These books are broken up. Blast off!

[reddragdiva]

Wikipedia is going well. My current interest is in the article validation feature, to be switched on in MediaWiki 1.5 (a few weeks), and active right now on the 1.5 test wiki. We also have a nice list of suggested topics.

This is the last thing required for my Wikipedia 1.0 plan, which is still the most coherent plan anyone's come up with. It should be applicable to either a DVD release (a DVD of the German Wikipedia recently sold out its first pressing in two days) or a printed release.

The plan for now is to just gather the data and do nothing at all with it. Just raw information. There are many anticipated possible problems; looking over the data will tell us which ones are actually happening. And you can bet the academics researching Wikipedia will go wild for it.

Oh, I was interviewed about Wikipedia on Open Source, on Boston NPR station WGBH 89.7 Friday afternoon. They had Jimbo in the studio and me by phone. My apologies for not letting LJ know beforehand! You can download a 49MB MP3 if you really want it. I'm up straight after Jimbo, from 8'14" to 14'37".

Comments

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

your plans to implement article validation will be foiled by the simple fact that People Are Stupid.

i am surprised that you of all people did not realise this!

is the interview worth the download?

[reddragdiva]

That's why Wikipedia sucks, after all! We'll see just how creative the forces of bad faith are.

I downloaded it and it's entertaining and interesting. Except iTunes just gave us the Spinning Beachball of Death, which is at least more picturesque than a blue screen.

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that I've started using Wikipedia instead of Google to look up things recently... feeling half tempted to add a number of articles to do with the moving industry.

[reddragdiva]

Wikipedia is my first port of call for what a particular technical thing is. Google tends to hit mailing list posts and suchlike.

[reddragdiva]

And now, looking at wikipedia-l, I'm hoping Brion doesn't decide the feature is Dumbest. Thing. Ever and pull it from production.

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

i sort of agree with him that it could be an extension. particularly since then it wouldn't be limited to 1.5...

i think he's more worried about the way the trial is running than the feature itself, though :-)

[reddragdiva]

The discussion is certainly cringew interesting so far.

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

why not just make the results available to everyone during the trial? that seems to be the main issue.

(yes, yes, i know i should bring this up on the list, but... ;-)

[reddragdiva]

It looks like that's how it'll happen, which is fine by me. Particularly if it makes the difference between the feature going in or not.

[ozjester.livejournal.com]

I can indeed confirm that David does own over a third of a ton of vinyl records!

[reddragdiva]

I think it's safe to say that you're in *pint*s for the term of your natural life after this.