i choose to sleep at the worst time it seems :-p<br><br>going back to bani's quote:<br><br>"Group (a) is working mostly on Grub. The few people who do something<br>
other than Grub are doing user interface stuff. As far as I know no<br>
one is working in how to improve search results except from the Grub<br>
perspective, which IMHO is a necessary but limited approach."<br><br>there are people working on other things other than grub. (shameless plug, but go get the new Grub clients BTW, the C# one now works on windows as well :-p) iirc seth is working on nutch and hbase solutions and the search backend, as well as the general server management. jer is also, as always, busy coding away on KT and the search UI and doing a great job there, if i may say so.<br>
<br>as for the policy discussion at
<a href="http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Mini_article/Policy_discussion" target="_blank">http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Mini_article/Policy_discussion</a> , I am hoping to go and have another look over that again, and maybe come up with a draft in the very near future. (have been really busy in RL, apologies) this is one thing that i think we need to sort out, and as i say i will try to look over it, but if other want to look and maybe create drafts then please feel free :-)<br>
<br>as for the "benevolent dictator", well...... i personally have written of Jimbo on this, due to the lack of input he has into anything, IMO i leave him just to go and have an attempt at getting publicity but forgetting the date which we launched! (see WP weekly 48 at the end). i personally feel that Jer is the "boss" of the code, as hes the one that can commit and i have most contact with, but i dont think of him as the boss of the wiki. he even admits, (hoping he will agree :-p) that the wiki isnt his thing, which i respect him for. but im not necessarily in the the mind that one leader would be a good thing. i think that as this is a community project, all decisions should in-deed be made by the community, but i do agree that we do need somekinda "person" who could make the overall decision based on the community opinions.<br>
<br>as for the fact that wikia is a for profit, i cant see, at this time it affecting us. they have provided huge amounts of resources, including 1000 servers, at least 2 staff members working full time, lots more part time coding from the different departments, pr efforts, HUGE amounts of bandwidth etc etc. also at this stage i cant see them just pulling the plug on it, but hey..... i also think that at this point there isnt much point in setting up a diff org, but the way that search is done, if we or you want to do it, then every things free :-p<br>
<br>on the communication front, i also agree, per my previosu rant emails etc, that it is POOR, but hopefully this will be getting better. there are already plans in the pipeline to increase the communication between the staff and all the different people in the community, but there's time until that happens...<br>
<br>regards<br><br>mark<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 2:33 AM, Bani <<a href="mailto:borboleta@gmail.com">borboleta@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Rainer Blome <<a href="mailto:rainer.blome@gmx.de">rainer.blome@gmx.de</a>> wrote:<br>
> Personally, I think this is not the most important deliverable any more.<br>
> Admittedly, there is no finished formal policy. But the existing<br>
> discussion itself together with the odd forum entry or two serves as a<br>
> working, de facto guideline. Given that the frequency of Wiki changes<br>
> has gone down to a single-human level, it is not that pressing.<br>
<br>
</div>You are right. I pointed the policy discussion as something important<br>
because that was directly related to what most people were working at,<br>
and, as I mentioned in the forum before, if each person started doing<br>
wiki editing their own way we wouldn't be able to achieve a standard<br>
and it'd be harder to keep the consistency in the long run. But now<br>
that there is a much smaller group working in the wiki we could say<br>
that the people involved have come to an agreement about what to do in<br>
the wiki. It is just a little hard for someone who wants to start<br>
contributing to find that information, so having a condensed version<br>
of the policy would be nice.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> These policies are more important than the mini article policy, in my<br>
> opinion, because they apply to the entire search infrastructure, not<br>
> just the wiki.<br>
<br>
</div>Right, that would be a way to know how to move forward.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> These policies can be developed by a community, but ultimately, they<br>
> need backing by the owners. It might provide some motivation to<br>
> potential policy developers if the owners gave any indication of whether<br>
> the policy development is going in a direction that is acceptable for them.<br>
<br>
</div>Well, it's been four months since the launch. Jimmy Wales hasn't said<br>
a word here in the last three months. Neither did Angela (except for<br>
the news about the two new admins, one that I sent her an email<br>
requesting to give him the admin status and the other being a person<br>
who the only thing he ever did was creating an account and requesting<br>
the admin status on the first days). But her last useful message was<br>
addressed to you:<br>
<br>
"Rainer,<br>
<br>
You are the owner! Not just you, but the entire community.<br>
<br>
Wikia isn't running this community top-down. It's really in the hands<br>
of the community to develop policies about the content there. Wikia<br>
staff are always on hand to offer advice, but we wouldn't even try to<br>
tell you how to govern yourselves. That is something the community<br>
will evolve over time."<br>
<br>
So I think they will accept whatever the community accepts. I'm much<br>
more concerned about Jeremie Miller accepting what other people come<br>
up with, because he is the one most actively involved and also the<br>
person (probably among others) who can commit the code and launch it<br>
in production. And I think he is doing a great job at that, both with<br>
his code and with giving some feedback to what is happening, but we<br>
still need more communication with the delevopers. And I think he<br>
likes coding more than he likes talking, otherwise I'd just "vote for<br>
him" to be the boss... hehe<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> Wikia, and Wikia Search with it, is a corporate endeavor. The authority<br>
> people are there, but they currently choose not to act, apparently.<br>
> Wikia Search looks free, but isn't. They can pull the plug at any time.<br>
> As long as this is so, I invest only a little time in it.<br>
> Some others see this the same way, at least it appears this way to me.<br>
> In the long run, we need an independent, not-for-profit search<br>
> infrastructure, similar to Wikipedia.<br>
<br>
</div>Well, that is a bit tricky... but I see people contributing to other<br>
open source projetcs that are controlled by a single company (example:<br>
OpenSolaris), so I don't think this is a factor to determine Wikia<br>
Search's failure.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Bani<br>
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