[WikiEN-l] Re: A Perhaps OT Post -- My Wikipedia Talk

Fri Jul 8 20:42:51 UTC 2005

Geoff Burling a écrit:
> I'm not sure if this is the right place to share this report,
> seeing how it does not concern alleged misbehavior of admins,
> or directly applies to any other topic recently covered here,
> but I'd like to confess that I gave a presentation on Wikipedia
> last night to the local Linux Users' Group here in Portland
> (aka, PLUG) that was quite warmly received. The entire
> audience, about 30-40 in number, who I feel are a reasonable
> sampling of the technical elite of this town (with one very
> obvious exception), were all very familiar with Wikipedia,
> & quite interested to learn more.
> 
> I tried to cover the basics of Wikipedia: the software, the
> hardware, how Wikipedia works, all of the projects associated
> with it -- & the eternal problem of being sure that its content
> was reliable. I also tried to cover the community angle of
> Wikipedia, comparing it to the communities that have evolved
> with various Open Source software projects, Linux in particular,
> but at that point I felt I had been talking too long & forced
> myself to be very brief.
> 
> Some feedback from the audience I thought people here might
> be interested in:
> * A lot of questions about copyright, & how we make sure people
> do not slip copyright violations in.
> * Everyone wanted to see the Klingon Wikipedia Front Page.
> * The issue of sex-related content came up, which led to a
> review of a number of existing Wikipedia articles, including
> [[autofellatio]]. (I told an Intel employee who wanted me to
> show that page, "I'll let you take a look at it tomorrow at
> work.")
> * People were impressed in the fact that the emphasis at Wikipedia
> is not on regulating content, but in regulating the behavior
> of its contributors.
> * One person asked if the goals of Commons & Wikisource don't
> overlap the goals of the Gutenberg Project. I'm not sure I
> gave the right answer to his question.
> * Another person afterwards buttonholed me, & proposed Yet
> Another Method of stablizing Wikipedia content for the 1.0
> release. I tried to assure him that David Gerard had the issue
> well in hand, & was working towards a workable implementation that
> would likely be released in 12 months' time.
> 
> I was also asked some in depth technical questions about how
> the servers handle the load on Wikipedia, something I know
> very little about -- but would be of immense interest to a lot
> of people. I also know that SysAdmin & Linux Journal pay money
> for articles they publish, so if someone who knows would make
> the effort to write an account, it would help subsidize their
> Wikiholicism. ;)
> 
> If anyone is interested in the slides to this presentation (I
> created 9 html files with links to selected pages), I'd be happy
> to share my work.
> 
> Geoff

Thanks for the report Geoff :-) If you could upload (or link) your 
presentation here (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations), you 
would be most welcome.

Ant