Did we toil in vain in hope that wisdom came with what we'd done?

[reddragdiva]

reddragdiva.co.uk is sort of working except I can't add anything to an album, because PHP has been locked down too far to work. So Friday's pics from B-Movie are temporarily here here. Usual rules apply.

Saturday and Sunday I did nothing much. This was probably needed. We did find what we hope will be the house. I started a draft Wikipedia essay called Process is Dangerous. ("Considered harmful" considered harmful.) It needs more content and less words, but it's coming along nicely.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Very nice :-) I saw an interesting argument about "ignore all rules" recently, where an editor banned by ArbCom from an article was making non-controversial and useful edits and having them reverted. This is a situation where the multiple-versioning "more wiki than ever" system being trialled on the German Wikipedia would be very useful. Of course this is just one step towards implementing Wikipedia on a modern DVCS like git/bzr/monotone - or one step towards this (http://community.livejournal.com/trustmetrics/5616.html).

[reddragdiva]

The German system isn't branching. If you want a wiki with branching, there's svnwiki, which is either a wiki with Subversion behind it or a wiki interface to a Svn repository, depending how you look at it.

When you're banned by ArbCom, it means "fuck off." Or at least "go away, your presence is a net negative and you can make those edits when you come back." The reversions are usually on a "scorch the earth" basis, where the useful changes are then made again by an editor not found to be odious.

I'm not sure a trust metric is a useful idea. Technical solutions to social problems on Wikipedia don't work very well - they just provide another system for the odious to game. (That's the other problem with the thicket of red tape.)

[steer.livejournal.com]

I wonder if, in time, it might be useful to have a "frozen" and "development" version of certain core articles (isn't there something similar for the CDROM). But I think that time is a way in the future.

[reddragdiva]

This was actually mooted a long time ago, but Jimbo said "no" - there would be a branch shortly before a release version, but the branch time should be as short as possible. I have a picture in my head of the non-branched version getting more good edits in the one place rather than splitting effort between the two and then trouble remerging later.

There are people working on various release projects. They're mostly marking particular articles as things they want in, rather than marking particular revisions of those articles.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yes... As I was writing this I was thinking more about it. Would it be as rewarding to work on an article knowing that any thing you changed wouldn't get in until next "release". Also, if there is an obvious factual error it wouldn't get fixed until "release".

On the other hand, I think we're all aware of the lazy journalistic slag happens to access article on "The protestant church" at that minute where it has been replaced by word "Cockmuncher" type issues.

Still, for the moment it seems to be largely "working".

[reddragdiva]

Slow news year.

[steer.livejournal.com]

"Wikipedia users occasionally less than mature shock horror probe"

[Note: In our article about Wikipedia users occassionally being less than mature this was later found to be a general property of human beings.]

[reddragdiva]

Although yes, a git-backed wiki engine would be interesting. One thing that caught my eye about git was Linus' insight that the basic unit is the project, not the file, and you need to be able to track blame for a particular chunk of code whatever file it ends up in. This would be a natural for Wikipedia, where responsibility (a much nicer word) could be tracked down to the sentence. The distributed aspect is interesting as well — forks would be a lot easier and easier to selectively merge.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Heh... for the last month or so my WP participation has been limited to minor tweaks and reverting or fixing the most egregious edits on the pages I watch. I do find edit warring fascinating though so I followed all the links on the User Pedophile war.

Oh... dear...

Wikipedia is a superb global project which is gradually and painfully producing the best encyclopedia out there. Every so often though it does degenerate into "no YOU have cooties".

[reddragdiva]

Note that I was in the thick of that one too. Jimbo exercises his wrath through the offices of the Arbitrators, but I can assure you his wrath was wrathful on that one.

[steer.livejournal.com]

*Grin* I also noticed that somehow you managed to avoid getting banned at any point. "I am rubber you are glue."

[reddragdiva]

That must have been sheer bias and favouritism. It can't possibly have been that I was one of those not being a dumbarse.