I am the Co-founder and Editor of MeatballWiki.
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These are the ideas on the table for the next version of MeatballWiki's script that at least I am lobbying for, but not necessarily everyone agrees with. Of course, others can add stuff here if they like, but this space is meant as my little notepad for script development suggestions like my Writing Queue above is for content development.
Done
While I blew away my OnlineDiary from here, I don't know how long I can last using my LiveJournal before I implode. The RSS include thing that OpenWiki does, while possibly bad on FeatureKarma, may be useful.
And whatever else I wrote on InfiniteMonkey. Perhaps I should just write InfiniteMonkey.
Thanks, Sunir. Its still draining a lot of time since he was (at one point) considered by many to be one of the very best C programmers in the world. Many of the groups I am part of are extremely upset since it was a suicide. Having known him for almost 20 years, and having many common acquaintances really compounds the problems. -- Hans
Hans, that's terrible to hear. It's a tragedy when someone passes away, but a double tragedy when they choose their own ending. My heart goes out to you. -- SunirShah
Your comments are sincerely appreciated. Once this settles a bit, I may write about it, subject to the many wishes and possible reactions of others, if only because I really do see valuable lessons in this case. I'm thinking of something along the lines of "excellenceMayCulminateInTragedy".
Feel free to deleteWhenRead. Thanks again, Hans
P.S. Great improvement to this page! I'm tempted to award my first BarnStar, but that's ... :.)
Sunir, how do you figure this page out? Isn't it about time for SunirShahArchive1? (Does anyone else archive their pages?) That's all - just popping my head in the door - and yes, that is a beautiful graph, by the way.. -- CormacLawler
Thanks! Good point re: mess. I really should just use either http://www.meatballsociety.org/weblog/ or create my own weblog for myself. -- SunirShah
Sunir, your email address at sunir.org via magma is bouncing. -- ChrisPurcell
yup. --ss
Sunir, I hope you are well. I miss your presence. -- HelmutLeitner
I have been better. By the way, I have been working on this: http://meatballsociety.org/cgi-bin/design. I have also committed Meatball (which means me) to its survival. -- SunirShah
Free links? *gasp* :) -- StephenGilbert
Easy, now. Most of the links are APA-style citations. ;) -- SunirShah
Sunir, last time I had a server crash problem, it came from a fan/heat problem, that made the CPU go down always after some time (about an hour). The hard disk is also a regular source of problems and changing it may solve it. Just my $0.02. -- HelmutLeitner
That is a good point. Chris does think he has figured it out, though. It relates to the DB upgrade. action=links is now disabled. :( -- SunirShah
OK, but you forgot to say how you would solve the problem if you were not a computer scientist? :) -- BayleShanks
For me, I think it's assinine that email systems don't pay attention to whom I am talking to currently, have been talking to, or who those folks have been talking to in my presence.
The simple problem is that proving you are you and your emails from you, without complexity and UserInterface issues, is an unsolved problem. Well, a solved but poorly implemented and distributed problem. And until your computerized proxies can tell, immediately, that it's me and not someone spoofing my email address, having a computer care about who you talk to is kinda silly.
Not that it's a bad goal.... -- DaveJacoby (Good to be back. I've missed it.)
In practice, FakeMail is not a big deal. You would have to be fairly intimate as an attacker for this to break past the SocialDistance? barrier, as you would need to know who I have been talking to. -- SunirShah
yeah.
i'm not generally a conspiratorial kinda guy, but w/r/t security in American air travel I do get the idea that half the rules are there only because politicians don't want to look like they're not doing anything. if we were serious about airport security we would allow citizens to conduct harmless "audits" (perhaps with prior notice to some agency) instead of throwing people in jail when they bring a scissors through security as a test and then tell a newspaper about it. -- BayleShanks
I'd like to DefendAgainstCynicism, but I agree with you. Speaking only as an outsider, it seems to me that your country has collectively decided that life must suck, either out of existential malaise born out of confusion or from some sort of perverted imperial guilt complex, and so it seems y'all are letting life suck instead of focusing on making it a better place every day, which is the only way to make life not suck, and what constituted that quintessentially American can-do optimism. -- SunirShah
Done
Sunir, it looks like we've indirectly broken server-side access to cookies by moving the script out of cgi-bin. So, for instance, my username keeps getting cleared. I don't have a sensible way to access the server right now - could you look into fixing the problem when you get back? I think just saving cookies to / rather than /cgi-bin/ should fix things up. -- ChrisPurcell
UserName Cookies are working here, through Ile Montreal Sans Fils's proxies. There seems to be another problem. -- SunirShah
I'm jealous. especially about the todo list organization. -- BayleShanks
Sunir, any idea what happened to the C2 search helper (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/c2search.pl)?
I deleted it as part of the great Meatball server cleanup. I've restored it. It doesn't seem to do anything, however. -- SunirShah
Sunir, the server's back up to 77% usage. Could you take a quick look around and see what can be cleaned up? I'm happier staying closer to 50% after what happened last time ;) -- ChrisPurcell
Actually, I meant disk usage ^^ Caching the twin RC feeds would be nifty, but you'll need to add triggers to the psql database to get it working properly. (Don't rely on the mb.pl script doing all the work, as sometimes we bypass it, and it's fragile against future scripts; any cache entries must be marked stale in the database.) Disabling Slurp is probably as simple as adding a no-robots META tag to the Edit page, and adding rel="nofollow" to the Edit links. -- ChrisPurcell
The /home/backup directory is the single biggest cost at 550MB. I'll download it and burn it to CD. The other cost is /home/usemod at over 400MB. I killed ~100MB of stuff. The /home/usemod/public_html/backup directory is eating up space. The SingleDispatch logs for the DesignBibliography are also fairly sizeable. I gzip -9'd them for now. I also destroyed a meatball.psql pg_dump that was in /home/meatball. I think I created it. We should look into off-site storage for the MeatballSafetyNet, and then we can move most of this crap there. -- SunirShah
Hell, I want to buy a better host. The server is dog slow. Now that we have a MeatballBudget, it may be time to solicit donations. -- SunirShah
Hi Sunir, after a long time I am back here again and tried to remove the last spam attack on the page WysiwygWiki, but failed by inserting [WikiSpam: revert + ban 1 link-spam domain]. What went wrong? I looked for a simple one button solution to revert to the last version, but didn't find something like that. The more friendly people with social intelligence are here, the more easy it is to revert the frequent spam attacks. I remember "WysiwygWiki" was one of my first (controversial) page on WardsWiki, that later moved to here, because it was heavily attacked. All the best. Fridemar
Someone reverted it for you. -- SunirShah
Thank you -- FridemarPache
Hello Sunir,
please allow links to dedicated WikiBlogging. This opens complete new possibilities for friendly and constructive WikiWeaving and WebWeaving. Meatball has treasures of community wisdom in it and a lot of collaborating friends. Even the WikiPedia (in its baby-phase) got advise here. It would be a pity, if this wiki would degenerate into a GhostTown, where the spambots take over (and destroy their own ground in the end). You know the wo/manhours that are invested in this marvel wiki! -- FridemarPache
Sure, of course. Yeah, there is a strong inverse correlation between the amount of spam and the amount of ham. Since Akismet and the OpenProxy detector were vetoed, I'm out of ideas that fit the amount of time & energy I have. -- SunirShah
And again ... Its nice to see your name appear on RecentChanges. Hope things are going well.
Congratulations! on freshBooks. I enjoyed our chat about this and hope it spawns a few thought that you'll find interesting during this fortnight.
It's a pleasure to see you posting ( DistantLand ). I didn't have time to even finish reading it, but I did make a few DiiGo 'annotations' for myself (in case you're interested). I'm hoping to add a few this weekend. -- HansWobbe
I'm going to try DiiGo now just to see what the hype is about. --ss
Please don't forget TrailFire [sample how to embed a slideshow, you know], which is more advanced towards wikiness. TrailFire is a rudimentary WikiFarm for wikis (with annotation capability) where the "trails" are the prototypes of wikis and the "marks" the prototypes of wysiwig wiki pages. --fp
Nice one on MeatballBackup! -- ChrisPurcell
What's on your mind? (This is a bad medium to organize.) -- SunirShah
Sunir, by accidentally inputting [CollaborativeEditor] in the digest instead of [CopyEdit: CollaborativeEditor], the following result came up: Is it a bug or a (hidden undocumented?) feature. The result showed up in the RecentChanges header instead of the expected verbatim text in the digest. -- fridemar
Sunir, motivated by TedErnst, I left a comment for you at: http://www.aboutus.org/UniversalWikiEditButton#Good_Enough_For_Version_0.1, mirrored on my blog -- [fridemar]
Congratulations on the engagement, Sunir! -- EugeneEricKim
Wow! Congradulations, Sunir! -- LionKimbro
I join in congrats! -- DaveJacoby
Congratulations! -- DavidCary
Congratulation to the integration of dedicated work and income -- FridemarPache
Sunir, happy to learn of your happiness in the field of relationships! Have a wonderful new year and hope to cross paths. Best, MarkDilley
In my infrequent glances RecentChanges, I have not noticed a lot of SPAM so I'm a bit surprised that you are spending a lot of time on "defence". Am I missing something in this regard?
As for where where MeatBall is going, I believe you will have to at least initiate such a debate (as you've just done) since, in your absence, it seems to have gone no-where. I may be able to help a bit, but I have recently launched about a half-dozen oddmuse wiki hives and I suspect this will take most of the time at my disposal between now and the end of September.
-- HansWobbe
Defense is 10-20% of time. BibWiki is currently suffering from spam. There are some other threats that I won't talk about here. The majority of time I spend just making sure the server is running. It keeps crashing due to running out of memory, or processes crashing like named, postmaster, and sshd. I need to get something like monit up and running. -- SunirShah
Hardware is a tactical problem. Really, we need a server admin (or team). I'm happy to move servers. UseModWiki would probably benefit if MeatballWiki moved servers and used meatballwiki.com. -- SunirShah
By the way, MarkusLude has stepped into the breech. It would be ideal, though, to have a small team of 3-4 administrators. -- SunirShah
Sorry for being silent during last weeks. I currently try to get an overview. Maybe I should post future finding and changes here on Meatball -- MarkusLude
Markus, no worries. Though, you should know MeatballServerLayout is where we have been keeping notes. -- SunirShah
Dear Sunir,
Wherever you lead, my attention will follow.
"What matters most is thinking what's next? What's the next most valuable thing to do?"
What is the world calling for? What is the Noosphere calling for? How are we called to serve? What do we want to see? What do we want to know? What do we want to understand? What do we want to share?
Blogging and Meatball: LocalNames?, so that blog and wiki can link to one another. Also, "Blog within the wiki," like AlexSchroeder's homepage. You've already started long ago, on this very page; Perhaps just take it to the next level.
-- LionKimbro
Sunir, big congratulations with regard to your marriage! Now we can be looking forward to small Sunetties... ;-) -- HelmutLeitner
Big congratulations. Although it [doesn't seem right that we're old enough] to do that ;-). -- DavidCary
Wow, thank you both very much! I hope my next 'baby', though, is BibWiki v2. Well, that and our first house, which we're actively looking to buy now. (We are indeed 'nesting'.) -- SunirShah
Wow, congratulations! -- BayleShanks
Congratulations to your marriage! -- MarkusLude
Regards, -- HansWobbe
2009-08-14 4:10pm
2009-08-18 Hopefully, I'm not wasting your time drawing this to your attention... http://randomwalker.info/projectluther/ -- HansWobbe
Whoa, thank you, Hans! -- SunirShah
Sunir, you have the power to calm things down by taking meatball offline. Please do not hesitate to use it if you feel the urge. -- NathanielThurston
Now, what prompted such a request? -- SunirShah
Sunir, because I saw in the height of my mania a possibility that the discussion we have started could turn into an out-of-control "love war", such as was spiraling in my own head in the past few days. I think we can use less drastic methods of calming the discussion, but I think that all methods of achieving calm and balance should be left on the table. Also, anyone who feels we are proceeding in inappropriate haste should feel free to ask us to all please slow down.
Also, e-prime language, when combined with explicit statement of feeling, seems to me like it can be a non-inflammatory method of deflection. An example is my deflection of fridemar's assertion that we should start signing document mode. -- NathanielThurston
Nathanial, you probably underestimate meatball and Sunir. He is one of the first wiki hosts, a pioneer of the first hour. Meatball has seen true wars of utmost ferrocity (remember Robert Abitbol? FightingIsBoring?). Other wikis/hosts closed down, mb carried on. What you see as a dangerous fire is not more than a little flame to meatball. That you try to inform Sunir about his options is a joke like telling Tiger Woods the options to hit his ball. -- HelmutLeitner
I was at a conference with JohnAbbe and others, and saw behaviors there I had never even imagined before. During a large 100-person 3 hour long circle conversation, there was a point where a man crawled out into the center of the room, and started waving his hands and legs into the air like a baby.
This was after about a day or two at the 4-5 day conference. The effect was to open a door; From there, the modes of expression became much more dramatic. My feeling and my evaluation changed with time, and I imagined that I was seeing the beginnings of tribal form; Mythologies were drawn in the air and came alive. The Earth, the dream, participation in the forever play of gender; Hard science and lizards in conversation with fairies. I saw in the play of the center circle of the room -- the politics of the interior individual mind. The center had transformed from a conversational space to a theatre stage, and further, -- this was okay. It was welcome. People sang, mimed, drew, and often people just talked in a straight and ordinary voice. Every mode was welcome. And like a recurring wave, "Attention to the middle, attention to the middle." The emergence was everyone striving to channel the voice of the middle. (The middle of the room.)
Near the end of the conference, I told John (who's by far more directly experienced with large group situations) that I was worried about saying some thing or another, and he laughed at me. "Lion, at this point, you could throw anything at this group." -- LionKimbro
Sunir, in spite of all differences we had the last days, I want you to express my appreciation for all contributions (software plus content) to the wider community. Please don't see my new questions and suggestions, biased by our last interactions. Thank you -- FridemarPache
Differences in ideas is not differences between people, I hope. -- SunirShah
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (Quote)
Sunir, after trying to replace the "Bar cleaned out" text by "Barnraisers welcome", I got the message "Your submission tripped our defenses" and the input was rejected. As this message also comes in other discussion contributions (of myself and potentially other people), it might be helpful to examine the installation parameters. -- FridemarPache
Comment"
Sunir, please note the bug of "malformed URLs for talk-pages" as Nathaniel pointed out. Currently the set of authors to answer there is NOT empty, at least I can't reach the peers in loco asking me questions there.
Regarding your:
The main position is, the ED probably knows all the successes and failures, all praise and criticism. So nobody can tell her something new in that regard. But what you/mb can do, is to provide a meta-view on the project, that is not about judgment, but about offering consistent perspectives, and maybe from that, dimensions of development. ... but this is not done in a minute, or alongside some drink, and it is not for free.
Offer her a thorough analysis, either from you (cheaper, $15.000 or more) or from mb as a think tank (more expensive, $30.0000 or more). Deliverable in three months.
Just my $0.02
Maybe this could be an example for MeatballTheThinkLab?
I also agree that that advice from Meatball is worth about $30. Enough for pizza and a six pack of beer.
Ah, localization humour.
What is with the obsession around here lately about making money off of Meatball?
I suppose there is no point reminding them about WikiCreole... Weather is always a good topic ;)
I could remind them that I don't believe in WikiCreole, but I bet that's not what you're after.
Yes, I'm trolling, but I'm HaHaOnlySerious?. Wikipedia's markup needs are well beyond WikiCreole, and they have way more stakeholders than can be accommodated by the WikiCreole group.
Sunir, I [wrote some thoughts] on the subject of the problems and future of WikiPedia just before I was able to access Meatball. I still like most of them.
To be honest I lost any hope for that project myself, it just came to me as the one thing I ever had to do with WikiMedia. What are you after asking this question actually?
I don't pay much attention to Wikipedia these days and I wanted to know if there were any real tensions remaining.
The actual project is to basically do a stakeholder analysis of all 125,000 volunteers. They want to understand what people want from WikiMedia and how to best enable them to achieve it. They do have excellent consultants working for them on this project.
I'm rolling around a few ideas. WikiMedia is a complex non-profit foundation. Such a phenomenal global success. There is nothing like it in terms of energy and hopefulness. Yet it's awkwardly inwardly focused compared to big charities like the Heart and Stroke Foundation or UNICEF or Greenpeace, or even The Mozilla Foundation or the Apache Foundation. I think the 20th century organizations have very clear public mandates that I think anyone on the street could describe if pressed. The Internet foundations are younger, but I think Mozilla has a clearer public mandate than WikiMedia. (Apache I'm not sure about.)
I would bet most people in North America think of Wikipedia in the same class as YouTube, even though they are quite distinct. WikiMedia has an real opportunity to be more. I'm interested in hearing where they want to take things.
Hey Sunir, I would be interested in ideas they might have for trying to capture the spirit of the project when it was younger and not so delete/revert happy. Maybe they would have a feeder wiki that people worked on to get things moved over to the main wiki - instead of the deletionist group growing. Good luck with it! Best, Mark
Sunir, regarding your
The consultants that you mention show that WikiMedia acts/thinks in the way I expect them to. If they already have engaged some consultants, it will be natural for them, to engage another one. (the big Asian building projects don't engage just one Feng Shui master, but three or four). But I don't urge you, this is just an option, if you do not have that entrepreneurial spark ...
To the original topic: we probably both remember the WikiSym 2005 lecture of Jimmy Wales, with his 10-point-plan for free-everything (e. g. free product IDs, free museum content, free school/university textbooks ...). As far as I see, most of this has remained vaporware, at least it did not get public attention. It was probably to much, too wide or too unfocused (GimmeFive, maybe focus on the TopThree, not ten). There must now be some void, some longing, to get something important on the ground, after this single "number one hit" WikiPedia. It needs the humility of going about the next/second step with the same seriousness and concentration as the first. There are a number of options. The important thing seems to be, how to relate such a project to the main community. It must be acceptable/inspiring to them, without actually detracting work power. It must be a space, where new people can flow in, and have the feeling of being pioneers again, not being under the control of the existing hierarchy.
Speaking of leadership and direction, I wonder what the status of the relationships are between JimmyWales, the board, Wikia, and the bureaucrats, the casual volunteers, and the public. The public itself is also diverse. There are consumers, like ourselves, as well as researchers, schools, NGOs, hackers, and democratic movements, and more that I cannot even think of.
I do exclude the wider wiki community, since we have proven in the latter years more distracting than useful to the project.
my impression from participating in a Wikipedia usability study a few months ago: they want to identify issues that might discourage new contributors - and would like to understand how to better encourage a wider pool of participants to get comfortable with the theory & practice of editing an article (basic stuff, general attitudes & new user experience - nothing about the more "advanced" inside politics some regulars might focus on).
So, I had lunch with Sue today. We covered a lot of ground that has been well tread before. Everyone already knows all the problems. I was listening for how this project will lead the community. We can spend a lot of energy on how to properly design the Wikipedia interface or whether to delete or keep, but I was more interested in understanding the emotional state of Wikipedia and how the Foundation wanted to lead it forward.
I was a little surprised to hear that the humanists had apparently disappeared from the project. I'll have to ask SJ about that.
Sorry, what are Humanists on wikipedia context?
The Humanists are the people who build Wikipedia for the sake of disseminating knowledge the the whole of humankind. When I was at the first Wikimania, about 30% of the discussion was about how to use Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community to create free textbooks, travel guides, etc. The project to get Wikipedia on the OneLaptopPerChild would be a famous example.
Sue was not familiar with people working on such projects today, and suggested surveys indicated almost everybody contributed to Wikipedia for their own entertainment and self-fulfillment (i.e. primarily SocialBelonging?).
You're traveling more than I am :-) Let me know when you are back in YyZ? and have an hour to grab a beer or a coffee. I'd like to chat about one idea idea relating to Accounting that results from the HST change and one idea related to an extension of WikiMemorial. --Hans
Sunir, I think that the new discussion technology may be creating more trouble that it's worth, at least at its present level of polish. For me, clicking on links from within a talk page yields a malformed URL; in particular, I can't find a way to navigate back to the main page.
Hi, Sunir, would you like to give a look at ReciprocalImprovement?
PS. I can't edit through the discussion form: it asks me to enter word "passion" and won't save. This bug does not happen when I directly edit the talk page, like I am doing now.
Hello Anonymous, where do you have problem to edit? I don't understand your problem right now. -- MarkusLude