Knowino:Village Inn

Revision as of 17:31, 18 December 2010

Archive 1

The Village Inn is a gathering-place for the community. Anyone can post news, announcements, and suggestions here. Add a new topic...

Folks, it's done

I've moved Tendrl to its own VPS hosting. I decided to go with the name "Knowino", since it's quite catchy, isn't easily misspelt, and had available domains. In the coming hours and days I'll enable uploads for all registered users, install LaTeX, and make sure images are functioning properly. Let me know if there are any problems!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's contributed to the project so far, particularly Paul and Boris for their hard work. Thanks, folks. Here's to a better encyclopedia! :-) —Thomas Larsen (talk) 04:40, 17 December 2010 (EST)

Wow! Congratulations! --Boris Tsirelson 04:53, 17 December 2010 (EST)

There are a few things that remain to be done—in particular, image resizing needs to be sorted out. I'll try and finish configuration changes tomorrow (Melbourne time).—Thomas Larsen (talk) 07:01, 17 December 2010 (EST)

← Image thumbnailing is now working correctly (I think). I've enabled image uploads for all autoconfirmed users—an user account is automatically confirmed once it is more than 24 hours old and has at least five edits. We do have the disk space necessary for more image uploads now, so feel free to prettify Knowino with lots of nice pictures! :-) I'm in the process of installing LaTeX on the server right now, and once the installation process is completed I should be able to eliminate our dependency on a third-party CGI script to render mathematical formulas. In short, it's all happening!—Thomas Larsen (talk) 20:13, 17 December 2010 (EST)

I finally managed to sort out mathematical formula rendering.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 23:33, 17 December 2010 (EST)

Excellent. The problem with the newline in <math> mode is gone too. --Paul Wormer 01:17, 18 December 2010 (EST)

Graphical material

You may have noticed that I updated the graphics of many of the CZ articles that Boris has downloaded. Whenever I need my own drawings, I upload them to WikiCommons (WC). I also get other graphical material from WC. Some drawings are not easy to find, especially works prepared by other Citizens. Out of politeness I don't want to upload their work to WC (and I don't know whether their license allows it, but even so). Now that Knowino is up (and presumably has space to store graphics?), one could consider uploading CZ graphical material to here. Questions: (i) Does the CZ license allow it? (ii) If so, do we want to do it? (iii) Does Knowino have the disk space for it? --Paul Wormer 05:45, 17 December 2010 (EST)

(1) It depends on the license used on Citizendium—I'd prefer to use only "free" images, like public-domain or CC-BY-SA pictures, at this stage. (2) I don't see why not. (3) Yes, Knowino now has the disk space for it (within reason, of course)... I'm still sorting out a few fine details of the upload process, but hopefully I'll finish tonight.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 05:59, 17 December 2010 (EST)

Budget

I've started Knowino:Budget as a page to keep track of our financial situation. Right from the very start I want to establish Knowino's commitment to financial transparency, and this is the first step in that direction.—Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:25, 18 December 2010 (EST)

On approval

Here is my controversial idea of approval, based on my mixed experience with approvals on Citizendium.

There are (here and henceforth, "is"/"are" means "should be, in my opinion") two very different kinds of approval. For now I call them "certification" and "approval", but probably you'll find better terms (assessment? valuation? consent? confirmation?).

An extremal example: imagine an article containing "2+2=4" and nothing else. :-) This is a very bad article, it does not deserve approval. Nevertheless it is free of errors, thus, it deserves certification.

Certification is made by experts only. Approval is made by the wide community (even a poll among non-registered readers could be appropriate). Certification means "free of errors" (and nothing else). Approval means something like "well done, useful for readers" (or even "exciting"). Several levels of approval could exist ("good article", "featured article"), but only one level of certification.

A certificate page "x/Certificate" (or "Certificate:x"?), attached to a certified article x, may look as follows.

Version of Jan 3, 2011.

Free of errors, to the best of my knowledge. Within my expertise, with the following exceptions:

Theorem 4.

Section "History".

(Signature of Expert A.)

Section "History" is free of errors, to the best of my knowledge. This section is entirely within my expertise. (Signature of Expert B.)

Version of Dec 28, 2010.

Free of errors, to the best of my knowledge. Entirely within my expertise. (Signature of Expert C.)

Being not an authoritative academic institution, we cannot just claim "this is true". Rather, we inform the reader that Expert B finds it to be true, and (on another page) that Expert B has such and such proofs of expertise.

If several experts can certify an article, — the better: let them all do. However, the responsibility is always individual, not collective.

A discredited expert loses the priviledge to approve.

Unlike Citizendium, we do not bother whether an expert certifies a work of others or of himself/herself.

Waiting for your ideas and opinions, --Boris Tsirelson 10:35, 18 December 2010 (EST).

I will think about your proposal as soon as we have an article to certify or to approve. --Paul Wormer 11:18, 18 December 2010 (EST)

—?? At least, I could certify Set theory just now. And not only. And you probably could certify, at least, some your articles. --Boris Tsirelson 11:35, 18 December 2010 (EST)

OK tomorrow I will have a look and form an opinion. --Paul Wormer 11:49, 18 December 2010 (EST)

Polemic articles

I propose that we wait with polemic articles (such as homeopathy, cold fusion, WikiLeaks, memory of water, UFOs, Ormus, everything about politics and religion, etc.) until we have a good body (say > 10000) of non-polemic articles. I have seen the time-consuming quarrels at CZ that raged on (and are raging on) while there was yet so much non-polemic stuff to write. I made a start by sneakingly skipping the import of cold fusion and memory of water from CZ. --Paul Wormer 11:18, 18 December 2010 (EST)

What do you mean by "we" - are you advocating restricting the types of articles that new contributors may start or import until this magic number of non-polemic articles is reached? What about contributors who are interested, or even expert, in religion or politics? Modek Ringburn 11:25, 18 December 2010 (EST)

By "we" I mean contributors of Knowino and the number 10000 is not magic. If an author of one single article causes the sort of fights that we see at CZ, then I would rather have him or her wait with contributing until this project is firmly rooted. I have seen that one article can drain away more energy than a few hundred of non-polemic articles. Usually the end result of the fights is a lousy article that nobody is satisfied with. These quarrels cost CZ the loss of dozens of productive and potential contributors. --Paul Wormer 12:02, 18 December 2010 (EST)

I googled and found

So what is next for the oppressive murderous London regime? modek ringburn, haarlem, Netherlands

This is what I call polemic and it has the magic number 1000 000 000 000 000 000 (that means 10¹⁸ existing articles), before it is acceptable. --Paul Wormer 12:31, 18 December 2010 (EST)