Easy way to tell - take a look at the pictures I took at some pastWikipediameetups (although there's a distinct bias in favor of old people who can find transportation). To get a more accurate breakdown by age, see Wikimedians by age (a page which, for the record, I started).
Actually, in my opinion (as Wikipedia featured article director), I think that Lord Emsworth probably has the strongest claim to "best writer", considering he's written about 50 featured articles (out of about 500, total); I think the next most anyone can claim is around 6 or 7.
Fixing vandalism is the easy part - 99 times out of 100, it requires an admin simply to click Rollback and occasionally to block the perpretrator. (about 4 clicks total). On the other hand, there are some very nasty clean up jobs (although, for good reason, I won't mention any specifics here) that require quite a bit more work -- 2-3 minutes per instance for an admin who knows the system well.
So what? In the US, guns are still legal even though don't seem to have ANY legitimate use."
The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny. --Walter Williams
This actually came up in my high school physics class a few years back. Since then, I've given it some thought, and my best guess was to define a kilogram in terms of the deflection of a beam of light under the influence of gravity over a given distance. In other words, define it in terms of the deflect of a beam of light passing a kilogram point charge at a certain distance.
Very good point - there are certain advantages to letting the government be able to take private propety - I like driving on striaght roads, riding on straight railways, straight bridges, 'etc. So here's the $64,000 question - how do you give the government the power to claim private property to promote the "greater good", without certain 'moneyed interests' exerting undue influence on the government to exercise that power.
For those slashdotters unaware of the SCOTUS case
on
Patents and Eminent Domain
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The summary above refers to Susette Kelo v. City of New London. The city is attempting to use eminent domain to take some land from people, and sell it to a private developer to develop. (I emphasize private because the case hinges on that) Cnn had a good write up here
I forget where I saw it, it might have been SNL. They had a faux-ad for the Mach 18 -- "The 17th blade scrapes off the last layer of flesh, and the 18th blade shaves the bone. "
I was just in freenode joking with Jimbo about this. He said he thought was wondering how long it would be before slashdot ran a story about it (2 hours) and asked people to please stop with the consideracy theories. Meanwhile, the devs are working fairly furiously to get it back up (Kate hasn't slept in 27 hours. Jimbo just declared Feb 22 to be Kate-day) (--A wikipedia admin.)
Take the converse of that arguement - what if the government requires everyone who does buisness with it to use a patented, royalty-requiring format. Now everyone is effectively paying a tax to whomever the patent owner is. And guess what? 999 out of 1,000, it's some megacorp. So no, I am not crying my eyes out over that one.
The BSA's main objection to the EIF is that it requires a standard to be "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis" and impose no constraints on "re-use." Such restrictions don't allow standards that, for example, rely on patents for which a royalty may be charged, according to Müller.
Forget the graphic part - the whole UI needs work. Package management is balkanized and bad in general, KDE/Gnome are becoming so heavy that you need a P4 just to run them, 'etc. You want to know the best way to use this money? Forget about handhelds and embedded systems - drop the whole $100 million into developing a good UI for desktop users.
(Note - this is my personal statement, and not an wikimedia statement) I suspect if google starts hosting wikipedia, it will be entirely back ended - e.g., the switchover will be transparent to the average user. Wikipedia will stay at www.wikipedia.org
Uh, no, limiting it to 50 of them would violate section 3 -- "If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. "
"They cannot restrict copying of the content, but they can limit access to it via Google's servers." - Wrong. The GFDL requires them to provide a transparent copy on a nondiscriminatory basis. Wikipedia does this via download.wikipedia.org, and google would be obligated, at the very least, to provide something similiar.
"I don't get the impression the servers were "misconfigured" so much as they weren't optimized to squeeze every last bit of life out of them" - wrong. There seems to be quite a few misconceptions about why the servers are so slow and/or why there are so many database errors at the moment. First, the site is not slow because of... Lack of servers. Although this has been a problem in the past, and surely will be in the future, it's not the current issue...What is making the site slow is mainly configuration and software issues. -- The Wikipedia developer's blog
Wikipedia seems to have just barely enough machines to handle its load, and if one stops working or there's a little inefficiency the whole thing slows to a crawl. Wrong. Wikipedia is running quite nicely today, and 5 servers (out of about 40) are currently down.
In the future, please get your facts straight before making flagarantly wrong statements.
It means that if you copy it and modify it, you are required to license the new version under the GFDL and acknowledge Wikipedia (and that a hyperlink satisfies our acknoledgement requirement). Is that supposed to be scandalous?
Slashdot Mirror
Here
Easy way to tell - take a look at the pictures I took at some past Wikipedia meetups (although there's a distinct bias in favor of old people who can find transportation). To get a more accurate breakdown by age, see Wikimedians by age (a page which, for the record, I started).
You're welcome :)
--A Wikipedia admin/arbitrator/bureaucrat
Actually, in my opinion (as Wikipedia featured article director), I think that Lord Emsworth probably has the strongest claim to "best writer", considering he's written about 50 featured articles (out of about 500, total); I think the next most anyone can claim is around 6 or 7.
Fixing vandalism is the easy part - 99 times out of 100, it requires an admin simply to click Rollback and occasionally to block the perpretrator. (about 4 clicks total). On the other hand, there are some very nasty clean up jobs (although, for good reason, I won't mention any specifics here) that require quite a bit more work -- 2-3 minutes per instance for an admin who knows the system well.
...because I wrote most of that article :)
So what? In the US, guns are still legal even though don't seem to have ANY legitimate use."
The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny. --Walter Williams
This actually came up in my high school physics class a few years back. Since then, I've given it some thought, and my best guess was to define a kilogram in terms of the deflection of a beam of light under the influence of gravity over a given distance. In other words, define it in terms of the deflect of a beam of light passing a kilogram point charge at a certain distance.
Very good point - there are certain advantages to letting the government be able to take private propety - I like driving on striaght roads, riding on straight railways, straight bridges, 'etc. So here's the $64,000 question - how do you give the government the power to claim private property to promote the "greater good", without certain 'moneyed interests' exerting undue influence on the government to exercise that power.
The summary above refers to Susette Kelo v. City of New London. The city is attempting to use eminent domain to take some land from people, and sell it to a private developer to develop. (I emphasize private because the case hinges on that) Cnn had a good write up here
I forget where I saw it, it might have been SNL. They had a faux-ad for the Mach 18 -- "The 17th blade scrapes off the last layer of flesh, and the 18th blade shaves the bone. "
Jamesday is wikipedia's chief sysadmin, so his comment is probably one of the most informative one here
No no, but with the google deal looming, the tin-foil-hatters are paying close attention to wikipedia, and every little thing gets overly-scrutinized.
As that economic genius, Eric Cartman taught us:
1) Get something other people love
2) Don't let them use it
3) Profit!
It doesn't hurt if you are running a fund drive at the same time, either.
I was just in freenode joking with Jimbo about this. He said he thought was wondering how long it would be before slashdot ran a story about it (2 hours) and asked people to please stop with the consideracy theories. Meanwhile, the devs are working fairly furiously to get it back up (Kate hasn't slept in 27 hours. Jimbo just declared Feb 22 to be Kate-day) (--A wikipedia admin.)
Right, because we all know money grows on trees...
Take the converse of that arguement - what if the government requires everyone who does buisness with it to use a patented, royalty-requiring format. Now everyone is effectively paying a tax to whomever the patent owner is. And guess what? 999 out of 1,000, it's some megacorp. So no, I am not crying my eyes out over that one.
The BSA's main objection to the EIF is that it requires a standard to be "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis" and impose no constraints on "re-use." Such restrictions don't allow standards that, for example, rely on patents for which a royalty may be charged, according to Müller.
Oh yes, I'm crying my eyes out over that one.
Forget the graphic part - the whole UI needs work. Package management is balkanized and bad in general, KDE/Gnome are becoming so heavy that you need a P4 just to run them, 'etc. You want to know the best way to use this money? Forget about handhelds and embedded systems - drop the whole $100 million into developing a good UI for desktop users.
(Note - this is my personal statement, and not an wikimedia statement) I suspect if google starts hosting wikipedia, it will be entirely back ended - e.g., the switchover will be transparent to the average user. Wikipedia will stay at www.wikipedia.org
Uh, no, limiting it to 50 of them would violate section 3 -- "If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. "
That's Mav, Wikimedia's CFO :)
"They cannot restrict copying of the content, but they can limit access to it via Google's servers." - Wrong. The GFDL requires them to provide a transparent copy on a nondiscriminatory basis. Wikipedia does this via download.wikipedia.org, and google would be obligated, at the very least, to provide something similiar.
"I don't get the impression the servers were "misconfigured" so much as they weren't optimized to squeeze every last bit of life out of them" - wrong. There seems to be quite a few misconceptions about why the servers are so slow and/or why there are so many database errors at the moment. First, the site is not slow because of... Lack of servers. Although this has been a problem in the past, and surely will be in the future, it's not the current issue...What is making the site slow is mainly configuration and software issues. -- The Wikipedia developer's blog
Wikipedia seems to have just barely enough machines to handle its load, and if one stops working or there's a little inefficiency the whole thing slows to a crawl. Wrong. Wikipedia is running quite nicely today, and 5 servers (out of about 40) are currently down.
In the future, please get your facts straight before making flagarantly wrong statements.
It means that if you copy it and modify it, you are required to license the new version under the GFDL and acknowledge Wikipedia (and that a hyperlink satisfies our acknoledgement requirement). Is that supposed to be scandalous?