Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Is that drama I smell?

No, it's just the lovely scent of the Hillside Landfill. But I digress.

It's been about a week since my last post, so I'd though I'd fill y'all in. I've been steadily working on Myrtle, which is now up to around 85,000 lines of code. I spent most of the weekend asleep, fighting off what was most likely a rotavirus, and what little time wasn't engaged in one of those activities was spent either dividing up and replanting the hostas along the front walk, or doing some preliminary data analysis on Wikimedia page view data that Greg Maxwell has graciously shared with me. (Our conclusions so far is that we need to collect the data again, with a better geolocator and more filtering of clearly invalid data.)

I probably won't be writing too very much about Wikipedia and Wikimedia anymore. It takes too much time to keep up with the drama there, and I have better things to do with that time than waste it on that. I'm certainly hoping that I'll be able to make it to November's WikiWednesday in Chicago, which (as far as I can tell) is being organized by the estimable Ted Ernst, of aboutus.org. I know some of my regular readers are familiar with AboutUs; Ted introduced it to me at the Chicago Wiki-Meetup that I organized back in September. It looks like an interesting project. (Don't worry, guys, I'm not planning on joining. You don't need the trolls it would bring.)

For the rest of the Chicago folk, sorry, I won't be arranging any more wiki meetups. Tony did as much work to arrange the September one as I did; perhaps he'll take over the role and arrange another one now that the UofC students are back. (Hint: I'm told that Jimbo will be in Chicago sometime this month. Might want to see if you can make use of that.) If you do, let me know, and I'll stop in.

I suppose I'll have to change the subtitle of this blog; it's a bit inappropriate now given that it will probably have a lot more to do with things other than Wikipedia or Wikimedia. Anyone for some good ol' Illinois politics?

9 comments:

  1. I am going to cry.

    Half the reason I read this is for the Wikimedia lulz.

    The other half is because you're funny, so hopefully that won't change. Oh well, best of luck to you in your endeavors! --Miltopia ~~~~~

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  2. Hmmm... isn't this about the third time we've heard a similar statement from Kelly?

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  3. Kelly, if you stop blogging about Wikiwhatever, then I'll have to. And the last thing you want is MessedRocker blogging.

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  4. Please don't go away from commenting on Wikipedia... you have lots of insightful views on it even if I don't always agree with them.

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  5. To Dan: you might want to take a look at this essay.

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  6. Here's another post from Kelly
    She's got to get it off her belly
    The acrimony may get smelly
    The insults fly, all go-to-hell-y
    I hope she doesn't go farewell-y!

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  7. "Ted Ernst, of aboutus.org"

    I went to that website and couldn't make heads or tails of it. Is it a commercial venture?

    It has advertising and job openings posted.

    Why would aboutus.org, or Ted Ernst, be organizing wikipedia meetups? Hmmmm.

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  8. WikiWednesday has nothing specifically to do with Wikipedia. There's a lot of wikis out there that have nothing to do with Wikipedia, thankfully.

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