, which impressed me because it prominently displays quotes extracted from the release itself. From a reader’s perspective, I can imagine how seeing a compelling quote might grab attention and encourage a look at the full story.

    SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Wiley Publishing is releasing WIKIPATTERNS (Wiley Publishing; December 2007; $29.99), a how-to guide for growing wiki use. Susan Scrupski, noted blogger and Chief of Applied Research at BSG Alliance, said on the book’s release, “I’m going to recommend this without even reading it! Should be an Enterprise 2.0 must-read top-shelfer.”

    Wikipedia, the wildly popular online encyclopedia, is the most well-known example of wiki. But wikis are also taking hold in organizations, because they streamline collaboration, help employees be more productive, and offer better security for sensitive information.

    Businesses need to know how to introduce this new tool to employees or customers, and give them the best techniques for sharing and collaborating. WIKIPATTERNS shows readers:

    • How an organization’s wiki differs from Wikipedia
    • The best ways to get started
    • How wikis streamline and simplify day-to-day activity
    • How to encourage participation and make the wiki “stick”

    Author and Atlassian Wiki Evangelist Stewart Mader provides readers with concrete, proven methods based on successful wikis in hundreds of organizations. The book is loaded with case studies from organizations big and small including: Sun Microsystems, Johns Hopkins University, LeapFrog, Red Ant, and the National Constitution Center.

    “WIKIPATTERNS is inspired by the already thriving online community at Wikipatterns.com,” notes author Stewart Mader. “The website-itself a wiki-is a growing community dedicated to wiki use. The book includes the most wide-reaching ideas as it shows readers how to successfully grow a wiki.”

    About the Author:
    Stewart Mader is Wiki Evangelist for Atlassian, makers of the award-winning and widely used Confluence wiki software. Stewart has worked with business, academic, and non-profit organizations to grow vibrant collaborative communities.

    He publishes Blog on Wiki Patterns (www.ikiw.org), founded Wikipatterns.com, and is the author of two books: Wikipatterns, a practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization and Using Wiki in Education, an online book on wiki use in education and research.

    About Wiley:
    Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has been a valued source of information and understanding for 200 years, helping people around the world meet their needs and fulfill their aspirations. Since 1901, Wiley and its acquired companies have published the works of more than 350 Nobel laureates in all categories: Literature, Economics, Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Peace.

    Our core businesses publish scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, encyclopedias, books, and online products and services; professional/trade books, subscription products, training materials, and online applications and websites; and educational materials for undergraduate and graduate students and lifelong learners. Wiley’s global headquarters are located in Hoboken, New Jersey, with operations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. The Company’s Web site can be accessed at http://www.wiley.com. The Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols JWa and JWb.

    WIKIPATTERNS
    Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.
    Publication date: January 14, 2008
    $29.99; Paperback; 216 pages; ISBN: 978-0-470-22362-8

    by Stewart Mader at 30 January, 2008 10:57 PM

    Brion Vibber

    Case-insensitive OpenSearch

    I did some refactoring yesterday on the title prefix search suggestion backend, and added case-insensitive support as an extension.

    The prefix search suggestions are currently used in a couple of less-visible places: the OpenSearch API interface, and the (disabled) AJAX search option.

    The OpenSearch API can be used by various third-party tools, including the search bar in Firefox — in fact Wikipedia will be included by default as a search engine option in Firefox 3.0.

    I’m also now using it to power the Wikipedia search backend for Apple’s Dictionary application in Mac OS X 10.5.

    We currently have the built-in AJAX search disabled on Wikimedia sites in part because the UI is a bit unusual, but it’d be great to have more nicely integrated as a drop-down into various places where you might be inputting page titles.

    The new default backend code is in the PrefixIndex class, which is now shared between the OpenSearch and AJAX search front-ends. This, like the previous code, is case-sensitive, using the existing title indexes. I’ve also got them now both handling the Special: namespace (which only AJAX search did previously) and returning results from the start of a namespace once you’ve typed as far as “User:” or “Image:” etc.

    More excitingly, it’s now easy to swap out this backend with an extension by handling the PrefixSearchBackend hook.

    I’ve made an implementation of this in the TitleKey extension, which maintains a table with a case-folded index to allow case-insensitive lookups. This lets you type in for instance “mother ther” and get results for “Mother Theresa”.

    In the future we’ll probably want to power this backend at Wikimedia sites from the Lucene search server, which I believe is getting prefix support re-added in enhanced form.

    We might also consider merging the case-insensitive key field directly into the page table, but the separate table was quicker to deploy, and will be easier to scrap if/when we change it. :)

    by brion at 30 January, 2008 08:41 PM

    Marcel de Ruiter

    IBM on Enterprise 2.0 [2]

    Via Luis Suarez:

    Boy, would I have loved to see that whole session… You can check out some notes Luis made via Twitter during the session (starting at this tweed).

    Related: my other Enterprise 2.0 articles

    Technorati tags: , , ,

    by Marcel de Ruiter at 30 January, 2008 06:44 PM

    Jim Redmond

    Writing laws through a wiki

    So an unnamed member of an unnamed government contacted the Wikimedia Foundation recently, asking for staff guidance on setting up a wiki so that unnamed citizens of the unnamed jurisdiction could collaborate on new laws. Since the staff mainly handle the operational aspects of the various wikis, the question got passed off to the volunteers — or, more specifically, me.

    I sent a detailed response, advising strongly against anonymous editing and whatnot. The idea has been kicking around my head ever since, though, so I thought I’d post something about it and solicit further input on behalf of the unnamed elected official.

    Long story short, I think that the proposed structure (”let’s get everybody together to write laws!”) is doomed to horrific failure, thanks to vandals, savvy agenda-pushers, and the fact that most people find most laws tedious and boring (and therefore would avoid watching the really important bills).

    As evidence that vandals would pretty quickly make a nasty bitter mess of things, I offer the LA Times’s “wikitorial” experiment. Need more? Hang out on Wikipedia’s “recent changes” list and check out stuff in near-real-time; how many of those edits are actually useful?

    Savvy agenda-pushers? I could refer you to any of those lovely articles on Wikipedia on controversial topics, but instead I’ll point you to this section of a Missouri law:

    Services related to pregnancy, persons holding ministerial or tocological certification may provide.

    376.1753. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, any person who holds current ministerial or tocological certification by an organization accredited by the National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA) may provide services as defined in 42 U.S.C. 1396 r-6(b)(4)(E)(ii)(I).

    This was added to a health insurance bill and didn’t attract a whole lot of attention until after it had already hit the books. Then somebody finally got around to looking up “tocology” — it means “midwifery”, a practice which was at the time very sharply limited in Missouri. It was a brilliant trick, and it worked (if only temporarily) because everybody was too busy looking at the Big Provisions to notice this one wee alteration.

    Now go to Wikipedia and start looking at articles on topics you don’t understand: math, physics, why people keep opting for short-term gain and long-term loss, whatever. How quickly could you spot very subtle vandalism? I’m not talking about pictures of penises on [[Johannes Kepler]]; I’m talking about a number changed here, a date there, a minor turn of phrase… If Wikipedia relies on its vast pool of editors to spot these things, and yet they still miss the tiny-but-important details, then how would a smaller law-wiki defend itself against subtle bias?

    Finally, there’s the question of popularity. It’s trivial to prove that some articles on Wikipedia get a lot more attention than others: there’s even a game, “wikigroaning“, that makes light of this by comparing the lengths of a very geeky article and one that is much more mundane. (The link contains a few choice examples.) “Wikigroaning” only works because Wikipedia is done almost entirely by volunteers. Editors on the English WP are generally more interested in their own pet topics, so they devote more time and energy to those topics than they do to other, perhaps needier topics.

    On a law-writing wiki, this phenomenon means that there will be much work on laws that relate to hot-button issues like abortion or war or taxes. That’s wonderful and everything, but most of a legislature’s in-session time is devoted to topics like infrastructure and school funding, which most people find excruciatingly boring but which are frighteningly important. Without additional eyes, though, editors with a vested interest may be able to get away with quite a bit.

    +++

    Now that I’ve said all that, I think that a wiki may work for writing laws, if it’s done right.

    • Grant read-only access to unregistered users — otherwise you’ll have chaos in no time
    • Recruit a small panel of editors — respected community leaders, some elected officials, and a few carefully-selected reps from interested groups
    • Set up an extra-wiki feedback mechanism, so that the non-editing general public could voice their concerns
    • Create an explicit and distinct mandate for the wiki — “write legislation that will achieve $GOAL” — and protect pages once that goal is achieved. (Leave article histories open, though, so people can see who made what changes when.)
    • Ban discussion that isn’t germane to the topic at hand. The wiki is there to write laws; it isn’t there as a soapbox.
    • Get the press involved, reporting heavily on the news from the wiki and encouraging people to check it out for themselves

    Any other thoughts on this?

    Tags: ,

    by Jim at 30 January, 2008 04:37 PM

    Wikinews Original Reporting

    Wikinews interviews two "America's Next Top Model" winners!

    Wikinews is taking a break from our current Top Model schedule to interview two past winners in a double exclusive.

    Expect interviews next Wednesday with CariDee and Jaslene.


















    Photo Credits: Mike Kortoci (CariDee), Kevin Sinclair (Jaslene)

    by Mike Halterman at 30 January, 2008 04:29 PM

    Milos Rancic

    LiveJournal Wikipedians

    The Hands Of Fate!

    Lookie what's made the main page today:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Manos%22_The_Hands_of_Fate

    After three straight days of impressive features on the truly encyclopedia worthy topics of Archimedes, Battle of Ramillies and Hamlet we come to this. And it's not even April Fools, Halloween or X-Day yet either.

    Now I love MST3K...I've been a fan of it since before some of you were born, and I dig the Manos "Experiment", but is a grade-E flick (Which Crow and Tom Servo aptly described as having the air of a snuff film) really a topic worthy of a quasi-serious general encyclopedia? Or Unca Jimmy's Big Bag O' Trivia?

    30 January, 2008 10:58 AM

    Marcel de Ruiter

    Dvortygirl

    Bedrock

    Being overtired somehow brings out the worst in me. Scott tucked me in the other night and asked if he should turn the volume down. Little did he know he would start this avalanche:
    Me: I think it's ok. I'm very tired, and I'll probably sleep like a rock.
    Scott: You mean log, right?
    Me: I just said rock, didn't I?
    Scott: Yep. My little basalt. That's you.
    Me: Just don't take me for granite.
    Scott: Good night, dear.
    Me: Perhaps I need to be a little boulder in vying for your attention.
    Scott: I'm leaving now.
    Me: (Sniff!) I try to be a good lava for you...
    Scott: GO TO SLEEP!

    by Dvortygirl at 30 January, 2008 07:55 AM

    29 January, 2008

    Samuel Klein

    Say hello to the weather pixie:

    The WeatherPixie

    Now to find a way to get one into our sidebar here.

    by metasj at 29 January, 2008 11:59 PM

    Ben Yates

    Florence: Wikipedia will have stable versions, wiki-to-print, and collaborative video editing.

    F.D.: First of all, improvements to the software. This is something that's been under discussion for two and a half years: stable versions. The idea is to be able to identify which versions have been validated, and to enable users to see both the current version and the last version that was accepted as being more or less correct.

    The second innovation, which I hope will become available in spring, is to give people the chance to put together a small personalised pdf file or paper version containing a selection of articles. Suppose, for example, that I want to know all about the Davos forum. I put things in a basket, just as on Amazon: the article on Davos, articles about the various personalities attending, global warming or the economic crisis. I compile my own little book which I can buy and have sent to me. That is Wiki to Print.

    The third innovation, probably in autumn 2008 will be the possibility of adding videos to Wikipedia and editing them collaboratively, like a wiki text. That should be really, really good!


    Wiki-to-print has been around for awhile as pediapress, but there were all sorts of problems with the implementation. Now that I check their site, it looks like they've "entered a long term partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation". Sweet. Here's the press release from a month ago; it looks like this slipped completely under the radar.

    by Ben Yates at 29 January, 2008 07:17 PM

    "Project Chanology" began as an Internet-based protest against the controversial Church of Scientology by "Anonymous", a group described as "a disparate collection of hackers and activists".

    by Ben Yates at 29 January, 2008 07:06 PM

    Sage Ross

    the ways in which

    Have you ever heard the phrase "interested in the ways in which"? If you have, it was probably uttered by a scholar in the humanities or social sciences, describing their research interests. There's a good chance that the explanation that followed was rich in jargon, heavy on social theory, and an mostly opaque to anyone not in the same field as the speaker. It was probably also an American or a Brit. (If this doesn't ring any bells for you, take a look at the search results for "interested in the the ways in which".) As a fellow graduate student pointed out to me, "the ways in which" has a very strong connotation, marking a certain style of thinking and writing about history and society. Most people that come through giving talks to my program, whether for job talks, colloquia, or some other lectures, can pretty easily be divided into "ways in which" types and people who know how to hold an audience's attention.

    Reflecting on the problems of jargon that come with writing history that is only meant for other historians, I'm working on a paper: "The Pedagogical Semiotics of Interlinguistic Anglophone Discourse, 2008-1999". On a closely related note, the grad students are think of doing either drinking games or jargon bingo to spice up future talks. "Blah blah blah, blah blah actor's category, blah blah." "Bingo!"

    On another related note, every would-be historian needs to watch the latest The Simpsons, "That 90s Show", if you haven't already. See a few clips here. Choice quotes:
    • Suede-elbow-patched associate professor: "Look at that lighthouse! It's the ultimate expression of phallocentric technocracy violating Mother Sky." Marge: "I thought they were just tall so boats could see them." Professor: "No, Marge, everything penis-shaped is bad."
    • Marge: "Did you know that history is written by the winners?" Homer: "Really? I thought history was written by losers!"
    Bonus link: PhD Comics on thesis titles

    by Sage at 29 January, 2008 05:22 PM

    Ben Yates

    As with so many things, yesterday's essay sounds much more convincing when spoken by a robot:



    link, for feeds

    by Ben Yates at 29 January, 2008 04:23 PM

    Turning it up to 11

    Cast your eyes back to the golden age of television -- anytime before the last couple of years. Think of a sitcom.



    Every sitcom is written by a team of genius writers -- the best writers in the world, who, individually, could lay waste to 99% of their peers. Deeply weird people who went to harvard.

    The actors in the sitcom are the most attractive people in the world. Millions of people go to L.A. to get discovered. Have you ever seen someone who seemed too beautiful to live -- just unbelievably, amazingly attractive? If you walk around socal you'll see one of those people every few minutes.

    Every single second of the sitcom -- the color, the framing, the facial expressions and movements -- is laid out on the screen purposefully, by professional cinematographers, people who have devoted their lives to understanding how this stuff works.

    That's why it's so hard to look at something else in the room when the TV's on. That's why I spent two straight hours staring face forward on the bed the day my mom got cable.

    Television has a peculiar intensity of experience. It has to, because the goal of any particular second of television is to keep you watching one more second, then one more, until the commercials come on (and to make sure you stay til they finish). This is the singular difference between television and movies (if you're in a movie, you've already paid) and the type of thing McLuhan was talking about when he said "the medium is the message".

    It's also the reason your parents told you tv rots your brain, and go outside! Your parents had to learn this from experience. Television was new in the 1950s, and nobody was saying it rotted your brain -- they viewed it as harmless theater-at-home and only realized you had to steel yourself against its magnetic pull after watching someone they knew follow the inexorable road toward homesteading on the faux-leather hide-a-bed with a 5-gallon bag of cheetos and a bedpan.

    Growing up with television also explains the peculiar intensity of american culture. The Guardian:

    The Americans have long been aware of the impact of heavy metal music on foreign miscreants. They blared Van Halen (among other artists) at the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega when he took refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City, and blasted similarly high-decibel music at Afghan caves where al-Qaida fighters were thought to be hiding.


    If you grow up constantly exposed to the intensity of TV, the next logical step when you're an adult creating art is to push things up to eleven. Sometimes it becomes an end in itself -- see bikini kill.

    This is a bit of a problem. The natural ebb and swell of life provides periods of calm, not just stimulation -- times when you're alone in your room, and your brain has to create order from chaos in order to entertain itself.

    I'm starting to think the internet provides this same unnatural intensity of experience. I was a mefi regular, but social filtration is something new. The sheer compelling volume of digg and reddit, where you only see the 0.1% of content that pushes people's awesome button hard enough to reach the front page...

    Like TV, it's the strange hyperfiltered essence, the panned gold at the upper edge of the parabolic curve. Like distilled liquor, I'm not sure you should drink too much of it.




    Like so many things, this essay is much more convincing when read by a robot:



    Link, if you're reading in a feed.

    by Ben Yates at 29 January, 2008 04:18 PM

    Sage Ross

    The pope, Feyerabend and Galileo

    Anytime you see a reference to Paul Feyerabend in the news, you can be almost certain that he's being misinterpreted or taken out of context.

    As newspapers have been reporting, the pope canceled a planned inaugural speech for the beginning of term at La Sapienza University, in response to the vehement objections of a group of scientists there. As the news reports would have it, the issue was that the pope (then Cardinal Ratzinger) had defended the heresy trial and conviction of Galileo, quoting philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend that the judgment against Galileo and his heliocentric theory was 'rational and just'.

    In this case (according to seemingly knowledgeable philosophers on the HOPOS mailing list and in the comments of this Leiter Reports post), Ratzinger invoked Feyerabend as one example of anti-rationalist thought, not necessarily as his own view. And the quote, while perhaps literally accurate, is a translation from the Ratzinger's Italian speech, probably based on the German version of Feyerabend (either Against Method or Farewell to Reason). Feyerabend argued that the church's position was rational in that the weight of scientific evidence really did favor heliocentrism at the time, and (to quote Barry Stocker's comment from the Leiter post) " had the right social intention, viz, to protect people from the machinations of specialists. It wanted to protect people from being corrupted by a narrow ideology that might work in restricted domains but was incapable of sustaining a harmonious life."

    That is, neither Feyerabend nor Ratzinger were suggesting that the judgment was just in the sense of Galileo having been wrong about heliocentrism (or his interpretation of scripture to square with heliocentrism).

    But to be fair to the scientists protesting the pope's speech, their main issue is not Galileo but the Vatican's positions about the relationship between science and the church. As one professor explained on the CBC's As It Happens (part 1, about 18 minutes in), it's the tension between a religious authority and a secular university that's the real issue; the pope has no place in the secular scholarly activities of the university, he argues.

    But Galileo vs. the Church is always a good hook for a story. Don't expect the misuse of the Galileo Affair, or of Feyerabend, to go away any time soon.

    by Sage at 29 January, 2008 03:49 PM

    Piotr Konieczny

    How long will we live?

    Recently The Economist has published a very interesting article: Abolishing ageing: How to live forever. Considering that it is not a fringe publication, but a reliable mainstream one, it is certainly worth checking out. If The Economist thinks technologies increasing our life expectancy are worth writing about, they are no longer just a dream of a science-fiction authors.

    For a follow up, read the very interesting article by Ray Kurzweil: The Law of Accelerating Returns.


    Of course this may not happen. But it looks more and more likely that it will.

    I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind leaving forever. Or at least for a few thousands years :)

    And if this seems weird or intimidating, do read Yudkowsky and Anissimov on the concept of shock levels:
    * Future Shock Levels
    * Future Shock Level Analysis

    Lessons for the day:
    Don't fear the future just because it's likely to be different.
    Don't underestimate the probability of change because change intimidates you personally.

    by Piotr Konieczny at 29 January, 2008 02:35 PM

    Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

    Advanced Interactive Media Class

    A book by the title "Advanced Interactive Media Class" was nominated for VfD. Considering the large volume of information in the book, deletion was ruled-out, and many people were leaning in favor of a transwiki to Wikiversity. Given that the word "Class" is in the title, this seemed like a good enough solution.

    However, before the VfD could be closed, the instructor of the class posted the following message (edited for brevity):

    Leave content as is until March 30th. [...] I'm new to Wikis but getting up to speed ASAP. [...] Undergraduate students are assigned to manage our Wikibook so it's not surprising that is has evolved inappropriately. I'll take responsibility to see that content is oriented to a book, not an on-line course, but will need until March 30th 2008 to accomplish this. [...] Is it possible to change the name of a book (from Advanced Interactive Media Class to Advanced Interactive Media), once it has been published?

    The initial knee-jerk reaction to this is that Wikibooks isn't a web-host and that we shouldn't be storing, even temporarily, material which doesn't belong on our site. However, it's worth remembering that writing books is a big undertaking, and we have to expect some books will reach stages of unaccepability on their way to completion. Common examples of this include temporary macropedias, where people "borrow" articles from Wikipedia to seed a new book, and then slowly format the information into a book-like form. Macropedias are not acceptable per our policy, but a "macropedia stage" of a book in active development is.

    Similarly, we can assume that a "course-like stage" of an active book that is being written by a classroom group should be an acceptable stage of development. When judging whether a macropedia is to be deleted, we must look at the activity level of the book, and make an educated guess as to whether the book is active enough to progress beyond that level. Likewise, we need to assess whether this course-like book is active enough to progress under it's own power to a more acceptable state. Considering that the class is currently on-going, and the semester is not over for two months, I think it's safe to assume that the book will eventually satisfy our requirements.

    The important lessons to learn here are that there is no single "standard" way for a book to develop, and that often times things need to get worse before they get better. In the wiki spirit of things, we can't expect anybody to get it right the first time, and if they did there would be no need for massive collaboration.

    by Whiteknight at 29 January, 2008 08:03 AM

    Nick Jenkins

    LCA2008 talk: “Who’s behind Wikipedia?”

    Today I’m at Linux.Conf.au 2008 in Melbourne, where Brianna Laugher gave a talk called “Who’s behind Wikipedia?”

    If I find the link to the video I’ll add it here, but in the mean time my quick notes from the talk are as follows:

    Firstly, selling Wikipedia to geeks is an easy sell.

    Brianna’s background: free content, rather than free software.

    Talk assumes familiar with Wikipedia, and is for people who believe that the Wikimedia model can work. Not for conspiracy theorists, or people who think the model does not work.

    What is Wikipedia? World’s largest grass-roots bureaucracy! 253 languages (145 have > 1000 articles), > 8 million articles total. Multilingual project.

    Early timeline:

    • 2001 - Wikipedia
    • 2002 - Wikitionary
    • 2003 - Wikimedia foundation formed.

    Will focus on the English Wikipedia. Different cultures will have different issues. E.g. Japanese Wikipedia has 45% of edits made by anon users, nearly twice that of English, which probably creates a very different culture in that project.

    Wikipedia community : Hierarchy / diagram of User access levels, roughly from largest groups to smallest groups:

    • Readers
    • Anon editors [can’t upload files or start articles, depending on config]
    • Registered users (6 million accounts, but a very large percentage never edit) [subdivided into new and auto confirmed]
    • Roll-back [hundreds of accounts]
    • Administrators / sysops [delete pages, protect pages, block users, approx 1500 on English, admission via RFA process]
    • Bureaucrats [26 people] / arbitration committee [12 people] / checkuser [30 people] / oversight [27 people] / WMF board and staff / Jimmy Wales [founder] / developers / stewards

    Wikimedia Foundation - provide essential infrastructure and organisational framework (i.e. part of function is glorified web host + enforce legal constraints to keep project running). Listed some of the WMF projects (wikibooks, etc.)

    Some cornerstone guidelines:

    • Assume stupidity over malice / assume good faith.
    • NPOV
    • Copyleft
    • consensus decisions
    • no ownership
    • incremental progress

    Policies:

    • a very long list! (e.g. 3RR, sock puppetry, verifiability, Biography of Living people, no personal attacks, WP:NOT, protection / semi-protection, ignore all rules).

    Guidelines:

    • Another very long list! (e.g. don’t bite the newbies, WP:POINT, spoilers, spelling esp. British versus American).

    Showed some tags that may be added to new articles, that new users may come across:

    • Speedy deleting
    • Proposed deletion
    • Normal / Article for delete (5 days of discussion).
    • –> How to defend “your” article: Improve it!

    If concerned about undeletion of content added:

    • Try to resolve with deleting admin
    • Esp. when notability has changed, or inappropriate speed, or process not followed.
    • Two useful pages related to undeletion: [[user:GRBerry/DRVGuide]] and [[WP:ATA]]

    Dispute resolution:

    • Be bold, revert, discuss
    • Talk pages
    • [[WP:RFC]] (comment)
    • [[WP:RFM]] (mediation)
    • [[WP:RFAR]] (arbitration - more formal and serious; need to provide evidence and reasons, etc.).

    How to get involved:

    • [[WP:AWNB]] - Australian’s Wikipedian noticeboard
    • WikiProjects (there are projects covering most hobbies).
    • Don’t leap into controversy, but do leap in. (e.g. don’t start out with Israeli Palestinian conflict, abortion, Linux Versus Microsoft).
    • WikiChix.org for female contributors.
    • Don’t worry about reading all the rules and documentation, just do your best. (instruction creep).

    The future:

    • WYSIWYG editing, maybe!
    • Stable versions.
    • Trust highlighting.
    • Splintered community (old hands versus newcomers)
    • Knol, Citizendium (expert-model versus the Wikipedia model). Also Citizendium looks like will use CC-SA license, which is good.

    Audience Questions:

    • Q: Are Wikia and Wikipedia separate? A: Yes.
    • Q: If I see errors, can I fix them? A: Yes, please be bold and correct inaccuracies, or if pressed for time, then delete the wrong information and add an explanation in the edit summary.
    • Q: Would like to be able to download Wikipedia images (and especially the image dump), last image dump was from 2004, and want a new one. A: The database dump and image backup process is something that is an item of community concern, and is being worked on.
    • Q: Putting Wikipedia into book format. A: Spoke about PediaPress.
    • Q: Notability, can this be determined by number of hits on a page? A: Yes and no (e.g. some topics can be obscure, yet notable).
    • Q: Growth of the Wikipedia? Exponential growth versus Linear, which is currently being experienced. A: A lot of growth is in the non-English-Wikipedia areas, although does not have latest data.
    • Q: Is Wikipedia too focussed on current events? A: Maybe, although there has a been a shift towards a longer-term view.

    by Nickj at 29 January, 2008 04:08 AM

    28 January, 2008

    Brion Vibber

    Firefox 3.0, now with 100% more Wikipedia

    Wikipedia is being added to the default search plugins for Firefox 3.0.

    by brion at 28 January, 2008 10:40 PM

    Ben Yates

    Remember how I was trying to build that Wikipedia-themed digg/reddit clone where users could filter Wikipedia articles and the best ones would rise to the top?

    That very thing now exists as Reddit Wikipedia! (I didn't code it myself, duh.) This is pretty fucking awesome, and I'm going to be copying all of the wikisnips there over the next few weeks.

    Reddit's layout is confusing; here are some direct links (which will become more useful as time goes on).

    The highest-ranked articles. (As always, cat-related content rises to the top.)

    The most recently submitted articles.

    The highest ranked articles submitted this month, this week, or today.

    by Ben Yates at 28 January, 2008 10:15 PM

    David Gerard

    For the Wikimedia answering machine.

    Inspired by this.

    This was a triumph.
    I’m making a note here:
    HUGE SUCCESS.
    It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction
    Wikipedia Review
    We do what we must
    because we can
    For the good of all of us
    Except the ones who are banned
    But there’s no sense crying
    over every quick block
    You just keep on saving
    till the database’s locked
    And the editing is stopped
    A Squid failure notice up
    For the people who are
    still unbanned

    I’m not even angry.
    I’m being so sincere right now.
    Even though you blocked my ass
    And banned me
    And blocked my whole college
    And set the IT staff on my ass
    As they kicked me out I cried,
    I was so happy for you!
    Now I’ve found your IP and your home phone on time
    And I found your employer and I’ll drop them a line
    So I’m glad I got blocked
    And the database is locked
    for the people who are
    still unbanned

    Go ahead and leave me
    I’ll stay on the Wikback for a while
    maybe I’ll find somewhere else
    to edit
    maybe Citizendium …
    THAT WAS A JOKE, HA HA, FAT CHANCE.
    Anyway, these edits grate
    They’re so delicious and moist
    look at me still talking when there’s editing to do
    when I look out there
    it makes me glad I’m not you
    I’ve experiments to run
    there is research to be done
    on the people who are
    still unbanned

    and believe me I am still unbanned
    I’m adding edits and I’m still unbanned
    when AOL’s blocked and I’m still unbanned
    when Qatar’s blocked I’ll be still unbanned
    and when the world’s blocked I’ll be still unbanned
    still unbanned
    still unbanned

    (anyone who wants to fix the scansion, feel free)

    by David Gerard at 28 January, 2008 09:45 PM

    Wiki-lawyer.net

    Why American University/WCL’s wireless sucks

    This email came out today from the Student Bar Association. Emphasis on the good parts added.

    Dear Student Body:

    The following problems have been discovered with the WCL
    network:

    1. All access points in room 101 were either turned off, or
    nonfunctional for the past two years.

    2. All access points on the 5th floor were located in elevator shafts,
    or other places where they did not provide coverage.
    3. Certain points on the 6th floor were assigned the wrong IP address,and so did not provide access.

    The Technology department is working to address these problems.

    If you continue to experience problems with the internet, please inform the Student Services Committee at StudentServices.SBA@gmail.com

    You can also file an online trouble ticket, when you find yourself in an area with internet access: http://www.wcl.american.edu/techres/complab/trouble%5Fticket.cfm

    Regards,
    Student Services Committee

    You are receiving this e-mail as a result of your enrollment in - “Student Bar Association (Full Year 2007-2008) - Koukourinis”.
    This email was generated by The West Education Network.

    How fucking outrageous is that? “Oh by the way, we forgot to turn on the internet for 2 years. Oh and we put the WAP’s in the elevator shaft. Oh, and if you can’t get online, send us an email….when you can?

    This is typical of WCL’s reaction to things. This is how they reacted to MacGate, this is how they reacted to the chemical weapons dig coverup….

    by SWATJester at 28 January, 2008 08:57 PM

    Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

    Flurry of Activity

    I've been keeping busy off-wiki with school work, and the small amount of time i do have online is spent sorting through email garbage, and working out some important issues on the chapcom wiki.

    While I've been away, however, Wikibooks has seen a flurry of activity from old and new users alike. A large amount of cruft is being deleted, and VfD has been more active then i've seen it in a long time. People are chatting in the reading room, and a few brave souls are even starting to participate more in the oft-neglected Wikijunior.

    I dont know more details because I'm not around often enough, but I'm happy to see how active the site is from a third-person perspective. Hopefully, i'll be editing regularly again soon.

    by Whiteknight at 28 January, 2008 07:55 PM

    Aaron Swartz

    A Very Speculative Theory of Free Will

    Previously: How Quantum Mechanics is Compatible with Free Will

    Attention conservation notice: I am well aware that this post will get me called all sorts of silly names and insults (Penrosian apparently the worst among them). For once, I am not going to respond. I just think the theory ought to be published and if you are not inclined to believe it, then feel free to ignore it.

    The big mystery of the mind is reconciling two things: what we know about the physical structures of the brain and what we experience from day to day as conscious people. The first tells us that our brain is made up of a series of interconnected neurons which fire in response to certain inputs. The second tells us that people have subjective unified experiences and at least the appearance of free will. It seems hard to explain how the first can lead to the second, although they're obviously connected somehow.

    So, for example, if we're looking at certain visual illusions, we can choose to see them one way or to see them another way. And obviously this choice has some impact on the rest of the brain, especially the part that processes vision. But nobody's been able to find the place in the brain from which such choices originate.

    I don't know enough about the subject to vouch for it, but this article claims that neurons are small enough that we could see quantum effects in their high-level behavior:

    The juncture between two neurons is called the synapse. Each of the perhaps 100 billion neurons in the brain is connected to about 1,000 other neurons. At the synapse, a firing neuron either passes a neurochemical signal to the next neuron, or it does not pass a signal, with the passing or not passing depending on the complex neurochemistry of the synapse. If, within a millisecond, a certain number of signals are passed on to a neuron, then that neuron will fire. Otherwise it will not fire. Thus what happens at the various synapses--signal passed on or not passed on--is the sole determinant of the firing pattern of the neurons in the brain. The synapses are the control points for our flow of thoughts.

    The synaptic gap, the gap between one neuron and the next, is quite small, 3.5 nanometers, which is about 35 (hydrogen) atoms. The sizes of the adjacent parts of the synapse, where much of the neurochemistry goes on, are also small, on the order of 3,500 atoms wide. Now one of the peculiar effects of quantum mechanics is that if the volume where an atom might be located (the place where the wave function is non-zero) is initially small, it will spread out in time. One can use Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to show that a calcium ion, for example, will spread out to the size of the synapses (not just the synaptic gap) in about .1 milliseconds (see 8 below). Neural processes in the brain occur on a time scale of a millisecond, ten times slower than the spread of a calcium ion over the whole synapse.

    So here's the proposal: a series of entangled quantum particles at the synaptic level allow for coordinated firing patterns which occur in response to choices by our conscious free will. Just as my previous post reconciled free will with statistical randomness, this would seem to reconcile free will with the neuroanatomy.

    It still seems incredible that there is some high-level coordinated process with its fingers in the quantum effects of our synapses. But we know something incredible is going on because we have subjective experience. So this doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me.

    28 January, 2008 07:02 PM

    Wikinews Original Reporting

    Ask your question to Drupal founder Dries Buytaert


    Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal, the freely licensed and open source content managing system, agreed to an interview with Wikinews.

    Buytaert just finished his doctoral thesis and has founded the startup company Acquia.

    If you have any questions about Drupal, free and open software or what's happening for him in the near future, you can post your questions on the interview preparation page or e-mail them to User:Stevenfruitsmaak .

    by Steven Fruitsmaak at 28 January, 2008 05:27 PM

    T. Mills Kelly

    When Google Gets it Wrong

    One of my colleagues, Mark Stoneman, recently wrote an interesting post in his blog Clio and Me on what happens when Google gets it wrong–or, more correctly, when Google users don’t think carefully about the results they get from their search query.

    The example that Mark cites is depressingly familiar. Someone with a historical question types in a reasonable search, in this case “Hossbach protocol” and the first two items in the Google search rankings are reasonable looking websites from Holocaust deniers. I would link to them here, but that would just boost them higher in Google’s algorithms–type in “Hossbach protocol” yourself to see the results.  If you had typed “Hossbach memorandum” you would have gotten the actual historical source first (from Yale’s Avalon Project), but you have to go down eight places in the search rankings to get to the Holocaust deniers that way.

    How many unsuspecting users with a simple historical question run into websites with artful fabrications? Too many, I’m sure.

    Because the Internet will always be a home to artful fabrications, historians have to pay close attention to their teaching responsibilities, and remember that our students need to learn how to make appropriate use of search engines and what they spit out. Otherwise, we are dooming a new generation to being duped by those who would make up the facts about the past.

    by tkelly7 at 28 January, 2008 02:19 PM

    Wikinews Original Reporting

    711chan.org ends attack on Scientology

    >>Click here to read the EXCLUSIVE interview and full Story.

    Administrators for 711chan.org, one of the websites responsible for starting Project Chanology, a "raid" or attack against The Church of Scientology and their website, called off their attack.

    In an exclusive interview with Wikinews, an administrator of 711chan states that the will "probably stay away from the CoS (Church of Scientology)."

    "We're probably just going to stay away from the CoS raid. It was poorly managed. We could've brought down a lot more if we weren't just a bunch of unorganized brats," said 'Inaki', an administrator on 711chan.org.

    "Many people from 711chan still want to raid, but the administration is sick of it," added Inaki who also stated that "Partyvan IRC actually has decided to remove the raid."

    Much of the reason stems from the fact that the attack on the Church was meant to stay within 711chan and that users were to stay "anonymous." An e-mail was leaked on the internet when the attack began exposing the script used to attack the Church's website.

    Also take part in our Wikinews poll to the right of blog postings, at the top of the page. Also ask questions for our interview with the Church of Scientology: Wikinews: Interview with The Church of Scientology

    >>Click here to read the above EXCLUSIVE interview and full Story.

    by Jason Safoutin at 28 January, 2008 01:08 PM

    AboutUs

    TweetSpeak

    WardCunningham announces TweetSpeak on Twitter
    on Friday at 06:22 PM January 25, 2008

    Twitter is a popular micro-blogging site that easily demands too much of your attention for the simple reason that you have to read it. Now you can listen instead. TweetSpeak lets you give your friends the continuous partial attention they deserve without taking your eyes off of the work you should be doing.

    Reactions around the net:

    Alert - you do need to know how to run a command line.

    (but I figured it out, so it is fairly easy)

    Contributor: MarkDilley

    by MarkDilley at 28 January, 2008 01:52 AM

    moulin - Wikipedia offline

    Release: Wikimedia by moulin in French

    Please, welcome this new fat french version of moulin.
    Sized 1.5GB, it includes:

    • Wikipedia
    • Wiktionary
    • Wikiquote
    • Wikibooks
    • Wikisource
    • Wikiversity

    It’s a major release featuring loads of improvements since last one.

    Due to Wikipedia’s grow, this new release doesn’t fit on a single CD-R. Present version is a 1.5GB iso which you can burn on a DVD-R or extract to a USB stick.

    We will release in the coming weeks a 2CDs version including small fixes and speed improvement: search engine is currently quite slow on Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

    Now, go download it !

    Thanks for your support !

    by reg at 28 January, 2008 01:43 AM

    27 January, 2008

    Ben Yates

    Wikinews Original Reporting

    Poll: The internet VS The Church of Scientology

    Gathering information for a possible full Wikinews poll, I am interested in what the public thinks of the "first great internet war", The Internet VS. The Church of Scientology.

    We are wondering who you think will win this war. Will the internet win? What about the "church"....maybe you don't care???

    Anyways cast your vote to the right of the blog postings, at the top of the page. From the date of this post, you have a week.

    Please feel free to leave comments.

    by Jason Safoutin at 27 January, 2008 04:54 PM

    Wikinews: Interview with The Church of Scientology

    They’ve got oodles of cash (allegedly), they have lots of celebrity members (definitely), but they don’t have too good a public image - at least not on the Internet.

    Who are we talking about? Well, that’d be the Church of Scientology.

    Over the past week the Church has ended up back in the spotlight following the posting of a video of Church member Tom Cruise and its subsequent takedown. Dozens of copies have sprung up and “Anonymous” - a rag-tag bunch of computer enthusiasts - have knocked several of the Church’s sites off the net.

    The Church hasn’t said much, but we’re trying to do something about that. If you’ve any questions about recent events you’d like to see Wikinews put to the Church, send them in. Email scoop@wikinewsie.org and we’ll see if we can get an answer.

    Also feel free to vote in our poll to the right of the blog postings, at the top of the page.

    by Jason Safoutin at 27 January, 2008 03:55 PM

    "Anonymous" releases statements outlining "War on Scientology"

    Full story.

    The Internet-based group "Anonymous" has released statements on YouTube and via a press release, outlining what they call a "War on Scientology". Church of Scientology related websites, such as religousfreedomwatch.org have been removed due to a suspected distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) by a group calling themselves "Anonymous". On Friday, the same group allegedly brought down Scientology's main website, scientology.org, which was available sporadically throughout the weekend.

    Several websites relating to the Church of Scientology have been slowed down, brought to a complete halt or seemingly removed from the Internet completely in an attack which seems to be continuous. The scientology.org site was back online briefly on Monday, and is currently loading slowly.

    On Monday, the group released a video titled: "Message to Scientology" on YouTube concerning their intentions to attack the Church of Scientology. A robotic voice on the video begins with "Hello leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous," and continues by explaining their motivations: "Over the years we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent and your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed." The message goes on to state that the group intends to "expel Scientology from the Internet".

    Click here for the full story.

    by Jason Safoutin at 27 January, 2008 03:53 PM

    'The Regime' hacks 711chan.org in response to 'Anonymous' attack on Scientology; takes site off line

    >>Click for full EXCLUSIVE Interview and report.
    Also see the poll to the right of the blog post.

    Wikinews has learned that a new entity calling itself The Regime used keylogging to gain an administrator password to 711chan.org, a site popular with the open vigilante group "Anonymous" that has recently been attacking Scientology online. Wikinews interviewed The Regime. Click the above link to see the interview and full report.

    As of 9:57 p.m. (eastern time) the site 711chan.org, has been replaced, allegedly by The Regime by the title Church of Scientology along with a statement on the home page stating "This website has been deleted due to copyright claims from the Church of Scientology." A search performed using Google, on 711chan has returned the number one result of the apparent hack. All that remains of 711chan.org is an apparent message to the members of the site to "run" and "hide."

    "711chan is full of fucking fail for siding with Gaia. I'm out of here, faggots. Enjoy your Gaia," said the message, which currently is only available in a cached version.

    The Regime's first attack went along with a message posted to 711chan's website (quoted below) saying that "This site has not been blessed by The Regime and is deemed lame", believing Anonymous to be self-proclaimed hackers (although this title was primarily used by the media). It also refers to Anonymous' attempt to bring down the Church of Scientology (named 'Operation Chanology'), saying that "chanology is lame, scientology is lame". It thereafter declared that the message board where Anonymous had been discussing Operation Chanology had been removed. Minutes later, 711chan stopped responding to queries.

    Click here for the full EXCLUSIVE interview and report.

    by Jason Safoutin at 27 January, 2008 03:52 PM

    26 January, 2008

    David Gerard

    YOU SAW WHAT I DID THERE.

    This is unfortunately about to be deleted due to licencing issues, but you need to see it first. Fair warms the heart. “Scan of an apology written by a student who defaced Wikipedia. Since this student has lost their school computer privileges they were forced to type this apology on a manual ROYAL typewriter in their keyboarding class. (Signature removed)”

    Update: Copy here.

    by David Gerard at 26 January, 2008 10:27 PM

    LiveJournal Wikipedians

    AboutUs

    Screencast: Welcome to AboutUs

    As another step towards making available great help resources for wiki editors and vistors, we have created our first screencast, called Welcome to AboutUs. Over the next few weeks, we plan to create many more screencasts, to compliment all of the existing help information. We would love your comments both on this screencast and on which topics you think we ought to be covering first as we develop more.

    by MarkDilley at 26 January, 2008 10:07 AM

    Anthere

    Google After Hours

    Davos est un véritable marathon; journées continues de 8 heures à minuit passé, tous les soirs. J'ai vécu des moments fabuleux, hyper intéressants, et puis quelques-uns d'un ennui profond ou de frustration. Mes préférences vont sans le moindre doute aux sessions privées prévues pour les tech pio,...

    by Anthere at 26 January, 2008 12:58 AM