Hello!
Domas, that is an unfair characterization of my e-mails, which I do
not
believe you have read in full.
Oh, I did read your emails :-) I think they are unfair
characterization of our development work, which you definitely do not
understand in full.
But had you read my e-mails
Hoi.
The Brion is not God. He and the other half gods, have sufficient enthusiasm
for all the weird and wonderful stuff we throw at them. They even spend
considerable effort on Semantic MediaWiki and Denny et al are the first to
acknowledge this and to say that they provided valuable insights. It
Hello Brian,
thanks for all your insights, bashing and vocal support of your pet
ideas.
I understand, that SMW is academically interesting concept (though
there're contradicting ideas in academia too, suggesting natural
language processing as an alternative, and this seems where currently
This community, which takes quite a bit of effort to communicate with,
effort which I have not seen from the development team:
Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make
sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately
determined by
Gerard, I'm not sure I understood the full context of your e-mail. There is
only one thing stopping it from going live in my opinion - developer
enthusiasm. I don't think thats how things are supposed to work.
On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
wrote:
Brian hett schreven:
There is only one thing stopping it from going live in my opinion - developer
enthusiasm.
What about community consensus?
Marcus Buck
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There cannot be community consensus if the developers are unwilling to
seriously consider alternate technological solutions to the ones they come
up with. That is a key piece of the broken process -- developers of SMW have
presented their ideas to the community, but whether or not there was ever
On 1/15/09 11:19 AM, Brian wrote:
Chad,
What more would you like me to do, specifically?
The first things that would help would be:
1) Stop looking to blame someone for past wrongs
2) Think of something that *would* actually help, and do that
When a discussion starts in a negative direction,
That's pretty much exactly what Semantic MediaWiki offers.
SMW has developed a lot, since many of you saw it. By now, you may
* switch off inline queries if you are afraid they won't work fast enough
* get rid of the ugly syntax everyone is scared about (and simply hide
it all in templates by
Access to svn does not imply access to MediaWiki. Changes to MediaWiki have
been almost entirely up to core developer discretion, and as I have
demonstrated, 'consensus' has largely implied that they, and only they,
thought the changes made Wikipedia better. The ideas are rarely presented to
the
Chad,
What more would you like me to do, specifically? I have attended the
conferences, I am aware of the MediaWiki development process and I am
pointing towards high-quality code that meets every possible standard the
community could reasonably ask. The most important of those standards is
that
I have one more:
- Developers don't have to wait for community consensus before
implementing changes. Developers don't have to wait for the community to
vote on every line of code.
This is obviously not something I have suggested, so its not a very good
argument against the process
The discussion to add a full-fledged programming language to MediaWiki is
yet another example of this. Rather than evaluate existing tools which allow
for user-interface extensibility, the developers would rather embed PHP
within PHP. This allows you to do a variety of things:
* Simulate the
2009/1/15 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
The discussion to add a full-fledged programming language to MediaWiki is
yet another example of this. Rather than evaluate existing tools which allow
for user-interface extensibility, the developers would rather embed PHP
within PHP. This allows you
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 9:57 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
The other useful thing that can be done with templates is to
standardise the field names in them as much as possible per wiki.
The reason? To enhance machine readability of data in them. People are
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 4:57 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote:
Another useful thing: after an article is parsed, write all the
templates it uses and their parameters in the database. Even if at first
it isn't possible to read this data on Wikipedia, Toolserver could do
wonders with
Hello Tim,
I definitively like to see things develop in the direction you
described. That would make the templates more useful, either for the
editors but also for the readers and other developers who can datamine
the Wikimedia-project entries. And at some point we must simply ignore
the
Brian wrote:
Thank for your answers.
ParserFunctions are my specific example of how the current development
process is very, very broken, and out of touch with the community.
According to Jimbo's user page (his bolded): *Any changes to the software
must be gradual and reversible.* We need
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
Are people asking for them? Are there bugs open asking for review?
Are there problems with the current code? Does it scale to WMF level?
2009/1/11 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer of
Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a user, and as Erik put it,
an advocate.
Semantic MediaWiki's syntax is disastrously horrible and intended for
ontology
I believe this example is an even clearer demonstration of the usability
disaster that is parser functions. And it is just the kind of thing that can
be essentially snuck into MediaWiki without the complete
community consensus. Perhaps that's not the case - I would be interested in
reading a more
2009/1/11 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
I see on Village Pump (technical) and wikitech-l, in addition to an
associated talk page, that there was a vocal group of people who objected to
parser functions and that they were ignored and the extension was enabled
anyway.
This is wikipedia. We
On Sunday 11 January 2009 20:08:22 Brian wrote:
pointed out, I would bet there's at least one template that uses a
ParserFunction on 75% or more of all the articles on enwiki. MediaWiki
effectively has a programming language in it because of a few hours of
developer work and a few minutes of
Perhaps, do you have a link? :)
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote:
On Sunday 11 January 2009 20:08:22 Brian wrote:
pointed out, I would bet there's at least one template that uses a
ParserFunction on 75% or more of all the articles on enwiki.
Hoi,
The Wikimania presentations of Alexandria are no longer online.. I am trying
to find out if a backup exists..
Thanks,
GerardM
PS If you have a copy of the Merrick Schaeffer presentation, I would be
happy to learn that you do..
2009/1/11 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu
Perhaps, do
Thanks Gerard, could you also inquire about the year before? I remember them
being in some obscure ftp directory, unlabeled.
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi,
The Wikimania presentations of Alexandria are no longer online.. I am
trying
to
Hoi,
Usability research done by UNICEF on MediaWiki, by English language people
in Tanzania had 100% of their test subjects failing to create a new article.
This research is repeatable, and it is easy to improve on this because
UNICEF created extensions that will be part of the initial research.
Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and the
community such little input?
In my experience, this is the way that most open source projects
operate. You can download and play with the source code to your
heart's content, but typically only a handful of committers
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
Because there's approximately one person (Tim Starling) who reviews
such extensions in practice, and he has limited time. There's
approximately
I still believe my questions have been answered adequately. However,
Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code
So that they can actually improve it. I don't know what alternative
you're suggesting.
This question cannot be viewed outside of the context of the rest
Simetrical, a general comment on your reply: I do not believe it is fair to
reply to parts of sentences. It lead to several replies that were clearly
out of context. I want to clarify one of my sentences that you broke into
parts:
Why must the community 'vote' on extensions such as Semantic
I do have another question: Who approved deploying parser functions on
Wikipedia?
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Simetrical, a general comment on your reply: I do not believe it is fair
to reply to parts of sentences. It lead to several replies that
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
False: Extension Matrix.
See the rest of that paragraph. Anyone who can write code and wants
commit access can get it. The only ones without commit access who
want it are those who can't or won't write code. Most of the
I don't believe the specific technical details that led to the development
of ParserFunctions are all that relevant. It is always possible to implement
a simple 'crash guard', so its not even that great of an excuse.
No single person should have the power to develop and deploy such a thing on
Brian wrote:
I am quite sure that the answer to Wikipedia's usability issues was not
properly taken into concern when ParserFunctions were written. This is based
on a very simple principle that I am following in this discussion:
Improvements in usability in MediaWiki will not happen through
Mark,
Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer of
Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a user, and as Erik put it,
an advocate.
That said, I believe these two extensions together solve the problem you are
talking about. And for whatever reason, the
Not sure why I said English Wikipedia - but I mean all Foundation sites of
course :)
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Mark,
Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer
of Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a
Brian wrote:
Mark,
Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer of
Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a user, and as Erik put it,
an advocate.
That said, I believe these two extensions together solve the problem you are
talking about. And for
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and the
community such little input?
Why must the community 'vote' on extensions such as Semantic MediaWiki, and
yet the developers can implement any
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and the
community such little input?
Why must the community 'vote' on extensions such as Semantic
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
It's an issue of scale. Do you have any idea how big the foundation
projects are? Inefficient code could cripple our donation-supported
In order to solicit community feedback on this very important issue, I
suggest the Foundation put up a multi-language banner on all Wikipedia's
soliciting input via a survey.
*How can Wikipedia be more usable?*
I also suggest the Foundation put up a We're Hiring banner. In tough global
economic
Hello, Brian.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
The plan for Usability Initiative includes intensive reviews of MediaWiki
extensions which are already available. Then we will
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
In order to solicit community feedback on this very important issue, I
suggest the Foundation put up a multi-language banner on all Wikipedia's
soliciting input via a survey.
Are you willing to make the translations and the
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the
Foundation?
Most of them aren't applicable (YouTube, Google Maps extensions, etc.)
or not tested to the scale of Wikipedia and would therefore require
significant investments of
Erik,
I am skeptical of the current development process. That is because it has
led to the current parser, which is not a proper parser at all, and includes
horrifying syntax.
The current usability issue is widespread and goes to MediaWiki's core.
Developers should not have that large of a voice
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
800,000 / 30,000 = 26. Is that not a fair wage? If the Foundation only plans
to hire three developers to work on this project then it must be spending
the money on something else entirely.
First of all, we're hiring three people because we already have
As you surely know, the work of all staff, including 'how they spend
money' is continuously assessed by the ED who in turn is evaluated by
the board. There is also 3rd party financial audit. What are you
hinting at?
Erik/Naoko: does the Stanton grant include a condition for (external)
specific
Erik I am glad you are still around and keeping an eye on things.
I believe that, with the audience the Foundation has access to, it could
save a lot of money by hiring people who love Wikipedia and want to work for
it. I don't think its true that the only way to get seasoned developers is
to
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
In order to solve usability, even for new users, I believe that you must
write a new parser from scratch.
I disagree, though the project team may ultimately agree with you. The
biggest barriers to entry for new users aren't likely to be obscure
edge
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
I am skeptical of the current development process. That is because it has
led to the current parser, which is not a proper parser at all, and includes
horrifying syntax.
Er, that would be a direct descendant of UseModWiki. That this has
been a
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
Erik I am glad you are still around and keeping an eye on things.
Thank you, I appreciate that. :-)
I believe that, with the audience the Foundation has access to, it could
save a lot of money by hiring people who love Wikipedia and want to work for
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:19 PM, mbimm...@gmail.com wrote:
snip
Erik/Naoko: does the Stanton grant include a condition for (external)
specific program evaluation?
Yes, we are required to submit a quarterly report to the Stanton Foundation
to inform the project progress and status which
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:30 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/9 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu:
I am skeptical of the current development process. That is because it has
led to the current parser, which is not a proper parser at all, and
includes
horrifying syntax.
Er,
Hi all;
I would like to know how is going to be rated the success of this
operation/project. Do you hope a big wave of new users? More edits per
day? To improve the visits/edits ratio? What are your wishes and your
realistic predictions?
Regards,
emijrp
Naoko Komura escribió:
On Fri, Jan 9,
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