sj's Longest Now [v.1]

A blog has been started on the Wikimedia Meta-wiki to cover
Wikimania.  The first posts have been made by yours truly, but
expect more to come from other conference attendees.  The content
there will have much more detail about the nuances and trivia of
conference organization and late-night jam sessions; so look there to
satisfy your Need for Mania.   Please excuse the lack of RSS
feeds for that specific page; this is one of the issues we will be
talking about during the hacking days this week.

In a recent interview (last fall), Ward Cunningham
highlighted the most pressing unresolved problem with wikis : the lack
of a simple and familiar editing interface for most users.  Asked
what one thing he would change about Wikipedia, he said immediately, “I’d put a WYSIWYG editor in front of it.“

Since then, no progress has been made towards changing the default editor for Wikipedia or for MediaWiki in general.  But discussions today with non-MediaWiki developers at the start of Wikimania’s Hacking Days
suggest that modern web-based WYSIWYG editors are becoming fairly
mature and fast, and are certainly reasonable as interface options, if
not as the default option, for wiki users.

Day 1 of the Wikimania was a definite success.  Everyone arrived
and found their way to the hostel (and, in Achal’s case, the hotel)
without incident; the hackers self-assembled to a midday start, and in
the process of discussing the first day’s topic, hacked out a first draft of a metadata solution.

After the day’s talks, and after what seemed like a fine dorm-style
meal, there were many good, quiet discussions and a viewing of Pi. Eugene and Sven and I talked about the active disinterest in HtmlArea
by Wiki programmers, including many of our friends.  Without my
mentioning my interview with Ward Cunningham, Eugene commented that
Ward probably wouldn’t feel strongly about it. 
   
When I pointed out that, in fact, Ward had twice listed “lack of WYSIWYG
editors”  as the greatest remaining barrier to the general public
using wikis, Eugene was surprised, and commented that nobody had blogged
about it.  Which was true!  Mea maxima culpa.

So, I’m going to blog about it now; better late than never. 
      

There are some stories that are just too silly to take
seriously.  You often run across them in the news and in popular
books.  And yet they are not jokes; standard news outlets and
publishers — if not the best, at
least internationally-known names — publish them and stand by
them.  The canonical story format is: vague allegations, alarming
hyperbole, unsourced quotes, and unlikely statements presented without comment as fact. 
Sometimes the subject is political, sometimes corporate, sometimes
“When chickadees attack!” human interest.  In each case it is fun
to guess why the stories are being propagated. 

The question for news reliability is, what does this say about how much
news accuracy or relevance matters to readers?  Does anyone really
care to have reliable news?  What kinds of guarantees do we have
from even the best articles?  Are there particular classes of news
articles that can be as random and fictitious as you like without
damaging the societal web?  Are there other types of news which
should be handled by only extremely reliable organizations?

A tip o’ the keys to Saadi for the pointer to this recent beauty: 

Feeling mopey about speaking too few languages? Want to get a kick out of seeing translations of your favorite articles side-by-side, while feeling useful at the same time?

The Interwiki Link Checker is here to help. You can choose which pair of languages to browse, and be shown a stream of articles in different language Wikipedias with the same title. You then are asked to say whether they are the same article (this will create an interwiki link between them) or not. (Expert tip: you don’t need to be well versed in either language to do this; you can always select “I don’t know” if the similarity isn’t clear)

The programme for the first annual Wikimania conference is almost finished!  You can see the draft
of  it online; there are still a handful of late additions to fit in,
and moderators to be finalized for two panels.  Let me know what you
think… O’Reilly had the misfortune of conflicting with our dates, so you can see that we snagged all the coolest people. 
You can still register online for only 20 Euros a day, or 50 Euros for
the weekend; and if you get in touch with me fast (i.e., by this
weekend), you may be able to snag a room at the Haus der Jugend where
the conference is being held before it’s booked.

For more info on where to stay in Frankfurt, see the location page on the site.  Reserve your rooms now, before the nearby places are all booked!

If “Cellar door” is the most beautiful combination of two words in the world, “Lahar” has to be among the most beautiful solo. 

Address: Elizabethtown, NY 12932
Campground Phone: (518)942-5292

It’s no Heart Lake, but it’s moughty fine all the same.  Update:
Light, cascading showers!  Porters who smoke packs while running
up and down the mountain, as found about Kili, were nowhere in
sight.  Great fun was had by all.

News from the wiki: a lovely idea for Wikipedians to offer and send gifts to one another in exchange for serious research is taking on steam.

In other news, Wikipedia and Google are showing up together in newsfeeds again.