[Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers should mind their own business

Tue Mar 9 16:39:12 UTC 2004

Salve Tim,

Am Dienstag, 9. März 2004 14:36 schrieb Tim Starling:
> Yes, that's a very nice fantasy. Are you going to program it? 

Well, I know that it would not be easy to explain another system, 
in short: the answer would be - not possible
in detail: the answer would be - to complicated
Or just "Are you going to program it".

I think you mean "very nice fantasy" in a ironic way
> Because I have better things to do.

Ok, it`s up to you to deside to
> My objective has always been to produce a
> practical model, one which I can code in a few hours of my spare time.

A lot of software can`t be programmed in few hours steps. But also for small 
stepps an utopie could be an aim. For a free project it is ok that you say 
you will not spend time in this idea - its up to you - and I did not wrote my 
idea is perfect and you have to progamm it.

But to write "that`s a very nice fantasy. Are you going to program it?"
isn`t this a bit unfair? Programing is more than to code it, and why killing 
an just buting idea?

> We
> can all dream up fantastic power models, but they lead to nothing but
> stalling and tangential unproductive debate.

This is my time that I spend into the idea to make it better and that I 
haven`t enthuse you to find a new better working model, and to find a 
solution to code it is already clear.

> Maybe some programmer will come along wanting to spend weeks coding a power
> model which will quite possibly meet strong opposition from the users.
Which user, the admin or the normal users?
And BTW do I`m on the software-developer mailinglist or on the user mailing 
list?

> I would advise such a programmer....
Ahh, here comes your message - there are a lot of more important, burning 
problems waiting for to less developers and because of this you judge that it 
would be inproductive to go on with my idea.

Ok, I can live with this, I already expected it.

I´m interrested in raising the reliability of the wikipedia project, server 
response will not influence this IMHO importend point very much.
I also beleave that admins could work more efficent when they do not work 
everytime as user and admin - to have a short (self choosed) admin shift and 
than spare time for own articles could rise the produtivity of the admins.

At last, consider that the number of articels, the popularity of the project, 
the request/second and also the number of users has grown rapid. So the 
problem of administration has grown in the same way as the caching problem.
Like the caching problem, only new and faster server does not solve the 
problem, in the same way the social and content administration of all new 
articles and users is not solveable with only more admins. ;)

So with more people it is possible to take care about more details at once - 
nobody is stopping people "waisting" their free time for interviews or to 
preparing a WikiReader, one printed extract of the Wikipedia. New 
wikipedia-user could care about new ideas - that´s the way it goes.

When some old/urgend problems are unsolved, raise your voice for help.

I does only raise my voice to support developers who want to become admin for 
getting experiances - and to get feedback from users if someone understund 
the advantage of an admin shift with a chief duty admin (like the 
professional radiostations works) and if some user/admins agree that this 
would be a possible way for a big wikiwiki like ours.

greetings
rob

PS: Be carefull with provoking others with words like "very nice fantasy" the 
most likly reaction will be that the other person will do everythink to make 
this fantasy come true - Or was this your intention - a skill from a workshop  
"modern motivation strategies for top manager"? ;-)

Don`t get me wrong (this was a kind of joke) and I do not take our thread 
personal - I just think you have good resons, and so do I - you try to make 
the wikipedia better - and so do I :)