Amen to that ! this is exactly how I do it now, directing my search towards discussion forums. Before that I used to use the defunct Dejanews sigh ! and then for a short time Google Groups, and got the best technical answers ever ! before Spam, people desaffection from Usenet and Google has rendered totally useless, re-sigh ! what a loss !
This also true for website design, through in beautiful pictures and shiny colors and people will be happy.
I also remember that at the University, students with "graphic oriented" projects, were systematically getting better grades than those that don't. I remember how I have spent days and days finding the latest and more optimised Fast Fourrier Transform algorithm, searching for the lastest published litterature and all and optimising every little detail, but didn't got a grade I considered fair just because I had no fancy graphics to show; while other stupid cellular automata drawing projects got excellents grades, just because they looked pretty, and spectacular.
Well, something I have learned through the years, If something is too good to be true, then it's really too good to be true ! It's exactly like 419 Fraud, too good to be true:).
Monarchy, while the king is also religious chief, quite secular in practice, only family law is adapted from Charia (Islamic) everything else is secular and in fact inherited from french law.
This article is complete BS, or wishful at best, China has Huge ! untapped pool of workers, they are 1,3 Billion, you can never imagine how big it is (this is 4,5 times the US, or 20 times UK or France, 3 times the European Union) ! so labour shortage is really not for tomorrow, or even after tomorrow in China or India.
Sorry After reading the WP entry I noticed that the publication journal had no peer review process, I believe that a such article could not pass the WP peer review as it is now. The article has generated a lot of controversy especially in Europe.
Well it seems to be just a case a sensationalist journalism in Slashdot again. Anyway Hoax happens even in peer reviewed journals. "Sokal Affaire" anyone ? which has shaked a hole area of human sciences : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
Morocco has always been a pro West nation; you must be confusing with another middle eastern country. Morocco was even the first nation to recognize the US and has the oldest non-broken international friendship treaty with the United States. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship has been in effect since 1786.
Yeah that's would be nice on theory ! but I am afraid that if Millions of childs suddenly had access to WP vandalism would become a real nightmare. Vandalism in WP is often the work of immature college students and many colleges IP have been banned, with kids that would be even worse I am afraid. Though I don't think they will be really intersted in WP content.
In fact they just use a different glyph (don't know its origin though) but still the same numeral system.
What is known as the Arabic Numbers in the West, correspond in fact to the glyph developed in Maghreb countries : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb or maybe in Al Andalus : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Andalus (nowdays Andalucia in Spain), from there the glyphs (and the numeral system) reached Europe. Note that these glyph are still in use in Maghreb countries today : Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Mauritania.
Well Morocco is in North Africa, but reported to its total population Morocco has even more offshored jobs than India (30 000 : mainly french speaking, for a population of nearly 30 Millions, vs 700 000 for a population of 1 100 000 000 for India) that's 1/1000 vs 0,63/1000 some countries might even have more, like Ireland, but as they are smaller this fact not very publicised, for Instance Google has does all his European opereations in Ireland.
Besides, the general consensus is that porn does much less harm than guns, even in countries where it's (supposed) to be strictly regulated like mine;)
Vous ne sortez de l'ambiguité qu'à vos propres dépens as they say
Or roughly in English: You have all to loose if you are no more mysterious, that's the real secret Google credo.
The problem of Google is to move forward without upsetting Microsoft too much. They need to occupy quietly more and more niches without upsetting the almighty MS, that's why the only solution is to be mysterious about their real long term strategy.
They just don't want to be the text Netscape and I don't think they will.
Well I am against intrusive ads too; but when you systematicaly kill ads that are the site your are visiting which are often its main source of revenue you are not doing him a favor, they are is in some sens the price you are paying to visit the site and you are taking a free ride. The alternative is a real paying site. If you want to support a site you appreciate, don't block the ads the site si displaying its as simple as that.
Sun owns the Java name right ? so people can fork the source code as they want if Sun refuses this forked "thing" to bear the Java name, then it can't be called this way, it's as simple as that. Only the Sun blessed version will be allowed to use the Java name. I don't see any risk of forking here.
Admins and editors don't need to be harsh in the slightest. The fact that you think that's necessary indicates that the system itself doesn't work to discourage noise and the people operating it have to make up their own method for disciplining noisemakers. Which of course leads to a total lack of consistency, which is the hallmark of bad leadership.
Well do you have another way to regulate the system ? if you have original ideas, there are plenty of forums out there to discuss new proposals. Sure, you need to join the system and convince people that you have useful ideas, you need to push you ideas, promote them, explain them, convince people, its the way it works in WP, make new friends too who will help you, its like in politics, but everything is politics, even science right ?.
An admin's emotions are unimportant to the process. But in my expereince admins' feelings are raw from dealing with trolls, and easily hurt, and many admins and editors take anything other than kow-towing as a challenge from a troll.
Plus, admins constantly forget the cardinal rule of adminship: they don't have any special rights, even though they have a special power. But they're almost to a man completely headstrong about being special and right. And the means to get them to see that they're wrong are onerous.
Hey ! we are just humans beings:) and humans will always be emotional, you can't just ask people to stop being emotional. Admins are passionate people, who are ready to offer a lot of their time and energy for this project, I just can't see how they can do this without a lot of emotion. In fact like every human endeavour WP just reflects the interests of its contributors, that's why some subjects are more covered in WP than others for instance.
Further, the system is ridiculously politicized. It's too difficult to become an admin
This absolutely not true a dedicated person can gain adminship very easily and as for politization see what I have said before.
It's far too difficult to lose adminship
Maybe you have a point here, its easier to do things than to undo them in WP, its quite difficult for instance to destroy entries once they are there and this is one of the main weakness of the system.
The result is a power-clique that protects its malefactors and victimizes the general public.
Yes maybe, but this a common weakness in all bureaucracies, WP needs to do something about it, but it will be very difficult. WP has naturally organised itself like a big city with its laws, deputies, leaders and so on, like any social group, remember we are just humans beings:) we don't know how to do things differently.
Wikpedia admins and editors need to be very harsh against vandalism and spam, if they don't act like that WP will be even more filled with junk. I have been a passionate Wikipedia editor for two years now and I have thought about leaving it many times exactly for the opposite reason you are citing. I find that WP is more and more filled with vanity pages, non notables entries, spam links etc. WP rise in fame and the fact that it now often appears in the first page of a Google search has alas attracted many spammers and free riders, and this is precisely the thing that could ruin it and not the other way around. I believe that if WP remains as lax about its editorial policy as its is it will probably die.
Thanks a lot for this thoughtful answer, there are times I really regret not having moderation points. Alas this kind of posts is becoming more and more common in Slashdot, because its moderation is flawed and is clearly showing its limits.
Sadely Wikipedia itself is starting to have the same problem, its high visibility is attracting lots and lots of spammers and people quietly pushing their ideology agenda and Marketing.
The future is probably "social evaluation". What we need is an "Attack resistant trust metrics", the one created for Advocado by "Raph Levien", seems a good one and has not been broken so far. The idea is to propagate trust from a small set of trusted peoples who will in turn evaluate other peoples. This scheme can be used for web sites too. In fact "Raph Levien" initial model was PageRank .
I really do apreciate the hard work of those people, the problem is that whatever they do, the look still feels amateurish, KDE has got the same problem. Maybe it is time to hire once and for all real profesional designers.
No need for shity studies about reading habits of people in the "Western World" (as if other people where so different, bidi doesn't count here, indeed those people don't think and act like us, don't they !?). 99% of people who come to Linux from Windows, so they expect things to be the Windows way and this is the only thing that really count.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that ! this is exactly how I do it now, directing my search towards discussion forums. Before that I used to use the defunct Dejanews sigh ! and then for a short time Google Groups, and got the best technical answers ever ! before Spam, people desaffection from Usenet and Google has rendered totally useless, re-sigh ! what a loss !
This also true for website design, through in beautiful pictures and shiny colors and people will be happy.
I also remember that at the University, students with "graphic oriented" projects, were systematically getting better grades than those that don't. I remember how I have spent days and days finding the latest and more optimised Fast Fourrier Transform algorithm, searching for the lastest published litterature and all and optimising every little detail, but didn't got a grade I considered fair just because I had no fancy graphics to show; while other stupid cellular automata drawing projects got excellents grades, just because they looked pretty, and spectacular.
Well, something I have learned through the years, If something is too good to be true, then it's really too good to be true ! It's exactly like 419 Fraud, too good to be true :).
Now I am going to really read the article !
I hope you have corrected this :) this is all what Wikipedia is about.
>Morocco 32,300,410 (OK educational system, ??
Monarchy, while the king is also religious chief, quite secular in practice, only family law is adapted from Charia (Islamic) everything else is secular and in fact inherited from french law.
This article is complete BS, or wishful at best, China has Huge ! untapped pool of workers, they are 1,3 Billion, you can never imagine how big it is (this is 4,5 times the US, or 20 times UK or France, 3 times the European Union) ! so labour shortage is really not for tomorrow, or even after tomorrow in China or India.
I hope those guys do update their repository after an article is deleted too, not only when it's updated.
Sorry After reading the WP entry I noticed that the publication journal had no peer review process, I believe that a such article could not pass the WP peer review as it is now. The article has generated a lot of controversy especially in Europe.
Well it seems to be just a case a sensationalist journalism in Slashdot again. Anyway Hoax happens even in peer reviewed journals. "Sokal Affaire" anyone ? which has shaked a hole area of human sciences : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
Morocco has always been a pro West nation; you must be confusing with another middle eastern country. Morocco was even the first nation to recognize the US and has the oldest non-broken international friendship treaty with the United States. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship has been in effect since 1786.
e aty_of_Friendship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan-American_Tr
Yeah that's would be nice on theory ! but I am afraid that if Millions of childs suddenly had access to WP vandalism would become a real nightmare. Vandalism in WP is often the work of immature college students and many colleges IP have been banned, with kids that would be even worse I am afraid. Though I don't think they will be really intersted in WP content.
In fact they just use a different glyph (don't know its origin though) but still the same numeral system.
What is known as the Arabic Numbers in the West, correspond in fact to the glyph developed in Maghreb countries : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb or maybe in Al Andalus : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Andalus (nowdays Andalucia in Spain), from there the glyphs (and the numeral system) reached Europe. Note that these glyph are still in use in Maghreb countries today : Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Mauritania.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numbers
Morocco
Well Morocco is in North Africa, but reported to its total population Morocco has even more offshored jobs than India (30 000 : mainly french speaking, for a population of nearly 30 Millions, vs 700 000 for a population of 1 100 000 000 for India) that's 1/1000 vs 0,63/1000 some countries might even have more, like Ireland, but as they are smaller this fact not very publicised, for Instance Google has does all his European opereations in Ireland.
Google have already stated officially that they were going to issue a PayPal clone, it's only a matter of time.
Besides, the general consensus is that porn does much less harm than guns, even in countries where it's (supposed) to be strictly regulated like mine ;)
Vous ne sortez de l'ambiguité qu'à vos propres dépens as they say
Or roughly in English: You have all to loose if you are no more mysterious, that's the real secret Google credo.
The problem of Google is to move forward without upsetting Microsoft too much. They need to occupy quietly more and more niches without upsetting the almighty MS, that's why the only solution is to be mysterious about their real long term strategy.
They just don't want to be the text Netscape and I don't think they will.
Well I am against intrusive ads too; but when you systematicaly kill ads that are the site your are visiting which are often its main source of revenue you are not doing him a favor, they are is in some sens the price you are paying to visit the site and you are taking a free ride. The alternative is a real paying site. If you want to support a site you appreciate, don't block the ads the site si displaying its as simple as that.
Sun owns the Java name right ? so people can fork the source code as they want if Sun refuses this forked "thing" to bear the Java name, then it can't be called this way, it's as simple as that. Only the Sun blessed version will be allowed to use the Java name. I don't see any risk of forking here.
Admins and editors don't need to be harsh in the slightest. The fact that you think that's necessary indicates that the system itself doesn't work to discourage noise and the people operating it have to make up their own method for disciplining noisemakers. Which of course leads to a total lack of consistency, which is the hallmark of bad leadership.
m anagement, there are some nice ideas wich can be used in WP, especially this one : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_resistant_trus t_metric, it has been successfully implemented in Advogato.
:) and humans will always be emotional, you can't just ask people to stop being emotional. Admins are passionate people, who are ready to offer a lot of their time and energy for this project, I just can't see how they can do this without a lot of emotion. In fact like every human endeavour WP just reflects the interests of its contributors, that's why some subjects are more covered in WP than others for instance.
:) we don't know how to do things differently.
Well do you have another way to regulate the system ? if you have original ideas, there are plenty of forums out there to discuss new proposals. Sure, you need to join the system and convince people that you have useful ideas, you need to push you ideas, promote them, explain them, convince people, its the way it works in WP, make new friends too who will help you, its like in politics, but everything is politics, even science right ?.
Have a look at this category I have created and which try to promote for instance : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reputation_
An admin's emotions are unimportant to the process. But in my expereince admins' feelings are raw from dealing with trolls, and easily hurt, and many admins and editors take anything other than kow-towing as a challenge from a troll.
Plus, admins constantly forget the cardinal rule of adminship: they don't have any special rights, even though they have a special power. But they're almost to a man completely headstrong about being special and right. And the means to get them to see that they're wrong are onerous.
Hey ! we are just humans beings
Further, the system is ridiculously politicized. It's too difficult to become an admin
This absolutely not true a dedicated person can gain adminship very easily and as for politization see what I have said before.
It's far too difficult to lose adminship
Maybe you have a point here, its easier to do things than to undo them in WP, its quite difficult for instance to destroy entries once they are there and this is one of the main weakness of the system.
The result is a power-clique that protects its malefactors and victimizes the general public.
Yes maybe, but this a common weakness in all bureaucracies, WP needs to do something about it, but it will be very difficult. WP has naturally organised itself like a big city with its laws, deputies, leaders and so on, like any social group, remember we are just humans beings
Wikpedia admins and editors need to be very harsh against vandalism and spam, if they don't act like that WP will be even more filled with junk. I have been a passionate Wikipedia editor for two years now and I have thought about leaving it many times exactly for the opposite reason you are citing. I find that WP is more and more filled with vanity pages, non notables entries, spam links etc. WP rise in fame and the fact that it now often appears in the first page of a Google search has alas attracted many spammers and free riders, and this is precisely the thing that could ruin it and not the other way around. I believe that if WP remains as lax about its editorial policy as its is it will probably die.
Well I fear that would be an order of magnitude bigger than Wikipedia :)
Thanks a lot for this thoughtful answer, there are times I really regret not having moderation points. Alas this kind of posts is becoming more and more common in Slashdot, because its moderation is flawed and is clearly showing its limits.
s t_metric like the one implemented in Advocado for instance.
What we need now is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_resistant_tru
Sadely Wikipedia itself is starting to have the same problem, its high visibility is attracting lots and lots of spammers and people quietly pushing their ideology agenda and Marketing.
The future is probably "social evaluation". What we need is an "Attack resistant trust metrics", the one created for Advocado by "Raph Levien", seems a good one and has not been broken so far. The idea is to propagate trust from a small set of trusted peoples who will in turn evaluate other peoples. This scheme can be used for web sites too. In fact "Raph Levien" initial model was PageRank .
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metrics
I really do apreciate the hard work of those people, the problem is that whatever they do, the look still feels amateurish, KDE has got the same problem. Maybe it is time to hire once and for all real profesional designers.
No need for shity studies about reading habits of people in the "Western World" (as if other people where so different, bidi doesn't count here, indeed those people don't think and act like us, don't they !?). 99% of people who come to Linux from Windows, so they expect things to be the Windows way and this is the only thing that really count.