Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:02, 10 January 2007

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Depth

Maybe this could make a little blurb in the next issue: Mutante's a set of multilingual statistics scripts, some of which are used on Meta (m:List of Wikipedias, for example), has added a new way to gauge the relative quality of a Misplaced Pages language edition: depth. It's calculated as:

${\displaystyle {\frac {edits}{articles}}\times {\frac {pages-articles}{articles}}}$

For Wikipedias with less than 1,000 articles, a depth of more than 200 isn't counted. If you'd like something more mathematical-looking (and thus more impressive):

${\displaystyle {\tfrac {e}{a^{2}}}(p-a):a\geq 1000\lor {\tfrac {e}{a^{2}}}(p-a)\leq 200}$

But really, it's just a small way of deemphasizing the article count as an indicator of a Misplaced Pages edition's progress.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania 2007bulletin: 2006-12-4

Just a note that the latest Wikimania 2007 team bulletin has been released, and may include some points worth covering. Daveydweeb (/_review!) 01:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Google Earth layer

Has this been covered yet? I've been talking with Greg Maxwell via email, and he's explained a lot of FAQ that hasn't been discussed so far elsewhere. I'd be willing to forward the email to any of the 'post's writers. -- Zanimum 20:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe this was covered here under Other news. let me know if you are referring to something else. --Trödel 22:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it. I though I remembered something being in. If I were to do a small, say 300 word article on how it works, would that be welcomed? What coordinate templates work and which don't, why some markers are out of place (our fault, it seems!), how it gets updated and at what rate, that sort of thing? -- Zanimum 22:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest proposing it to the editor (User:Ral315) first here (next week's issue working page) --Trödel 22:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, forgot that list existed. -- Zanimum 22:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah; go ahead. Ral315 (talk) 04:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

To update, I'm attempting to have this done for the end of the week, for the next issue. -- Zanimum 20:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sidebar

It looks like the sidebar has finally changed (at least in monobook). May be worth covering. – Chacor 09:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It has? Is there a before and after picture? It does look different, but I can't remember what it looked like before... Ah! Found the link: Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(proposals)/Sidebar_redesign. It looks like they changed the top two boxes (with minor differences), but left the bottom box (the toolbox) unchanged. I seem to recall that some people said something about technical difficulties in doing changes to the toolbox. Anyway, I'm copying this thread over to the talk page of the redesign page that I linked to above. Carcharoth 10:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Changed back, it looks like. – Chacor 07:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages 6th most searched site on google

'wikipedia' was number 6 and 'wiki' was number 10: google BBC --Ehouk1 20:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

UK Indymedia accuses Misplaced Pages of lying

A recent Village Pump (miscellaneous) addition permalink refers to this external item: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358569.html. For your consideration. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Ottawa Sun quotes us as if we were a news bureau

"By AP AND WIKIPEDIA". -- Zanimum 14:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, Wikinews ain't gonna be happy about that. ;) Titoxd 21:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages in China still ranks high

According to Andrew Lih's blogs, the Chinese government department involved in running the "Great Firewall" is involved in releasing a list of the most popular sites in China. Misplaced Pages ranks highly... -- Zanimum 15:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

An online debate: What's the meaning of Zanta?: He may be local, but fans say he belongs in Misplaced Pages

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061223.ZANTA23/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Ontario/

-- Zanimum 14:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Centiare trying a semantic wiki

I think it would be of interest to readers to read this blog review that compares a new semantic wiki (Centiare) to the Yellow Pages, Misplaced Pages, Hoover's, and MySpace! --JossBuckle Swami 06:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't seem that different from AboutUs, Qweki, and Richdex. And I don't see anything semantic about it. --Pmsyyz 20:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Centiare appears to be different in that the first creator of a Directory space article actually "controls" or "owns" that article (i.e., other editors are locked out of it). So, Wal-Mart's page about Wal-Mart would say what Wal-Mart wants it to say, regardless of what the community thinks it should say. Community would be welcome to edit the Wal-Mart Talk page, I presume. As far as Centiare (not?) being semantic, scroll to the bottom of this Portal page and play around with that sortable list of entities that have tagged their primary NAICS code. Each column is sortable. I don't think you can do anything close to that on Misplaced Pages, AboutUs, Qweki (a link farm, not a content hub), or Richdex (which isn't even working properly). I don't know... Centiare looks pretty damn different to me. --MuscleJaw SobSki 02:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Since most companies already have a website that can be found with a search engine, Centiare doesn't seem that revolutionary. The sortable tables is just a bit of JavaScript. It can be done on Misplaced Pages. See Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2006-11-20/Technology_report. --Pmsyyz 13:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Pmsyyz, I'm sorry to take issue with what you're saying, but I don't think you have a full understanding of how Search Engine Optimization works. Just because an organization's website "can" be found with a text-based search engine, doesn't mean much. That's because 95% of search engine users fail to click anywhere lower than the 3rd or 4th search result on 95% of their searches. Centiare has scripted a very informative SEO discussion about how their directory could help any organization that currently fails to come up toward the top of both general and specific Google searches. They've already proven it, and they're running more tests to prove it further. And that's why it is revolutionary. --JossBuckle Swami 15:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipe-tan in the Tabliods...

Don't quite know if it's newsworthy, but... WP:TAN: "Two Wikipe-tan cosplayers have been spotted in a cosplay activity in the University of Hong Kong. One of them, Heung Ying Ching(向映晴), was interviewed by Hong Kong magazine Easy Finder weeks later. In that article, more images of Wikipe-tan were used to illustrate how Heung became an "international icon". As an aside, the article erroneously told how she was invited by Kasuga and Norwegian "administrator" GunnarRene to become the real-life Wikipe-tan. Apple Daily went further on that error, saying Heung became a representative for Misplaced Pages. " --Kunzite 09:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

That's hilarious and amazing. -- Zanimum 14:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Unified login

It would be interesting if you could post an update about the status of unified login. I can't find any current information online, so you would probably have to ask Brion Vibber directly. Thue | talk 10:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The short answer is, don't ask brion about it, or he'll smack you :) As far as I know, it's been tested and seemed to work with some degree of success. I think that after the fundraiser's done, we'll start hearing more about it. Then again, I would have thought the same thing about stable revisioning, too :) I'll check with brion later this week. Ral315 (talk) 13:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

"Misplaced Pages links used to build smart reading lists"

From : "Software that generates a list of reading material tailored to a person's individual interests has been developed by a PhD student in the US." Mike Peel 19:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's confidential... some of the Communications Committee have contacted this student, asking whether it will be made publicly available, and whether we can help him in any way. -- Zanimum 14:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

From the "It's a small world file":

Image:Hawk eye.jpg, from flikr, was being used in the eye article, where it was seen by Professor Russell D. Fernald of Stanford University, who then used the image in the article Casting a Genetic Light on the Evolution of Eyes in the academic journal Science. The graphic that it became part of can be seen on the Science website or on the flikr website. 11:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ironically, to view the larger image you need to log in to the website, which requires some sort of (paid) subscription. Compare and contrast with the image on Misplaced Pages. Mike Peel 17:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Week proposal

Probably not even close to being of sufficient quality for inclusion, but thought that maybe this page (or some better phrased form of it) could possibly be included in the upcoming issue. Please inform me of whatever revisions are required for it to be included, if you deem it worthy of inclusion at all. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Used for Artificial Intelligence

article, slashdot. cheers. JoeSmack 08:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

paper

A day in the life of Misplaced Pages

Most editors have no idea of the complexity of Misplaced Pages or the extent of activity in the project on any given day. If there was some interest, I'd be happy to help with writing an article about a "day in the life" of this project. Such an article might begin by noting that at 00:01 there is a changing of the article on the Main Page (by a bot, I think).

The article could include things like this (all figures are names are for illustration only):

• 06:10 - the 1000th new article of the day, Title of 1000th article, is added by User:Whoever the user was. By the end of the day, a total of 4,221 new articles will have been added to Misplaced Pages, 3995 by registered users and 226 by anononymous IPs, the latter through the moderated article creation process.

• 08:18 - User:Name of Candidate is nominated for an adminship by User:Name of person nominating. By the end of the day, 43 people have expressed their opinions on the nomination. The tally is 27/12/4; if the trend continues, it will probably result in an unsuccessful candidacy. There are five other RfAs in progress, with four likely to result in the appointment of new administrators by the end of the seven-day period that RfAs remain open.

• 10:22 - WP:AIV receives it's 200th notification of vandal activity. By the end of the day, that noticeboard will have received and processed 590 notifications, blocked 357 accounts (XX%) completely as vandal-only, and issued temporary blocks on 195 other accounts (XX%) that range from one hour to one month.

By "help with writing", I mean identifying sources of information (they're scattered, not surprisingly) and coming up with a list of things happening around Misplaced Pages that might be included in the article. (I've come across a lot of things while compiling an editor's index in the past two months that I think other editors would find interesting.) John Broughton | Talk 18:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the main page is updated by ParserFunctions; it changes over automatically at the start of a day. One good place to gather such statistics will be the logs. --ais523 15:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia's alexa rankings hit 9th

according to alexa, wikipedia hit 9th website on the internet on January 3rd (and again on January 7th) of 2007. im pretty sure that this is the highest wikipedia has gotten ever on the rankings, 10th being its previous best. JoeSmack 03:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

iPhone release features Misplaced Pages screenshot

Apple's iPhone video on its website features an iPhone bookmarked for Misplaced Pages, and a screenshot of the iPod article. Very cool. - Nunh-huh 19:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

New and improved POTD system

We over at Misplaced Pages:Picture of the day are pleased to announce the implementation of a new POTD system. Previously, only two formats were available to users who wanted to have the POTD on their user pages: {{Pic of the day}} and {{POTD}}. However, many were unhappy with this because those formats didn't fit into their user page designs. As of January 1, 2007, it is possible to customize the POTD display to only have the image (at any size), the blurb, the credit, the article that the picture comes from, or any combination thereof. Complete instructions may be found at Misplaced Pages:Picture of the day. howcheng {chat} 20:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Rise of the bots

A special article on the history of bots on Misplaced Pages could be quite interesting. Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/ProtectionBot will not conclude for several more days, but it could possibly be the first successful RfA for a bot. Additionally, several bots such as User:HBC AIV helperbot and User:HagermanBot have taken up tasks that have always been done manually until now. I aslo found User:Tawker's comment about initial opposition to AntiVandalBot interesting in light of its current praise from countless users. Just a thought. Dar-Ape 00:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget Jmaxbot and Dragonflybot. Raul654 00:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

PS - I'd be thrilled if someone could automate the daily featured article. Raul654 00:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

And Shadowbot2 as well... can we have a bot that programs other bots? ;) Titoxd 01:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure... Bots don't always get along-- they've already started reverting each other's edits. :-) Dar-Ape 01:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

BATTLE BOTS!!! Raul654 01:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I see lots of referencs to Curpsbot as well. What was that? Wasn't there a bot that added lots of small towns from some big database dump? Carcharoth 01:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Rambot was the bot that added the census articles. Curpsbot was a bot runs by Curps that used his admin powers to do bad things to bad people. Raul654 01:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Misplaced Pages bots might help. Anyone see any really interesting bots there? Or technically amazing or indispensable bots? Carcharoth 03:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

There are just under 400 bots in that category. Misplaced Pages:Types of bots and Misplaced Pages:History of Misplaced Pages bots are also interesting. Carcharoth 03:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Not very comprehensive though. I'm going to drop the links off over at WP:BAG and see if someone over there wants to update the pages. Carcharoth 04:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)