Every version is in the article history, so it would be pretty simple to mark a given version as "known good," without blocking the free flow of edits.
We have a guideline, Biographies of living persons, which tells an editor how to approach these things properly. (The guideline is very much written for clueful editors of good will, so it doesn't contain clues for the clueless or sticks to hit editors of bad will with — there's no point bloating a guideline with those, as the clueless and those of bad will won't read them anyway.) The key point is getting the article right, and for living biographies that requires the highest standard of references.
Probably not. X11 is the protocol. Things like the Xfixes extension modify the protocol without breaking backward compatibility, so we're unlikely to have to leave X11 behind in the foreseeable future.
Although it's not relevant to the point you're making about Wikibooks, I do know a few people who installed Mediawiki on their personal website just because it was easier (less friction) than coding all their own HTML - just using it to put together a simple site to present their personal geek projects, update manuals and FAQs, etc.
If RMS was hit by a bus tomorrow, Bradley Kuhn would probably cover in the first instance.
If Linus was hit by a bus tomorrow, you know the kernel would tick along just fine while they found the perfect feature-nazi with excellent technical taste.
"Furthermore, most freelance work or custom applications don't pay well compared to salaried jobs. "
In IT, this is so very much not the case. I'm a contractor for the buckets of cash.
My installation is fine. But I have to set the appearance separately for KDE apps from GNOME apps. You and I understand why; but any user coming to Ubuntu and being faced with this is going to go "WHAT ON EARTH?!" And quite rightly - there is no reason the user should be punished for the KDE vs GNOME battles.
I'm using Ubuntu Breezy with the GNOME desktop and I've installed all the kubuntu-desktop stuff as well.
The major problem I can see is that the user should not even have to care whether a given app is GNOME, KDE or whatever. You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit. WTF?
No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE; you need to make the mixture not affect the end user at all. They desperately need a unified look-and-feel control panel that will set this stuff consistently without the user having to care.
The least-worst idea I've seen is a massively distributed article rating system — an editorial committee can't possibly scale (we've currently got about two Britannicas of text), but lots of people clicking "Rate this page" has a chance. Particularly as our readers currently outnumber our editors 50:1 or so.
See Article validation feature and En validation topics - which would put a "Rate this page" tab at the top of every page. The feature is currently waiting on a version of the code that won't overload the database if it's put into production;-)
See also my plan for 1.0 (I dashed this off about a year ago and it's still the best working plan we have) and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 (a bunch of writings on producing a stable version).
The Guardian's online operation is now turning a profit as a separate business, and has about 30% more content than appears in the printed version. (So I was told at a job interview there in August.)
Yes indeed. The X Window System showed us just what excellence in graphic design you can get when you leave it to furry-toothed programmers whose computer permanently displays a screen filled with green-on-black terminal sessions, plus a minimised Opera for their pr0n.
The trouble with the Wikipedia article on Xenu is that it makes it pretty much impossible to write a funnier article on the subject in Uncyclopedia.
We picketed the Church of Scientology in London a few weeks ago. Our flyers were a cut-down version of the Wikipedia article on Xenu. There's nothing like having a policeman stand three feet from you in an intimidating pose, reading your leaflet and trying desperately to stop himself from sniggering.
Jimmy Wales (who started Wikipedia) has asked really nicely for a feature where anonymous edits don't show up for ten minutes to anonymous viewers (logged-in editors' changes would show up immediately, logged-in editors would always see the current version). Unfortunately the devs say it would be a nightmare to program, but it's obviously desirable and people are thinking seriously about how to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Every version is in the article history, so it would be pretty simple to mark a given version as "known good," without blocking the free flow of edits.
We have a guideline, Biographies of living persons, which tells an editor how to approach these things properly. (The guideline is very much written for clueful editors of good will, so it doesn't contain clues for the clueless or sticks to hit editors of bad will with — there's no point bloating a guideline with those, as the clueless and those of bad will won't read them anyway.) The key point is getting the article right, and for living biographies that requires the highest standard of references.
(Apple gets in the films through assiduous product placement.)
Because it's either pay the fine or leave the EU market. An economy and population the size of the US one.
Probably not. X11 is the protocol. Things like the Xfixes extension modify the protocol without breaking backward compatibility, so we're unlikely to have to leave X11 behind in the foreseeable future.
It came from Uncyclopedia.
Although it's not relevant to the point you're making about Wikibooks, I do know a few people who installed Mediawiki on their personal website just because it was easier (less friction) than coding all their own HTML - just using it to put together a simple site to present their personal geek projects, update manuals and FAQs, etc.
If Linus was hit by a bus tomorrow, you know the kernel would tick along just fine while they found the perfect feature-nazi with excellent technical taste.
"Furthermore, most freelance work or custom applications don't pay well compared to salaried jobs. " In IT, this is so very much not the case. I'm a contractor for the buckets of cash.
My installation is fine. But I have to set the appearance separately for KDE apps from GNOME apps. You and I understand why; but any user coming to Ubuntu and being faced with this is going to go "WHAT ON EARTH?!" And quite rightly - there is no reason the user should be punished for the KDE vs GNOME battles.
The major problem I can see is that the user should not even have to care whether a given app is GNOME, KDE or whatever. You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit. WTF?
No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE; you need to make the mixture not affect the end user at all. They desperately need a unified look-and-feel control panel that will set this stuff consistently without the user having to care.
See Article validation feature and En validation topics - which would put a "Rate this page" tab at the top of every page. The feature is currently waiting on a version of the code that won't overload the database if it's put into production ;-)
See also my plan for 1.0 (I dashed this off about a year ago and it's still the best working plan we have) and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 (a bunch of writings on producing a stable version).
The Guardian's online operation is now turning a profit as a separate business, and has about 30% more content than appears in the printed version. (So I was told at a job interview there in August.)
My email address is in there for any additions and updates.
Actually, it doesn't have modular X.Org - "X.org 6.8.2 with wider hardware support" (i.e., patches). X.Org 7.0 is still at RC0.
Yes indeed. The X Window System showed us just what excellence in graphic design you can get when you leave it to furry-toothed programmers whose computer permanently displays a screen filled with green-on-black terminal sessions, plus a minimised Opera for their pr0n.
Not long at all. OpenOffice is LGPL - MS would just have to release its changes.
By the way, the X Window System article will be the Wikipedia front page feature on September 3rd.
Not in Mozilla; only in Firefox. Mozilla 1.7 is unaffected.
Hi, Everyking!
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Autofellatio
We picketed the Church of Scientology in London a few weeks ago. Our flyers were a cut-down version of the Wikipedia article on Xenu. There's nothing like having a policeman stand three feet from you in an intimidating pose, reading your leaflet and trying desperately to stop himself from sniggering.
Chatzilla's already available as an extension for Firefox. I run it that way.
Yeah. How to design stuff thinking like a suspicious bastard :-)
Jimmy Wales (who started Wikipedia) has asked really nicely for a feature where anonymous edits don't show up for ten minutes to anonymous viewers (logged-in editors' changes would show up immediately, logged-in editors would always see the current version). Unfortunately the devs say it would be a nightmare to program, but it's obviously desirable and people are thinking seriously about how to do it.
-1, Troll. ;-p