DailyBuzz/Archive2

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[[DailyBuzz|talk

24-Feb-2007

  • Has GMail Notifier been broken for everybody the last week or so? When I try to check my email I get a Google error page saying, "The page you requested is invalid." Scott
  • FontShop has a good list of Web 2.0 logos.
  • Awesome promotional video found from the good folks at Glumbert.com - Virtual Sky Diving MarkDilley
  • An idea: Let's feature more of the "Longtail" type sites and less of the "mainstream" larger sites. I find these more fun and interesting and guess that our readers may also. Thoughts? Ray | talk 16:32, 24 February 2007 (PST)
Thinking about that as a category Category:LongtailCategory MarkDilley
  • Why wouldn't you realize a [[:w:article]]-style linking to Wikipedia's articles, as it is done in many Wikis? It could provide a way of fast linking to Wikipedia's articles about sites. Eugrus 10:09, 24 February 2007 (PST)
Thanks Eugrus for giving us a push in that direction. We need to enable interwiki linking for wikipedia, wikitravel, wikihow, and ... what others? Brandon
This already in on our development priotites list. Wouldn't we just draw from the standard, which currently is from meta Wikipedia and used to be on Meatball wiki? MarkDilley

23-Feb-2007

  • Looks like Brandon fixed the lower case first letter issue! Yea, so now EBay.com can read eBay.com in the wiki. MarkDilley
    • This is going to cause a little mayhem, pages that have been originally created with a lowercase (like eNom.com) the system needs to redirect to the proper casing (which we've already done in the case of eNom.com. Likewise, images with lowercase first names are going to come up with a red link. Change the first letter to an uppercase fixes this, or reupload the image under the correct name. As always, if you're having trouble fixing either of these situations, Contact Us.
  • Many thanks to Brandon and Jason for fixing the caching issue so we don't have as many problems when saving edits! Ray | talk

22-Feb-2007

  • I thought that we could now search for something with out a TLD and get a search return... [1] :-( MarkDilley
  • Folks, making a request that where you see a WikiLink - make a WikiLink. As BillSeitz points out LinkAsYouThink. - now, as far as the noise that is now on the bottom of the edit window... folks that care are going to make up their own versions and we can decide later. Best, MarkDilley
  • I think a couple of people have already noticed and have started playing with it, but the "email on page changes" option has been turned on in the preferences. This gives logged in users the ability to get emails when pages they're watching have been edited by someone else. Super handy, and a feature that's long been requested. And, we've even created an instructions page to help you get stared -- EmailAlerts.
  • I really don't like the new box that shows up at the bottom of the editing page. It adds tons of noise and contains almost no useful information. The "Save page, Show preview, Show changes" buttons are almost lost on the page now. You also can't scroll to the bottom of a page you're editing anymore and click "save page," because of the presence of the box you have to search on the page for the "save page" button. Scott
    • I've actually like that the box is there. For power users, we don't need a "cheat sheet" like that, but I think it could be handy for those less familiar with MediaWiki markup. I wonder if it's possible to redesign that a little to de-emphasize a touch, or re-emphasize the Save/Preview/Changes buttons. -- TakKendrick
      • Yeah, I just don't see how any of the information in that box is helpful to anyone, as a matter of fact I think it makes AboutUs look 10x more complex and difficult. It doesn't tell you anything and it's not a cheatsheet, like the box above the edit box it just adds whatever you click into the edit box. I don't see anybody scrolling down, finding what tag or symbol they need, clicking it, scrolling back up to the edit box, finding where they were at and where the tag was posted in the edit box, then inserting their text into the middle of whatever they added. So if you already know you need to use "[[]]" to make a link, why would you go through all that instead of just typing it out? Or why would you use the box on the bottom when there's already a better box at the top? All I see this doing is creating more work on RC when we have to edit out all the tags that users added by clicking those links not know what they did. We currently have the same problem when users click the buttons at the top of edit box and leave them blank. Scott
        • What about a much minimized list, like the "Insert" and "Wiki Markup" items, and then a LINK to the help/cheatsheet? It'd take up far less space and reduce the noise to acceptable levels. Don't know how possible that is, but if it's just a table or something easy to edit that'd be awesome. -- TakKendrick
        • Personally, I think it's a good addition to the page. Most other wikis use the similar Character Insert Plugin (wikipedia in particular) and, functionally, I find a lot of use in it. In cases where citations need to be made, it is MUCH easier with the list at the bottom (I can insert a ¹ or ² easily for references). I'm against an abbreviated version because I like the uniformity with other wiki sites (wikipedia users will instantly recognize this format as familiar). Perhaps we could make the buttons themselves more obvious to alleviate any confusion concerns. To sum up: my vote is that it is useful, and anybody who has used a wiki will recognize it (as mildly confusing as it may be to a brand new user). I see your point Scott, but I actually think it looks more professional in the end to stay with Wikipedia on this! Thoughts on that? ChrisBabson

21-Feb-2007

20-Feb-2007

19-Feb-2007

18-Feb-2007

17-Feb-2007

  • Oh, this is exciting, testing out the Watched Page email notification function. Many people have requested this feature, I hope it is working! MarkDilley

16-Feb-2007

  • DiscussionBot -- I believe I've corrected its crazy behavior. Now I'm just working on cleaning up after the mess it's made. User:Jacob

15-Feb-2007

  • Discussion/Talk tab is gone. There is a DiscussionBot that moves over any information that was previously on a talk page, to a Discussion section. We are experiencing the bot as going a little crazy right now. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it goes overboard. MarkDilley
  • I'm thinking that the yellow bar on the top showing the featured sites is overkill now that we are showing sites on the home page for longer? User:Ray King | talk
    • I still like the yellow bar, and the fact that only less-traffiked sites show up there. My only problem is that on my small monitor, the 4th domain spills to the 2nd line. TedErnst 12:43, 15 February 2007 (PST)
      • yeah, my concern was that we were taking up too much space on the top, especially for those working with smaller screens. User:Ray King | talk
        • Maybe drop one or two of the four as a partial step? That gives added visibility for just a short time, plus leaving the feed icon up there all the time is good as well. TedErnst 14:51, 15 February 2007 (PST)
  • I am not even worried about the overspill to a second line... MarkDilley
    • Can you say more about that, Mark? TedErnst 05:57, 16 February 2007 (PST)
    • I think we need the yellow bar for sure, because so many people aren't hitting the home page at all, since they're landing after Google vanity searches specifically on their page. But, I have no problem taking the list down to three if we wanted. TakKendrick
      • Are you still going to drop one, Tak? I still think it's a good idea. Screen realestate is precious. TedErnst 10:00, 27 February 2007 (PST)

14-Feb-2007

My favorite since AboutUs started has to be RubberSNOW.com, which the bot created as RubbersNow.com. It's a classic. TakKendrick

13-Feb-2007

  • Found this info via Archive.org which is really an intensely structured site. A Wikipedia link regarding structures. MarkDilley
    • 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure -- Self-organization describes a system's ability to change itself by creating new structures, adding new negative and positive feedback loops, promoting new information flows, or making new rules.
    • 1. The power to transcend paradigms -- Transcending paradigms may go beyond challenging fundamental assumptions, into the realm of changing the values and priorities that lead to the assumptions, and being able to choose among value sets at will.
  • Middlebury, VT is right near where we had a country home when I was growing up! The GraceBaptist article rekindled lots of fond memories :-) User:Ray King | talk
  • OptOut - Proposed plan:
    • Clarify the description (wherever present) to convey the idea that this means that we there won't be autogenerated content spidered from the website or gotten from whois, but that the article is still open to others to expand upon.
    • Eliminate the name "OptOut" - instead we "remove the automatically generated content" under certain circumstances
    • For folks that would like us not to use the AboutUs:Bot, we don't, instead we replace the article with a {{SiteStub}} which explains that there is no auto geneated content on this page. We also explain that this could be for several reasons:
      • Website owner requested that we don't spider their site
      • Their robots.txt file instructed us not to
      • For technical reasons we weren't able to
      • We decided not to for some other special reason
    • We do this from now on and at a later point in time we go back and retroactively eliminate the Category:OptOut and replace with SiteStubs.
    • ...comments welcome User:Ray King | talk
Good work Ray, a tweak, stub doesn't work for me, I was thinking of stump, or seedling, or something MarkDilley
ok, how about {{NewPage}}? User:Ray King | talk
I like {{NewPage}}, I was trying to come up with something catchy like Template:StartingBlock, but {[NewPage}} is direct and has little ambiguity. --TakKendrick
ditto on {{NewPage}} - MarkDilley

12-Feb-2007

  • Discussing renaming "OptOut" to "NoBot" - the key thing is to explain that "NoBot" means that we won't start the page off with whois information and/or text from their AboutUs page, but we will allow the community to improve the stub into a fuller article about the site.
    • There is discussion about renaming to either "NoBot" or "UserGeneratedOnly"

10-Feb-2007

  • Curious who patrolled Haddock Conceptmaker/Copywriter because I think it may fit better on a domain page. MarkDilley
    • I moved it to the domain name that it lives at!
  • Malware is something we need to think about. Thanks to Drew for catching it. MarkDilley
  • Complaining Well - There are many sites that are bad; copies of other sites made with the intention to confuse the public, sites that add malware to unsuspecting browsers, companies that rip off their customers, etc. AboutUs is a great place for people to share their experiences so that other readers can be spared a bad experience. Editors who come across such a site should feel free to post their thoughts to AboutUs, but also to "complain well".
    • A voice of reason is so much more powerful than a "rant" or vandalism of the article. We know that the editor may be right, but when a page is "blanked out" and replaced with "SCAM SCAM SCAM" or similar, we have to revert the edit because it isn't useful to the next reader. This is painful because we would much rather have the information! A better way to admonish the site is to add a section and title it "Controvery or Criticism" and then spell out the concern factually and constructively. And of course say only what is true based on actual experience. User:Ray King | talk
  • It would be cool if we had a page for changes to the site infrastructure, something like a software project's Change Log. Of course the name and definitions can change, but I'm thinking about bug fixes going there, new software features, revamps to the main page, establishment of user projects, etc, etc. All the meta-stuff, ya know? TedErnst 15:44, 10 February 2007 (PST)
  • We as a community should maybe have a talk about what to do with scam sites. (TVIV.com and Mininova.com come to mind.) These sites spoof content from the real sites (TVIV.org and Mininova.org) and try to charge users for the privilege to pipe in free content from the real pages. TakKendrick
    • At this point, Mark and I have placed notes on the real site articles about the scam and are then redirecting the fakes to that page. Part of me wonders if we shouldn't do soft redirects on those fakes with a note about "Don't use this URL, it's a fake" and a brief history/discussion on the scam. TakKendrick
    • I'm worried that by doing a hard redirect that users might believe the different TLDs to be synonymous. TakKendrick
    • What do other people think? TakKendrick
A hard direct solves the problem of users going to the offending site, but it also prevents the issue from being clarified. People wouldn't know there were other considerations. The soft direct with a history/discussion might be the best way to approach it. Perhaps a template to draw attention to it would be effective, and then a following information section. Drew
Agree that the article describing the "copy" or otherwise offending site should say what our community thinks it is and then have a prominent link to the "original". That way, readers are most informed. Template might work also if we see a lot of it. User:Ray King | talk
  • BTW: On a related note, I'd love it if someone in the community who really understood how BitTorrent works would help us to create an article (or add to the BitTorrent.com article) to explain in layman's terms exactly how the file transfer protocol does it's magic. TakKendrick

09-Feb-2007

WikiWednesday - Evan (of WikiTravel.org) has just challenged Portland to have a WikiWednesday (SocialText.com) - who is interested? MarkDilley

I think Evan's got a point there User:Ray King | talk

08-Feb-2007

  • While on RC I'm constantly seeing people adding their domains to categories by editing the category itself, instead of adding the category to their domain. This MediaWiki extension seems like it would be a useful extension to alleviate that problem by adding an 'add to category' input box onto each category page. I also just think it fits in well with AboutUs. Scott Keeler
Awesome. TakKendrick

06-Feb-2007

  • My geek circuits are on overload. After a month of rumors, it appears that Apple Computers and Apple Corps Ltd (keeper of the Beatles musical legacy among others) have finally settled their 20 year dispute. As a fan of the Beatles and Macs, it's a win-win. The heart of the argument has been whether it would be confusing for the computer manufacturer to produce music and has led to many bloodly battles (the infamous "Sosumi" (So Sue Me) sound file, iTunes litigation and more). According to many sources, including ABC News (read more) this is now over. What does this mean? While no one really knows many people believe Apple Corps will finally end their hold out and will allow Beatles tunes to be downloaded legally, probably via iTunes. Others, including Wired.com (read more) believe this could allow Apple Computers to finally pre-package iPods with music already loaded. Wired.com also -- be still my heart -- continues to fuel the "Yellow Submarine" iPod rumors as well. Tak Kendrick

05-Feb-2007

Whew, what a great weekend at RecentChangesCamp.org! There were a ton of great people, but I did miss Marshall Kirkpatrick, so I went and checked out his weblog and found this amazing video by Prof. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University. I really think this speaks to the work happening at AboutUs. MarkDilley

02-Feb-2007

  • Typing live from Recent Changes Camp. A lot of great conversations going on around me, check out the camp proceedings and notes from individual breakout sessions. I'm particularly interested in the conversations circling around "Wiki, Community and Commercialization," "Wikis as the Open Source of Knowledge," and the Open ID movement. TakKendrick

01-Feb-2007

  • RecentChangesCamp.org will be starting tomorrow at 9am and continue through Saturday and Sunday! It's a free "unconference" based on the Open Space model that many people have had a hand in planning. If you're in the Portland area and interested in Wikis or Open Technology, please stop by. There will be discussions for people of all levels of experience. IsabelAnheier

31-Jan-2007

30-Jan-2007

Help select a new AboutUs logo
  • We've gotten the initial concepts for a new AboutUs logo from Logoworks.com. We'd love to have the community comment on them. Take a look at them and leave some feedback here. TakKendrick
  • A new version of SubEthaEdit from Coding Monkeys came out today (v. 2.6). New features include a tabbed interface and some general fixes. SubEthaEdit is a real-time collaborative text editor (Mac only) that allows multiple users from around the world (or on a local network) to work on one document simultaneously. Designed in some ways specifically for coding, we use it at AboutUs for taking meeting notes and some other collaborative writing projects. Personally, I use it daily just as a stand-alone text editor, because it has a "wikipedia mode" extension available that allows me to writing in Wiki syntax when I'm away from the AboutUs wiki. TakKendrick

29-Jan-2007


Discussion

  1. Would you release the source code for the rating extension?
  2. How come the CommunityPortal page is locked?
    1. The CommunityPortal page is locked for unregistered users, if you have logged in then you can leave a message there.


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