Right in time! And the rightly early version too! Kudos to the diggers and bashers!
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 21:23, Moka Pantages <[email protected]>wrote: > This is so exciting! To Steven's point: we've also started a page > where folks can add bits of interesting information as they excavate > the files [1]. Can't wait to dig in! > > Congrats, Tim! > > [1] http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_the_Beginning > > > Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:20:10 -0800 > From: Steven Walling <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > This is fantastic, and the timing could not be better. > > If anyone finds anything noteworthy, please add it to the timeline of > Wikipedia that we're building at the 10th anniversary wiki,[1] as well as > the other tools for cataloging interesting tidbits from our history.[2] > > 1. http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_timeline > 2. http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share > > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Chad <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Tim Starling <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > I was looking through some old files in our SourceForge project. I > > > opened a file called wiki.tar.gz, and inside were three complete > > > backups of the text of Wikipedia, from February, March and August 2001! > > > > > > This is exciting, because there is lots of article history in here > > > which was assumed to be lost forever. > > > > > > I've long been interested in Wikipedia's history, and I've tried in > > > the past to locate such backups. I asked various people who might have > > > had one. I had given up hope. > > > > > > The history of particularly old Wikipedia articles, as seen in the > > > present Wikipedia database, is incomplete, due to Usemod's policy of > > > deleting old revisions of pages after about a month. The script which > > > Brion wrote to import the article histories from UseMod to MediaWiki > > > only fetched those revisions which hadn't been purged yet. > > > > > > I didn't want to believe that those revisions had been lost forever, > > > and I even opened the UseMod source code and stared forlornly at the > > > unlink() call. What I (and Brion before) missed is that UseMod appends > > > a record of every change made to two files, called diff_log and rclog. > > > In these two files is a record of every change made to Wikipedia from > > > January 15 to August 17, 2001. > > > > > > I've put the two log files up on the web, at: > > > > > > http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-logs-2001-08-17.7z<http://noc.wikimedia.org/%7Etstarling/wikipedia-logs-2001-08-17.7z> > > > > > > The 7-zip archive is only 8.4MB -- much more manageable than today's > > > backups. > > > > > > rclog contains IP addresses. The Usemod software made IP addresses of > > > logged-in users public, so the people who made these edits had no > > > expectation that their IP address would be kept private. That, coupled > > > with the passage of time, makes me think that no harm to user privacy > > > can come from releasing these files. > > > > > > -- Tim Starling > > > > > > > I have to say this is super cool. It's like digging up a time capsule > > right before the 10th anniversary. One of my favorite early edits: > > > > "This is the new WikiPedia! The idea here is to write a complete > > encyclopedia from scratch, without peer review process, etc. > > Some people think that this may be a hopeless endeavor, that > > the result will necessarily suck. We aren't so sure. So, let's get > > to work!" > > > > -Chad > > > > _______________________________________________ > > foundation-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
