Talk:Wikipedia/Archive 2

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Why have articles about movies and tv shows?

I suggest that all articles about movies and tv shows be scrapped, and instead have the links point to the apropriate page on the Internet Movie Database. www.imdb.com Their database is already amazingly thorough, and appears to be around to stay. No point in rewriting copious amounts of information which already exists in a well organized form elsewhere Vroman 23:12 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

  1. Descriptions at IMDB don't link back to other related articles on Wikipedia (such as interesting locations, years, film technologies, and people other than cast and crew)
  2. IMDB's license is restrictive
  3. IMDB data won't be directly available in an offline edition of Wikipedia
  4. IMDB is available in English only (and possibly partially in Italian and German, though the links don't work), so that wouldn't help the many other languages Wikipedia is available in.
It's certainly appropriate to link to IMDB for additional information, but it doesn't replace free, integrated descriptions. --Brion 23:37 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
There is never a good reason to delete perfectly good material from the Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't paper. We can create perfectly good NPOV articles, something IMDB doesn't even try to accomplish. -- Zoe

Can we describe Wikipedia with a neutral point of view?

I'm tempted to slap a neutrality dispute disclaimer on the top of this page, just on principle. Can we really claim to be impartial when describing ourselves? Martin 19:16 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No - in principle I think a neutrality dispute disclaimer should only be used as a last resort where there is a serious argument going on, and there are no big disputes about this page. Normally the answer to a slightly biased article is just to change it. We can't be 100% impartial, but that will be reasonably obvious to readers already - I wouldn't think a disclaimer adds anything. Enchanter
Fair enough. Martin 19:47 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Why new software?

Why exactly has the decision been made to create yet another wiki for wikipedia? I'd be pretty interested in that topic hence there are sooo many wiki implementations out there some of which are pretty powerful (twiki comes in mind). Maybe someone involved in that decision would care to write something under 'software' ?

See Wikipedia3 for an explanation of several other features that this Wiki has that distinguish it from other Wikis. I am attempting to install it now in my company and I picked it above any of the other Wiki engines mainly based on these additional features, especially the Namespaces. Nanobug 16:55 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I'm actually in the process of choosing a decent wiki for an internal documentation project of mine; however - hence the main focus of phase3 is Wikipedia I think I'll better choose TWiki. It has lots of features + cooperate intranet success stories ...

Stallman

Wikipedia is supported by free software exponent Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation

Do we have a reference for this?

I've heard Stallman mentioned Wikipedia in some public occasion and gave some positive comments. Perhaps that's what "support" means. Though I don't have a reference in English. I am not sure about FSF's support. Tomos 00:10, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Found it: [1] - "Just as we were starting a project, GNUpedia, to develop a free encyclopedia, the Nupedia encyclopedia project adopted the GNU Free Documentation License and thus became a free commercial project. So we decided to merge GNUpedia project into Nupedia. Now, the Wikipedia encyclopedia project has adopted the philosophy of Nupedia and taken it even further. We encourage you to visit and contribute to the site". Also, here's a quote of RMS [2] "exciting news". Well, it'll have to do. Martin

Unnecessary and harmful deletions? (August 2003)

I feel that MyRedDice has made some unneccessary and harmful deletions from this article. I don't have time to go through it today. But at least he has removed the fact that Larry was here at the beginning and left it in an incomplete sentence. Could someone else check these changes? Rmhermen 21:45, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I will try this now a bit. Tomos 00:12, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Oh, you want "For around thirteen months" to be "For the first thirteen months", I guess? You're right: that would be more informative. I'd do it myself, but I think Tomos is doing something :) Martin 00:22, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I saved two past versions - one immediately before MyRedDice/Martin made a series of edit, and the final version among his. I checked diff. between the two. You can see it here. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&diff=0&oldid=1228227
In general, I guess the edits were quite agreeable. From Rmhermen's comment, I expected quite controversial, mal-intended edits, but my impression after checking them is quite different. Mainly, I see the text less self-boostering and hyperbolic. The result is a more encyclopedic entry - which is appropriate considering that this is in the article namespace, not in Wikipedia:
Regarding Larry Sanger, I think I have read he exerted some control after a while (not initially). I forgot where I've read it, though. I think I have also read that Larry was the editor-in-chief, which contradicts both the pre-Martin and after-Martin versions. If I come across some pages that make those claims, I will bring them.
If some old-timers think they know that Larry did have some final say about certain things, and did use his authority (may not be a good term..), and think that that understanding was widely-held, I guess it is okay to write that in a neutral way (not asserting, but explaining that such a view exists.)
He also removed quite a few links to those "Wikipedia:" pages. I think that's in order to make the article less a "guide to Wikipedia for potential users," but just a "explanation of what it is." That's again an improvement. But I think those Wikipedia: pages can be used as a source material, just like historical documents for historians. But that's for another edit, rather than reverting to the previous version.
--Tomos 01:18, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I was here for the last few months of Larry's reign. He was not the editor-in-chief of Wikipedia, he was the editor-in-chief of Nupedia and Bomis paid him a full time salary. However, since Wikipedia's founding in January 2001 until he was laid off in February of 2002 (stock market bubble bust) he spent an increasing amount of time just on Wikipedia. His role here was semi-officially "first among equals" but in reality he was the guy people ran to arbitrate disputes, set policy, delete pages and ban vandals - all the power that is now shared by 100 Admins and to a lessor extent any other user (as far as mediating disputes goes - nobody except Jimbo can do binding arbitration of disputes now). In a very real sense he was like a small town Sheriff - at least that was the impression I got. --mav
Maveric's description is pretty accurate. At first, Larry just wanted to be a plain ol' Wikipedian like everyone else, but as Wikipedia grew and Nupedia stalled, he took on the role of making decisions when agreement couldn't be reached; some of his decisions cause controversy in certain circles. One of the earlier articles written about Wikipedia refered to him as the "chief cat-hereder", which is the best description I've seen. :) -- Stephen Gilbert
Thanks for the information. I incorporated some of info. into the article, hoping it would be an improvement. Needless to say, further edits are welcome. Tomos 07:16, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the positive review! :) I still think there's a bit of tweaking to be done on Policies and Downloading the database, but I may defer that for later :) Martin 13:39, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's more than a bit cheesy that major figures in the history of encyclopediae and compiled knowledge have no bios here yet, not even stubs. Someone care to fix that?

Like who? Also, why don't you do it? :) Adam Bishop 17:33, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Like most of the Muslims, who actually invented the form. You can see who doesn't have a bio, by rolling the mouse over the links - where you see a link to ...THENAME&action=edit that means there is nothing there yet. I am not an expert biographer, but, if Muhammad is promoted to Brilliant prose, I will consider taking a stab at these folks with something other than a scimitar.
Why is it dependent on Muhammad being considered Brilliant Prose? (Just curious) Adam Bishop 05:52, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hardware

I'm now updating this article in Japanese Wikipedia. I hope someone could help on this. As I understand, there are three machines now for the Wikipedia.

  1. the database server, serving all languages and sister projects
  2. the web server for English wikipedia
  3. the web server for all others

I know the web server for en. was introduced in mid-May, 2003. But before that, had there always been two machines? Or the wikipedia started with just one machine and added another at some point? When was it?

Tomos 23:47, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A brief history of Wikipedia serving:
Phase I: January 2001 - January 2002
  1. One of bomis' servers hosted all Wikipedia wikis running on UseModWiki software
Phase II: January 2002-July 2002
  1. One of bomis' servers hosted all Wikipedia wikis; English and meta running on the php/mysql-based new software, all other languages on UseModWiki. Runs both the database and the web server on one machine.
Phase III: July 2002-May 2003
  1. Wikipedia gets own server, running English Wikipedia and after a bit meta, with rewritten PHP software. Runs both the database and the web server on one machine.
  2. One of bomis' servers continues to host some of the other languages on UseModWiki, but most of the active ones are gradually moved over to the other server during this period.
Phase III still: May 2003-present
  1. Wikipedia's server is given the code name "pliny". It serves the database for all phase 3 wikis and the web for all but English.
  2. New server, code name "larousse", serves the web pages for the English Wikipedia only. Plans to move all languages' web serving to this machine are put on hold until load is brought down with more efficient software or larousse is upgraded to be faster.
  3. One of bomis' servers continues to host some of the other languages on UseModWiki, but a few more of the active ones have been gradually moved over to pliny.
-- Brion 00:44, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That clarifies a lot! Thanks Brion! Tomos 03:36, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Looks great as usual, Brion ;-) I will copy it to the FAQ-HW Fantasy 14:23, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)