Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
Rare geekery
Term has finally been winding down at school this week; we finished at lunchtime and spent the morning of history lessons watching relevant videos. So for yesterday and tonight I decided to do some alternative activities to school work due to not having much to do, and in order to have a change. I will be commencing my holiday homework tomorrow if all goes to plan, and then of course it is on to revision. I also intend to try and catch up on my e-mails and other related activities but I fear already this is not going to happen. Really, I should have spent this time doing that rather than this.
I have opted to yet again redesign my website, seanwhitton.com – I think this is about version five. While this blog is presently as it has been for some time due to the comparative difficulty I will have trying to convert the blog’s complex template to the new layout, the new site didn’t take me too long to re-layout and I am pleased with the result. I did a direct transfer of the old site to the new by simply replacing the old template with my new code and this means that not all pages look quite as they should. Since I now have a site map on the home page, I was tempted to add some more pages to the listing and thus I have some things to fill in. It seems I naturally have site content now without having to work too hard to make it up which is a good thing. This blog has always been my main source of writing and so I aim to transfer this over eventually. It will be far from easy, however. My new design is supposed to be easy to use, simple and clean, so I would appreciate any feedback on whether it is this.
About a week and a half ago I decided to purchase a ‘slug’ or what is actually called a Linksys NSLU2. It is a device designed to serve files with a built-in FTP and web server, that can easily be mounted on network machines. The idea is to add storage to a smallish network that can easily be accessed. However, since the thing is based on Linux anyway is has been hacked somewhat by fans and is now officially supported by Debian – in other words, I now have a mini-server with low power consumption that I can run useful things off and leave on all the time. It took me some time to get it working because my router was feeding it false information meaning it couldn’t properly connect to the Debian mirrors to get hold of the operating system files (I had to open another shell and edit /etc/resolv.conf manually). Getting the router to forward web, SSH and FTP ports was not easy either. Now it is running, with its cute 120GB WD Passport Drive, absolutely fine and you can see a picture here. I am very happy with this purchase.
I have decided to actually be a proper unix geek and learn how to use vi(m) efficiently. In general I use it on SilentFlame only because nano isn’t installed, but I realise that I am wasting keystrokes and vim is a good idea. I just need to work through vimtutor methodically and try to use the different methods presented where they are going to speed me up most. I need to get used to editing my site and other such things in SSH as it is a lot easier. Eventually I could of course set up Wikipedia to use vim for all editing, but this may be a bit far. Not sure at this stage – still trying to absorb.
Restoring sanity to the masses
It seems my recent reminiscence is shared by a friend David Gerard, who pointed me in turn at Clay Shirky, one of Wikimedia’s advisory board members. As David claims he was, I was mentally nodding as I read through, as the patterns that are described for online communities are ones that I think I have been subconciously noting for some time, as I’m sure many have. However, the theme seems to be that things need to be done before a community is set up in order to avoid problems later on. While Jimmy probably envisioned that a community would arise surrounding the encyclopedia project, it seems unlikely that he and his fellow starters would give it much thought as that was not what they were aiming for. If only Shirky’s essay had been written a little earlier, people might start to notice the tell-tale signs of things going wrong before they got to the point of no return. While Wikipedia trundles on and will probably keep doing so in its current form, it could be so much better if we were to sort out a lot of the problems that the community faces. But either people are powerless to do so (and likely don’t know what to do either, like me), or those who do have that power haven’t got a clue what to do about it, however much they want to.
In the comments following his post David seems to think that the best thing to do is to put the developers in charge as an ultimate authority (something we don’t really have at the moment). He claims they already have a great deal of power anyway. While those who administrate our servers will always have the ability to “pull-the-plug”, for some it will cost them their jobs and really, we are not going to have a developer revolution. Yes, we depend on software to keep us going, and yes the developers control the code and the implementation of it, and yes they have a well-established cabal like the rest of us. But I don’t think an automatic shoulder-load of power to them makes sense because a good coder does not necessarily equal a good leader. Don’t get me wrong here, I have great respect for the devs and what they do (you have to be a really good coder or sysadmin to navigate the mess of our servers, apparently) but at the same time you can’t be good at everything at once, generally speaking. A technocracy isn’t fair.
The problem is that I don’t have any solutions to the problem either, and it seems no-one does. So people pull back from the encyclopedia with a “screw this” attitude into their cabals, they work away at either things above at Foundation level, they move to other Wikimedia projects to write dictionary entries or news articles instead (this is fine, but it may not be what they want to do), or they hide away with articles that get little attention and work quietely. People are only going to keep seeing the attraction of this, with closed mailing lists and IRC channels being so much more pleasant. When you are in one or two the outside community starts to look a lot worse than it used to, as you realise the alternative. freenode staff and helpers have had this problem recently as I describe here, because our own private communities are a lot nicer than the outside, public social channels. Unless we do something soon, more and more will retreat up and out – including me.
Reminiscence
An experienced Wikimedian who is involved with more Foundation-level stuff told me today that he thought he really didn’t know “how the English Wikipedia works anymore”. I was inclined to say the same thing about myself because it seems that I have pulled back out of Wikipedia itself and into the Foundation stuff too (that is, Wikimedia rather than Wikipedia) – but via a different route. In general experienced users who have been around for a long time have in recent years pulled out of editing to a great degree due to the fact that things are getting more and more unpleasant down in the article editing bazaar. People fight more, rules are tossed about. This is due partly to the steady growth of Wikipedia in active users and articles, but I get the impression those who wish to do the community harm are more prominent. The other reason is that sane minds are generally needed at the Foundation level. So they all gather up there, and thus cabals inevitably form.
The above is the usual for people who were involved in the encyclopedia long in the past. For myself I seem to be in the same negative position of not really knowing what is going on for a lot of the time but I got there a different way. I was never a proper article writer because I don’t know a lot to add that isn’t there. I don’t really have the patience to research and source long and complicated articles. But when I started out I still really wanted to help with Wikipedia because it is something good that can really benefit humankind (and other things we may come into contact with, due to our improved education, such as the environment on this planet). So I got into vandal-fighting and mediation and IRC (and then freenode staff through this). I then began to prepare myself to run for adminship, as my intention was to help administrate the project as I thought I could really help here. At this point I began to move into Foundation matters, finding it more interesting. And then I realised I no longer knew what was going on over on Wikipedia – I found myself spread way too thin as can happen and so started cutting back on what I do, severing connections.
So as it stands now, I look back on working on the English Wikipedia itself with nostalgia in a way. I knew friends back then who now have little time for the project due to real life commitments and I miss simply plugging away at tasks. So, the answer is arguably just dropping back in and doing them. This I would like to do, but I simply don’t have the time with crazy volumes of reading material stemming from my e-mail inbox and elsewhere, and jobs that need to get done that I have responsibility for – or so it seems. And yet I still sometimes find myself floating between things, not sure what to do. I’m no longer really comfortable in what I am doing, and it makes me less productive and useful to Wikimedia. However, I will keep going, and hope that I slot down into a niche where I can trundle along 
Busy busy busy
It seems I am embroiled in a lot of different projects and activities at the moment, and this is absolutely fine in the summer holidays. However, it will definitely not be in September when I will have far too many subjects to be able to do the amount of tasks that I am carrying. The problem is that often I find I am not actually doing enough actual work, but I plod through anyway so it isn’t too important. My issue is primarily with my Wikimedia work where I do number of different things – my main jobs at the moment are IRC group contacting, e-mail response team work, press and communications work and mediation on the English Wikipedia. The problem with all this is that increasingly I find that little jobs such as admin work, queries for advice and other non-Wikimedia projects such as working on Heather Gladney’s website are being put aside as I haven’t the time. I’ve also been promoted on freenode staff which means there is more stuff I can be involved in. Doesn’t actually use that much more time, though.
So, the answer is to start dropping jobs. This is unfortunately not that simple because that set of jobs that I actively do are all ones that I really like and thing I’m reasonable at. IRC group contacting is something I cannot stop because I am needed for that; I have brought in changes to speed things up and process cloaks very quickly as a freenode staffer. Answering e-mails on OTRS is important now that I am additionally doing the press queue as part of communications work. It would be reasonable to take a break from answering the general info queues as they have plenty of people on it, but I haven’t been that active on that anyway. Press and communications work is short-staffed and I think I’m pretty good at it, so I want to continue with that one. That leaves mediation… I really like the idea of it and think that is an important part of the community (and am honoured to be involved) but at the same time I’m not actually that great at it. It sucks time in with the reading required and often I’m not sure where to go. I am now weighing this one up.
We played DnD last Sunday, and it went very well. I was able to DM effectively and the players made it very entertaining by coming up with things; it was nice having Jonathan do most of the combat and riding on the airship was fun. The pickled brain prompted me to give brine-related magical abilities to our party leader, who can now do some cool stuff. The party used strategy but quickly bored of combat so the dungeon I made was sorta wasted as it has been before, but it wasn’t a problem. They did the key bit of having the rest of the story explained to them: they are now at a stage to continue the campaign next year fully understanding what their aims are. More here.
Well, I bought the Harry Potter book a lot earlier than I expected to and have consumed it quite happily. I originally decided to wait and get it out of the library, resolving that since the the past two books had been spoilt for me this one would be too. However, the opportunity arose as I am with grandparents at the moment to buy a copy relatively cheaply and so I did. It was definately worthwhile; it was *a lot* better than I expected. The story of the book itself was good and the overall plot, coming together across the series bringing in elements and characters from all the way through, was brilliantly done. I realise Rowling is, as they say, an excellent story teller. The hype that surrounds the release however remains absurd as it isn’t that good.