Libertarian Wiki:Village pump

Contents 1 Template:WP has 2 Email list 3 Obnoxious demands for solutions to arithmetic problems 4 Should we put News in the place currently occupied by Libertarian of the Month? 5 Creative Commons 6 Requests for page imports from Wikipedia 7 Libertarian Wiki:Requests for adminship 8 New logo to replace the one currently in the upper-left corner 9 Name change 10 Discussion Forum 11 Namespace alias 12 CategoryTree 13 Bots 14 Technical improvement 15 Demonstration of RPED extension 16 Action alerts? 17 Maths 18 Pure wiki deletion 19 Template:Fact 20 How do we feel about some very POV categories? 21 Featured article of the month -> Featured article of the week 22 New logo, redux 23 Combating spam 24 Allow users to edit without creating an account 25 Export 26 Proposed move to http://libertapedia.org/ and abandonment of http://libertarianwiki.org/ 27 Moving to http://libertapedia.org/

Template:WP has

OK, check out this new template: This should come in handy. Of course, there is also Template:Bouncy WP has:

Nathan Larson 06:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I like the bouncing one the best! :)
-- Alvin Mulvey 23:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Email list

I wonder if we can establish an email list similar to this one? https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l Nathan Larson 20:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Obnoxious demands for solutions to arithmetic problems

It seems like every time I make an edit, it asks me for a sum or difference. Is there a way we can tone down the anti-spam mechanism a bit? E.g., by exempting autoconfirmed users? Nathan Larson 20:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

It is starting to get on my nerves as well.
-- Alvin Mulvey 23:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I sometimes get hit over 100 times a day with spam, so I need CAPTCHA (the arithmetic question). It asks if there is a link in the edit, even if a previous edit did the link. If you edit just the section, and that section doesn't have any links, then it doesn't ask. I am busy recently, but I will look into some method for certifying users. The spambots will add a user for every hit and can probably break the autoconfirmed user thing. Paul Studier 06:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Should we put News in the place currently occupied by Libertarian of the Month?

I'm torn as to whether we should put the News section at the upper-right of the Main Page (as Wikipedia does), or keep Libertarian of the Month in that position.

Advantages of putting news at the top:

• May increase repeat visits to site, as people come to the main page to glance at the latest headlines
• People may care more about news stories than individual libertarians

Disadvantages of putting news at the top:

• It means we actually have to keep the news up to date, which we've been abysmal at doing so far.
• Out-of-date news is more noticeably neglected than Libertarian of the Month, which only needs to be attended to on a monthly basis.

Maybe we should just get rid of the news section completely, if we're not going to keep it up to date. But I'm not sure what should go in its place. Nathan Larson 20:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Nathan! I think the news should go in the top right-corner. Is there any way to program it to follow the LP's blog? Perhaps a widget or something? If it can be programed to do that, when you click the news headline you will be redirected to the LP's website. But people who want to see the LP's news will go to LP.org for the same news anyway. So perhaps we can program it so that it follows multiple Libertarian blogs and multiple Libertarian Partys around the world. That would be pretty interesting, Libertarian News from around the world! I hope I made sense up there! :)
-- Alvin Mulvey 22:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to program that. Ideally, the news updates should be provided by LP Wiki editors from around the world, perhaps motivated by their own interest in promoting their pet causes or activities that they want others to learn about and get involved in. We need to get the wiki to a certain critical mass at which we will enter an upward spiral of self-maintenance. The better our content is, the more eyeballs will be attracted to the site, the more people will cite our articles around the Internet, and the more people will be motivated to contribute in order to reach that audience. It will feed on itself, if we can get it to that point.

It is the general trend that wikis depend mostly upon a comparative few hard-core contributors. The problem is that in our case, we can count those "few" major contributors on the fingers of one hand, while Wikipedia has a few thousand major contributors. One of the reasons it's so hard to keep a wiki from stagnating is that the software is complex and the built-in automation is primitive or lacking, which makes it labor-intensive to contribute. So really, our problems are largely technical in nature, and require technical fixes. Nathan Larson 23:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

According to Alexa the LW is up 40% in web traffic. So I guess that is a start.--Alvin Mulvey 00:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually another major problem is the fact that people tend to want to integrate all the content together in one wiki. There is always a problem of overlap among wikis, and Wikipedia tends to attract the editors' efforts because it is the biggest. We should probably just mirror certain Wikipedia articles rather than re-creating them from scratch. But there are some technical barriers, again, to address before that can be done very well. Nathan Larson 00:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

What sort of technical barriers? --Alvin Mulvey 02:01, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, for instance, here's what it should do. When you go to an article like anarcho-capitalism, it should show you the current revision of the Wikipedia article, which will be mirrored on our site and automatically updated whenever a change is made to the article on Wikipedia. When you click "edit," it should take you to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anarcho-capitalism&action=edit . In this way, we can integrate more closely with Wikipedia. Some coding needs to be done to implement this, and I'll be working on that later. There are many other changes that are needed as well before we can integrate very seamlessly with Wikipedia. We need to complement Wikipedia, not compete with it. But our site is somewhat of a fork, and that is what weakens us. Nathan Larson 02:49, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. --Alvin Mulvey 03:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Creative Commons

I recommend that we change the site to Attribution-Only Creative Commons licensure. This will make it possible to copy stuff from Wikipedia to our site if necessary. Also, it is a good idea from a libertarian perspective, since that way, copylefting can spread virally, and we can hasten the abolition of intellectual property. Lastly, it is a good idea from a defensive standpoint, because we don't want people taking our content, modifying it, and then prohibiting us from using the modified content. A lot of well-respected libertarian sites such as Mises.org, Bureaucrash, etc. have switched to Creative Commons licensure, and I think it's time we made that shift too. Nathan Larson 00:39, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyleft is much safer. --Opcn 10:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Requests for page imports from Wikipedia

I have added Libertarian Wiki:Requests for page imports from Wikipedia. A sysop will need to do the imports from Special:Import. The pages can be downloaded from here, or an export can be done. Nathan Larson 01:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Libertarian Wiki:Requests for adminship

I created Libertarian Wiki:Requests for adminship. Nathan Larson 01:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

New logo to replace the one currently in the upper-left corner

OK, here is our chance to get a new logo to replace the one currently in the upper-left corner. Pete Eyre of Bureaucrash says one of his volunteers can create one, but asks, "Do you have an image in mind?" What kind of tone do we want, and what kind of symbolism? Something radical, like Bureaucrash's? Or something more conservative? Also, do we want to keep that slogan, "A Wiki by and for libertarians"? Conservapedia's slogan is "The trustworthy encyclopedia." I would favor toning down the whole "wiki" aspect since most visitors to our site will be readers, not editors, who place less importance on the wiki part than on the encyclopedia part. Nathan Larson 01:26, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps The Torch of Liberty, Enlightening the World for a theme? Perhaps a better picture of a torch for a logo? The logo should be a .gif with 135 by 135 pixels, with a matching favicon which should be a .ico with 16 by 16 pixels. Unsigned post by User:Pstudier

It can also be a .jpg or better yet a non-lossy .png; see this page. The only downsides to the torch idea are that the Statue of Liberty is a big government statue, and that it is an American statute, whereas this site is international. Nathan Larson 05:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I think a badge would look nice. Sort of like the Conservapedia's badge.--RBLibertarian 05:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It kinda gets to the question of what identity we want to assume. Are we to be primarily "A clearinghouse of useful information for libertarian activists," as the Main Page says, or do we want to be more of an encyclopedia with the larger general public as our primary audience? For whatever reason, activists don't seem to have made much use of the site for organizing their activities. Nathan Larson 05:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we should be more like the Conservapedia and be encyclopedic. Does anybody have any good ideas for a new slogan?--RBLibertarian 05:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Here are some mottos of other libertarian orgs. Nathan Larson 05:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How about "The Encyclopedia Of Liberty" just a thought.--RBLibertarian 11:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Great minds think alike. That would go well with a name change; e.g. "Libertapedia: The encyclopedia of liberty" or perhaps "Libertapedia: The encyclopedia of freedom" if we want to make it less redundant. Nathan Larson 17:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Glad to see that my suggestion has been used. But I think "Liberty" is better then "Freedom". "Liberty" is an unalienable right, while "Freedom" is something that can be taken away just as fast as it was given. But some people don't even know what "Liberty" means, so "Freedom" might be a good word to use.--RBLibertarian 17:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

(Un-indent) Actually "The Encyclopedia of Freedom" sounds kinda similar to Wikipedia's motto "The Free Encyclopedia." But if we take "Libertarian" out of the name of the site then we might call it something like "Libertapedia: The Libertarian Encyclopedia." "Freedom" is a word that has been co-opted by George W. Bush and everyone else. "Liberty" still has a Jeffersonian connotation, despite its hypocritical mention in the pledge of allegiance and on our fiat currency. Nathan Larson 20:03, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

"The Libertarian Encyclopedia" sounds good. --Freedom Fighter 05:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I created a Motto discussion HERE.--RBLibertarian 09:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

One thing to consider is that shrunk down to 135x135, some images won't look as good as at higher resolutions; e.g. File:Ancap-goldblack flag.jpg (click on it and see the thumbnail) Nathan Larson 04:57, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

See also Libertarian Wiki:Fr33 Agents; I have enlisted outside help. Nathan Larson 01:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Name change

The upcoming creation of a new logo makes this a good time to consider any name change proposals. I know that two ideas brought up were "Libertapedia" (a url that is not yet taken) and "Libertypedia" (a url that is taken, but that we might be able to obtain.) Either of those names would be similar in style to Conservapedia and would also have the advantage of toning down the wiki aspect (which is already evident to users familiar with Mediawiki) and being a one-word name. Nathan Larson 17:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I have created a rough draft for our new logo HERE.--RBLibertarian 07:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Discussion Forum

Hi guys, I just created a Discussion Forum for us! Now we can use a REAL forum for discussing stuff!

Here it is: http://libertarianwiki.freeforums.org/ Please keep in mind that I still have a lot of work left.--RBLibertarian 11:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage discussion to move off-site like that? Nathan Larson 17:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

In this case I think that would be very desirable. If you join I will promote you to Global Moderator.--RBLibertarian 17:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is an innovative idea. But I also have the same question in mind as Nathan. Is off-wiki discussion really necessary? I am not sure. --Freedom Fighter 18:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Many sites do use off-site forums. And discussing stuff in a real forum beats this.--RBLibertarian 18:18, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The advantage of the Village Pump is that you can link to other parts of the site from here with existence-detecting wikilinks. And edits to this page appear in Special:RecentChanges, watchlists, and the contributions of users. Nathan Larson 20:03, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I like the off site forum idea. If my host or I get hit on the head by a meteorite, then at least you have a place to talk about it. Paul Studier 22:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of which... are these the only backups? It would be good to have offsite backups done at least daily. See also http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Backup and http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Domain_Restore . It looks kinda scary, especially when you read users' stories on the talk pages. Nathan Larson 23:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Glad to see Paul likes the idea. I personally think a forum is a much better place to have discussions. Do any of you guys want to be moderators?--RBLibertarian 07:02, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Hold on a moment. Perhaps we can get the advantages of a forum (e.g. threaded discussions, automatic signatures, etc.) using one of these extensions. Nathan Larson 07:06, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

What is the problem with an off-site forum? Those forum extensions are a waste of time IMHO.--RBLibertarian 07:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Namespace alias

I recommend the use of a "LW" namespace alias for "Libertarian Wiki" and a "LWT" namespace alias for "Libertarian Wiki Talk." This would be similar to how Wikipedia uses a "WP" namespace alias. For more information, see:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_namespace#Aliases
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Namespace_alias

I think Paul would just need to add a line to LocalSettings.php that reads as follows:

$wgNamespaceAliases['LW'] = NS_PROJECT;
$wgNamespaceAliases['LWT'] = NS_PROJECT_TALK;

Thanks, Nathan Larson 20:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I will get to this when I can. I am about to move and may not have internet access. Paul Studier 22:27, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

CategoryTree

I also recommend installing the CategoryTree extension. For an example of how it works, check this out. You can click on any of those subcategories to expand them, and continue drilling down till you find what you're looking for. The CategoryTree special page would be a good link to provide new users with for navigating the site and seeing what we have. Nathan Larson 11:13, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

That would be great!--RBLibertarian 11:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Bots

This wiki is in need of some bots. We need to perform some maintenance tasks on a regular basis:

• Flag all short pages with Template:Stub
• Remove Template:Stub from all pages over a certain length
• Flag all uncategorized pages with Template:Uncategorized
• Etc.

We might be able to detect/fix vandalism and spam quicker using certain bots too. I've been pretty impressed with the vandal-fighting bots on Wikipedia. I can work on these bots as time allows, although I have a lot of other development projects on my plate too. See Wikipedia:WP:CREATEBOT if you want to try your hand at it. Nathan Larson 01:35, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Technical improvement

The site needs some technical improvement, specifically

• Template:Infobox is not working
• A redirect button is necessary in the edit toolbox
• When you click a reference number in an article, it takes you to the footnotes section, but it does not highlight the particular reference. --Freedom Fighter 11:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we should do a mass import of everything in the Template namespace from Wikipedia. That should take care of the nested template issue. Do you know specifically how to get MediaWiki to do that other stuff? It's probably more like to get done if we can give Paul specific instructions. It looks like this might be the way to add the redirect button to the edit toolbox, although it seems to me that we should be able to download the pertinent code somewhere. Surely there are a lot of people who would like to customize their Mediawiki installation to be just like Wikipedia's. Who knows, maybe some of the technical improvements we need made rely on an extension. Nathan Larson 11:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Demonstration of RPED extension

OK, I have taken a pre-alpha version of the RPED extension live, for demonstration purposes. Here is a guided tour. Go to http://rped.org/wiki/index.php?title=Anarcho-capitalism#Anarcho-capitalism_today . Notice how Doug French and Mark D. Hughes are red-linked, but all the other links are blue. Notice also the urls that display in your status bar when you hover over those links. Now scroll to the top of the page and hover over the word libertarianism (in the last sentence of the second paragraph), and notice the url that displays in your status bar.

I downloaded the list of English Wikipedia page titles (all 7,181,313 of them, including both articles and redirects) and fed them into this extension. It causes links to turn blue if that page exists either on the local wiki or on Wikipedia. If they exist on neither, the link turns red. There is a lot of other stuff I want to get it to do; e.g. it would be good to make the local links blue and the Wikipedia links green or something, so people can tell at a glance which wiki that link will take them to. But you get the gist of what this extension is about.

In this example, the local wiki consists of only a few articles (e.g. libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism), but most of the links are blue because those articles exist on Wikipedia. We can do the same with our wiki, if we want an easy way to wikify virtually everything without having to create all that content. There is some stuff here, e.g. Suffolk County, New York, that is probably never going to grow beyond a stub because it's too off-topic from libertarianism. We may as well delete it and link to Wikipedia instead.

There is more technology coming to help keep the page title list up-to-date (Wikimedia only does data dumps twice a month, and right now that page title list is a couple months old), but that is stuff that operates on the backend; the user doesn't need to concern himself with it. Let's do some soul-searching and decide whether this extension is something we want to use or whether we want to be gung-ho about becoming a comprehensive encyclopedia like Conservapedia, which has 90,000 pages (we presently have about 4,000 pages) or Wikipedia (which has 3 million+ pages). If nothing else, we could nominate the site for GreatFeature. Nathan Larson 17:44, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Action alerts?

I thought of adding another section to the main page for action alerts - e.g., Notices about current events stating, "Write your newspaper about x" and including links to sample letters, talking points, etc. It would take away from the encyclopedic tone and give us more of an activist focus, but I guess the present featured article blurb is already doing that. Any thoughts? Nathan Larson 00:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Maths

Is it possible to get rid of doing the maths while linking to other sites? It is quite annoying for regular editors :) --Freedom Fighter 14:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

We need to come up with another way of combating spam. See Libertarian Wiki:Spam. If you can come up with something for Paul to implement that will be just as effective, and provide instructions for setting it up, then maybe he will do it. Personally, I like Wikipedia's approach of using captchas for new users and dispensing with them for autoconfirmed users. Nathan Larson 22:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Pure wiki deletion

The pure wiki deletion extension alpha release has been implemented here: http://rped.org/PWDwiki/ For more info, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PWD and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pure_wiki_deletion_system . Let me know if this is something you guys would want to implement here. It would basically eliminate the need to delete anything, except in cases of copyright infringement or other illegality that has to be removed from view of non-sysops. If an article were to be deleted for being, for instance, off-topic or nonsense, we would just blank it. All links to that article would turn red, but any user could still view the page history. And upon an attempt to re-create the article, the user would be notified:

"A former version of this article was blanked by [USER NAME/IP] on [DATE]. The reason given for blanking was [EDIT SUMMARY]. You may view the article's history, edit the last version, or type a new article into the white space below."

I think it is helpful for non-sysops to be able to view the articles that have been removed, because it allows users to verify that deletion was justified, and because it allows users whose contributions were removed to obtain a copy without asking an admin for it. Nathan Larson 16:14, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree --Opcn 20:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

So, do we have a consensus on this? Going once, going twice... Nathan Larson 06:02, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify - this lets anyone delete and undelete an article, correct? Good idea but only if we don't open editing back up to unregistered IPs, where I could see it becoming a problem. But as it stands right now we don't have a large enough active user base where a deletion discussion on each article can proceed in a timely manner, and spam, patent nonsense, essays on subject matter so far removed from libertarian principles as to be antithetical to this site, and so on might stay up for months with a "delete" tag and nothing done about them. I say go ahead and give it a try and see how it works. We will still need a mechanism to permanently delete or oversight edits which might expose the site to legal action (slander, libel, copyright infringement, disclosure of personal information - incidentally, as a libertarian wiki I think we should be basing such decisions on what is malum in se, actionable torts in civil law, or in violation of the libertarian non-initiation of aggression principle, rather than things that are merely malum prohibitum under criminal law if they do not otherwise involve the initiation of force or fraud.) As long as we still have this mechanism in place to permanently delete something if necessary, I don't foresee any big problem with pure wiki deletion, and this may be an ideal wiki to test it out -- demonstrating how more freedom works. Buck 12:37, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

PWD essentially creates at least three tiers of deletion. There is RevisionDelete, which allows for a higher-level user like Paul to remove articles even from being viewed by sysops. There is regular deletion, available to sysops. And then there is pure wiki deletion, which is available to everyone. The latter is intended for articles such as spam, off-topic posts, etc. that, while not suitable for inclusion in the site, are not actually legally required to be removed. For those, we continue using regular deletion. Nathan Larson 17:08, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:Fact

Why doesn't this work? I tried mucking with it but my wikifu is weak. --Opcn 12:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It is true for many other templates like Template:Infobox which is discussed in a previous section. Not sure why this is happening. I think this has something to do with Mediawiki installation. --Freedom Fighter 12:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Are all the nested templates in place? It seems to me that I figured out how to solve this once, but I'll have to research it. Nathan Larson 07:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

How do we feel about some very POV categories?

I'm thinking things like Category:Bad idea (for the PATRIOT act) or Category:Tyrant for Stalin, etc. --Opcn 07:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yup, these are unencyclopedic categories and should be deleted. --Freedom Fighter 07:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article of the month -> Featured article of the week

Our site will look more vibrant and probably attract more frequent visits if we switch to having a weekly featured article. Is anyone willing to put a new featured article up about once every other week? That way, we can each shoulder half the responsibility. Nathan Larson 07:49, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

New logo, redux

Well, it looks like we have a pretty good logo submission: http://libertarianwiki.freeforums.org/post32.html I think we should go for the gold. For one thing, the site could use more color. Also, the submitter is correct that white-and-black is symbolic of anarcho-pacifism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_flag#Bisected_flags_and_stars

In the words of Murray Rothbard, "The libertarian foreign policy, then, is not a pacifist policy. We do not hold, as do the pacifists, that no individual has the right to use violence in defending himself against violent attack. What we do hold is that no one has the right to conscript, tax, or murder others, or to use violence against others in order to defend himself."

Anarcho-capitalism (gold and black) is perfectly compatible with libertarianism, though - it is in fact the purest form of libertarianism. Also, because this is not the actual anarcho-capitalist flag, it is not necessarily an explicitly anarcho-capitalist symbol anyway - one could interpret it as being simply supportive of gold, a sounder currency that fiat money.

Paul, please see this page for how to implement the new logo. Thanks, Nathan Larson 07:59, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Ben deserves a medal of honor for this.--RBLibertarian 08:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think we are going to do a Libertarian of the Month blurb for him. I encourage those who need creative work done to consider Ben of Ambivert Creative. Nathan Larson 08:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I like the new logo. I was tossing around ideas for one with Wikipedia-like puzzle pieces forming the shape of a porcupine, but I'm horrible at graphic design. One more vote for the gold and black torch! Buck 12:37, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Combating spam

We need to come up with alternative methods of combating spam if we want to get rid of the math requirement.

I propose we post to Libertarian Wiki:Requests for action by the site owner the following request:

• Edit filtering: If you haven't already, add $wgSpamRegex = '!(display\s*:none|overflow\s*:auto)!'; to LocalSettings.php. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam#Edit_filtering for more details.
• Extensions: Install the following anti-spam extensions that are used by Wikipedia: AbuseFilter, AntiBot, SimpleAntiSpam, Spam BlackList, TitleBlacklist and UploadBlackList.
• Configure ConfirmEdit to not use a Captcha on autoconfirmed users by adding $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true; to LocalSettings.php.
• Arrange to Autopromote users to autoconfirmed status:

• Set $wgAutoConfirmCount to some reasonable number, e.g. 20 for 20 edits.
• Set $wgAutoConfirmAge to some reasonable number, e.g. 3600*96 for 4 days.

Let's try this and see if it works as a viable anti-spam measure. Nathan Larson 10:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Allow users to edit without creating an account

I think we should consider allowing users to edit without creating an account. Spammers can easily create accounts through spambots, so really the people we are imposing cumbersome requirements on are legitimate editors. We should, however, impose CAPTCHAs on non-logged-in editors. My main concern here is that I want to remove all impediments/deterrents to new editors getting started here. If people make a lot of edits, we (and the CAPTCHA requirement) will encourage them to create an account, however. Wikipedia has managed to control spam reasonably well through other anti-spam measures despite leaving editing open to non-logged-in users. Nathan Larson 08:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Export

All right, I'm going to make an effort to export all 4,169 pages for backup purposes. Wish me luck. Nathan Larson 06:01, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move to http://libertapedia.org/ and abandonment of http://libertarianwiki.org/

I propose that we move further editing activity to http://libertapedia.org/ and abandon http://libertarianwiki.org/ . As site owner, I will rapidly respond to all requests for new features, enhancements, extensions, upgrades, adminships, etc. I will set a goal of getting all templates working within a week or two of the migration. Anti-spam measures will seek to minimize the use of annoying CAPTCHAs, and established users (i.e. editors with several edits and a few days' tenure) will be free from them entirely. A high premium will be placed on keeping editors happy by providing a laissez-faire environment in which to work and giving them the functionality they need to be efficient, and a high priority will also be placed on keeping the site looking polished. Full database dumps will be made publicly available on at least a weekly basis so that users can download and migrate the content at will. I don't want anyone to feel like they're being asked to commit to something that they'll be locked into.

I will also develop custom code to meet the unique needs of the encyclopedia as expressed by the members, and, as community consensus allows, beta test interesting new extensions so we can be on the cutting edge of wikis and attract attention from the larger wikisphere. Advertising will be kept to its present dull roar, and we will probably pick a better service (most likely Google) that will provide more targeted, profitable and unobtrusive ads; all proceeds will be put back into the project as directed by community consensus, and reports on finances will be made periodically to the community. If the community should ever decide it wishes to switch to a different site owner, I will arrange for an orderly handover of the domain and all data. With community consent, I hope to also appoint a trustworthy and active user to share access to the database and thus be able to take over if I get hit by a bus.

I just finished importing virtually all of the pages from this wiki. There is a lag of a few hours due to the timing of the import. The images have all been moved as well (see the file list page). They have not yet been integrated into the database; there does not seem to be an easy tool for doing that automatically (although I plan on developing one). A temporary workaround would be to upload them via the upload page. Notice that a streamlined means of gathering images from urls has been implemented that eliminates the need to first download them to your local system. I have made it fairly easy to do this; just click on a red broken image link, and it will take you to the upload screen. From there, you need only enter the url and click to upload and voila!

Other issues I am still working on include getting a better search engine, preferably Lucene-search or its little sister, EzMwLucene; bear with me, these are a real bear to set up. If anyone wants to try their Unix-fu at it, let me know. FYI, my current host is Bluehost, which was chosen for inexpensiveness. I notice it runs a little slow at times. We can get a different host if you want. If you should decide not to switch sites, at least we now have a more recent backup. Nathan Larson 08:35, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Nathan, can you login to Facebook? Let's discuss it there.--RBLibertarian 08:48, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Great job Nathan! Your efforts will make a good wiki for the libertarian movement. I have just registered at Libertapedia. We will be able to build a more active wiki at the new domain. --Freedom Fighter 09:21, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

By the way, you all can export your watchlists by going to Special:Watchlist/raw. Copy it, then go to the same place on Libertapedia and paste it. Once User:Opcn and User:Buck get on board, I think we can go ahead and turn the main page into a soft-redirect to Libertapedia. Nathan Larson 14:23, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone made an attempt to get a hold of PS? as I see it he did warn us that he would be off for a while, and had a legit reason. I wouldn't be adversely opposed to moving, I just would hate to hurt Pauls feelings after he put in so much work on the project. --Opcn 22:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a preference which site we edit at as long as we all agree on one or the other. Yes I agree, we should try to get a hold of Pstudier before making a final decision. I'm for moving if this is necessary to keep the site up and stable. I'll hold off on further editing activity until we know for certain which site everyone wants to go with. Buck 22:49, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there have been several problematic things. (1) A site owner, if he is the only one with database, FTP and bureaucrat access, simply has to check in on his wiki from time to time and perform maintenance/technical fixes/etc. no matter what is going on. Internet access is available even on the road; most hotels these days have Internet, wi-fi is available at a lot of coffeeshops and eateries, and libraries have free Internet. (2) The unwillingness to fix the arithmetic CAPTCHA issue despite repeated complaints is troubling. (3) The unwillingness to install more than a couple extensions is troubling. (4) Not backing up the site for four months is extremely troubling. (5) There have been maintenance backlogs before; it took over a month in late 2008 to get MediaWiki upgraded and ParserFunctions and Cite installed, which is not a particularly hard task.

In the long run, especially as the wikis grows and become a place where the aggregated time investment of editors is truly massive and greatly affected by even small enhancements or lack thereof in the site, we'll need a site owner who is really interested in staying on top of things and putting a lot of time into the wiki on a consistent basis. The libertarian presence on the wikisphere is in danger of fracturing into a disorganized mess of several different non-integrated and unnecessarily duplicative wikis (if it hasn't already); it would be better if we can establish one wiki that is so good that everyone flocks there, and our success can begin feeding on itself. I view libertarianism as being a very urgent cause, because there are people sitting in jail or otherwise having their rights trampled on every day, waiting for reform, while all too often the libertarian movement wastes time spinning its wheels in one way or another. I don't want to hurt a fellow libertarian's feelings either, but ultimately the good of the wiki must prevail over personal considerations. Having said that, I suppose I'll call Paul tomorrow and see what his thoughts are. Nathan Larson 04:21, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I have one question, how did you get his phone number?--RBLibertarian 06:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I thought it was publicly available? Opcn, where did you find it? Nathan Larson 06:33, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It is available in google search. See this. --Freedom Fighter 06:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, OK. Hopefully that's a cell phone number. Nathan Larson 06:48, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I am glad that Nathan Larson has agreed to take over the wiki. The last year has not been good for me, and I have been very busy the last month and I can not give the wiki the attention it needs. The recent contributions from Nathan and others have revitalized this wiki, and bodes well for the future. Paul Studier 13:04, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your years of service. You are welcome to stop by the new wiki and to retain your admin status there if you wish. <salute> Nathan Larson 13:43, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Paul for your efforts to build a site for the libertarian movement. We will be glad to see you in the new wiki. --Freedom Fighter 16:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Moving to http://libertapedia.org/

I propose that at the appropriate time, that http://Libertarianwiki.org redirect to http://libertapedia.org. As a test, I have redirected http://w2.libertarianwiki.org. The old site is available at http://w4.libertarianwiki.org in case something doesn't get transferred. Paul Studier 14:04, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's wait about a week and then do it. Nathan Larson 14:40, 29 March 2010 (UTC)