MisesWiki:Commons

Welcome to The Mises Commons, the central discussion board where you can make announcements, propose new ideas, and ask questions of the entire community.

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USA-centrism

I am wondering if we might consider aiming for a more global perspective in our developing articles. This has been occurring to me as I have been tinkering with Net neutrality, a timely issue in the U.S. as of December 2010 but still with application elsewhere.

After all, at this writing we are billed as "A Global Repository". Further, in presenting praxeological truths that remain true regardless of location or era, a global approach--or at least acknowledgement--seems prudent and consistent.

Of course, I also recognize I can simply take this approach on my own whether or not anyone else "approves," and maybe it is mostly my eyes that have been slow to open, while perhaps most are already doing this. I thought I would at least put the idea out on the table for others' consideration.

Any of you non-USA folks care to chime in? Are readers of Mises Wiki as concentrated in the USA as we might think? Please feel free, all. -- RayBirks 15:58, 2 January 2011 (CST)

Do you have specific suggestions on how to aim for this goal? In general I'd leave this to the discretion of the users, let them work on whatever they are interested in. A certain USA-centricity is probably unavoidable (speaking from Europe here). But if you want to make the thought more popular and maybe even coordinate the efforts, you could make an "International" WikiProject. There are even users thinking about writing in different languages, so it could house them as well.

Speaking of statistics, the page with the Meetups is the second most visited page, but the number of international visitors (or visitors in total) would be interesting to know... will try to find out more. Pestergaines 05:53, 4 January 2011 (CST)

Pestergaines, thanks for your comments. No, I don't have specific goals, and starting up a WikiProject seems like it would be more than I would like to handle just now. We are still "just getting going," after all. Your thought of leaving it to users' discretion makes the most sense to me in the here and now. My main thought is, for myself, to keep the experiences of others in mind, rather than fall into the trap of my own geo-centrism, if you will. Thx.  :) --RayBirks 13:20, 8 January 2011 (CST)

Well, it's still something to keep an eye out for in the long term. (And should it be necessary, the start of a page is already there. :) ) Have a nice day! Pestergaines 13:43, 8 January 2011 (CST)

Maybe we should eventually go for a scheme of en.miseswiki.org, fr.miseswiki.org, etc.? Nathan Larson (talk) 11:31, 7 August 2012 (MSD)

If there is a sufficient amount of other-language pages, we can definitely go that way. Pestergaines (talk) 03:26, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

In the meantime, perhaps users can do what they do at MediaWiki.org, which is create subpages for each language, and then use a navigation template to go from one to the other? See, for example, mw:Manual:LocalSettings.php/de or mw:Download/fr. Nathan Larson (talk) 03:36, 11 September 2012 (MSD)

Just let whoever has the time and the inclination edit the wiki if they're from Europe great if not that's great too at least they're working on the project. If you allow people to put stuff up in their native tounges that might help as well. Diax (talk) 09:59, 17 May 2013 (MSD)

Argumentation

I've started a little experiment, an argumentation chain for Austrian Business Cycle Theory in the making. Planning to expand it in the next few days, see if you can use for it.

The concept can be expanded for other arguments, of course. :) Pestergaines 16:54, 16 January 2011 (CST)

"No, it can't!"

"Yes, it can!" (heh) -- RayBirks 17:17, 16 January 2011 (CST)

See? That's what I'm talking about. :D Pestergaines 17:22, 16 January 2011 (CST)

Could you guys comment at Category talk:Argumentation? I don't understand what its scope should be. --Forgottenman (talk) 08:02, 27 January 2011 (CST)

Will do so soon, after further reflection. Myself, I have actually been back and forth on this one (haha). It is my plan, however, to make suggestions and changes in a friendly, flexible, and non-abrasive manner, which is completely consistent with a classical liberal, Austrian School, and/or anarcho-capitalistic outlook. Further, this approach may be implied or even demanded by the argumentation justification for libertarianism first offered by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the 1980s. When coupled with the increasing biological empirical data that disrespectful and harmful words can damage the listener's (or reader's) brain, polite and respectful discourse may even be necessary to sustain the species. So, I will comment soon.  :) -- RayBirks 19:24, 27 January 2011 (CST)

N.B. to Forgot: No worries: I did not mean to sound like I was implicating you. You are just fine! It's just that, this topic (i.e., my "mini-rant") has been on my mind of late. Further, upon listening to this 25-minute video interview about the Mises Wiki, recorded in mid-December 2010, I was reminded how I have distanced myself from the Wikipedia project as I increasingly encountered editors who need some basic kindergarten people skills. Is it any wonder people draw back from editing, newcomers especially? To paraphrase Gresham's Law: Bad manners drive out good manners. Their chilling effect is unseen but powerful. I would like this community to champion an atmosphere of mutual respect and to more readily shun or exile those who cannot or will not do so. Living by example is important, yes, but boundaries need maintenance. -- RayBirks 21:31, 27 January 2011 (CST)

To continue the kindergarten analogy, I would say the problem is not so much that the kids lack the necessary social skills to play well with each other over on Wikipedia, as it is that the designated "adults" (sysops, ArbCom, etc. operating under the ultimate authority of the Board of Trustees) have either instigated or permitted the stifling of much productive activity, which has discouraged people from wanting to continue participating. Jimbo, who is analogous to the principal of the school, could have run it in a Montessori manner that gave the kids more liberty, while dealing firmly with those who sought to interfere with that liberty. Instead, he put in place a bunch of overly restrictive rules and invited the community to decide by "rough consensus" matters that really should have been left to individuals' discretion.

If you look at a kindergarten where all the kids are allowed to do what they want, as long as they don't hurt others, you'll see them exploring many different avenues (e.g. one may read a book, others may play hide and seek, others may build a tower with blocks). But tragically, there often comes a point at which the adults say "Put that away; it's time to study x now," or some group of bullies (typically operating with the support or acquiescence of most of the class members, and with the tolerance of the mostly-apathetic teacher) will interfere with someone enjoying himself and being productive in his own way. I am reminded of this passage from Ayn Rand's essay "The Comprachicos":

“

He does not know what to do; he is told to do anything he feels like. He picks up a toy; it is snatched away from him by another child; he is told that he must learn to share. Why? No answer is given. He sits alone in a corner; he is told that he must join the others. Why? No answer is given. He approaches a group, reaches for their toys and is punched in the nose. He cries, in angry bewilderment; the teacher throws her arms around him and gushes that she loves him. . . . He learns that regardless of what he does—whether his action is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, sensible or senseless—if the pack disapproves, he is wrong and his desire is frustrated; if the pack approves, then anything goes. . . . He learns that it is no use starting any lengthy project of his own—such as building a castle out of boxes—it will be taken over or destroyed by others.

”

The Wikipedians are happy to express their insincere wikilove by delivering a plateful of virtual cookies to your talk page when you arrive, but they won't allow editors the freedom to build a house (i.e. an article) without subjecting it to the arbitrary judgment of the community on issues of notability and so on. If you try to post, say, a resume in your userpage giving useful background about yourself, they put that up for deletion too, saying it's a vanity page or spam. A lot of times, it just amounts to a popularity contest in which editors with unpopular opinions or independent styles are more likely to be assumed to have bad faith. If you express an opinion that maybe this isn't the best way to run an encyclopedia, they say "If you don't like it, the rest of the internet is that-a-way." And so, here we are. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:02, 7 August 2012 (MSD)

I see an issure with the money section of your ABCT page. What you're calling money i.e. the USD(FRN) and other fiat notes are not money it is a common mistake to call them that. What the FRN is, is a promissory note, or a money susbstitute. I don't know how you want to go about fixing it. Your call. Peace be with you! Diax (talk) 09:39, 17 May 2013 (MSD)

So I made some changes to that section mentioned above feel free to change it back if you don't like them. Peace be with you! Diax (talk) 09:52, 17 May 2013 (MSD)

Red links

New issue for discussion...a user recently reverted an edit, removing an internal link, stating "Please add article then link. No point having dead internal links." Is this a policy we are going to agree on? No red links on the Mises Wiki?

I was under the impression that we were more or less going to follow along with a typical Wiki (no, not just Wikipedia, virtually all wikis do this) policy in which wiki-fying the article is encouraged, so long as common sense rationale is used, and only terms which will be created as pages soon or that should be created because they would be notable and verifiable and useful and in-line with the goal of the wiki, are linked. Obviously Wikipedia is the easiest place to go for info and discussion on this, but that by no means means that that is the only place that has such a policy.

Of course, if this "add article then link/No point having dead internal links" is going to be the policy, a lot of pages are going to have to be revamped...including the Main Page. --John James 18:05, 23 May 2011 (MSD)

I would say that red links should be encouraged, within typical bounds (no links for common words, etc.). This has also been discussed in the email list and red links were supported by Jeff Tucker. --Forgottenman (talk) 19:56, 23 May 2011 (MSD)

Yeah that's what I figured. That's virtually the policy of every wiki. And if you look at that page linked above it mentions how one study showed that red links helped Wikipedia grow. Let's have at least one more weigh-in and then I think we might go ahead write up a quick something for the guidelines. --John James 01:12, 24 May 2011 (MSD)

I very much agree to encourage red links within reason. For the record, I think I can also understand the reversion - the 'Austrian School' is our showcase page of sorts, so it would look better if all links were blue. But that may take quite some more time. :)

Not sure if that needs to be in a guideline, but throwing it out there. Pestergaines 14:59, 25 May 2011 (MSD)

First of all, the reason given for the reversion was not that it was a "showcase page", and should therefore be held in a special light where red links should be discouraged. It was made quite clear that there is "no point having dead internal links" [period]. So that defense doesn't hold much water. And second, I think it's actually ironic...We're going to encourage red links because they have been shown to help the project grow, yet we're going to discourage their inclusion on the very pages which are more likely to be seen by more people (and therefore are more likely to have red links actually turn blue, as well as being the pages where growth and development is most important)?

And third, call me crazy, but I was of the opinion that the Main Page is more of a "showcase page" than even the Austrian School page...did anyone bother to count the red links there??

In my opinion this "red links are encouraged, but 'showcase pages' should not have any" notion is a pretty poor defense, and an even worse guideline. I agree with virtually every other wiki project...that red links are a good thing, as they help the project grow, as well as encourage new users to get involved. A red link staring right in the face of someone knows something about it could be just the motivation a potential new user needs to throw his hat in the ring and try out some wiki-ing. I think that can be even more valuable than the particular instance of growth...because one new stub is one thing...but a new "Wikian" is something else all together. And it can make a world of difference not only for our Mises Wiki project here, but for virtually every other one in existence. I say that's a good thing. --John James 20:31, 25 May 2011 (MSD)

It's worth remembering that while red links do encourage new contributors, they are not helpful to readers. It's reasonable to want to have a "showcase" article (like WP's featured articles) that represents what we'd like all our articles to look like in the future. Such an article would probably not have any red links: any red links that existed would be filled in by new articles.

Eventually we might want to have no red links on the main page, but my goal there is to show new editors as many places as possible where they can jump in and start contributing. --Forgottenman (talk) 19:17, 2 June 2011 (MSD)

Bingo. That's my whole point. That's what red links do, regardless of where they are located..."show new editors where they can jump in and start contributing." Yes, I understand the appeal of "featured articles"...but articles don't get that way because of some centralized regulation mandating that this article and that article be deemed "featured", and then every thing pertaining to those specific articles is treated in some special manner so as to "make" them featured simply by the fact that they are treated differently than other articles. It's quite the other way around. Articles get featured because they reach a certain level of quality, and are recognized to be good examples of the kind of product the project is working toward. Individuals making their own free choices about what articles to edit, what edits to make, and how much effort is put into each of those is what creates a wiki...not some central governing body telling everyone which articles will be "showcased" and which ones can be ignored.

If editors of the Wiki wish for a certain article to be of a minimum level of quality, they can freely edit that article as much as they want to improve it to that point. (They can even form groups to organize and point out articles that need the most work and encourage others to help contribute to those. That's what wikiprojects are all about.) And yes, part of what makes a quality wiki article is how well it connects to relevant and related articles. (This is why larger wikis like Wikipedia have some kind of "wikify" encouragement...because it improves the usefulness of the specific article, but also because it helps expand the wiki project.) And by the same token, that's why there is virtually no wiki that is in the practice of discouraging red links, let alone banning them...even if just on certain lionized pages.

I really dislike the idea that articles need to be de-linked (i.e. weakened in their usefulness and diminished in their impact) because we want to showcase how great they are. That seems very contradictory in my view. --John James 23:47, 2 June 2011 (MSD)

This is a very interesting and important issue. There is sometimes a tension between what is good for the reader and what is good for the editor, but I think the reader quickly learns that redlinks don't go anywhere. By the way — another topic to consider is whether to allow non-logged-in editors to edit, since a lot of times the newbies just want to make a quick change (e.g. typo correction) to one article and never edit the wiki again.

With reference to the issue of redlinks, I have installed on my wikis (e.g. Libertapedia) an extension I wrote, which links to Wikipedia if the wikilinked page doesn't exist on the local wiki. I used to have it set up to actually detect the page existence on Wikipedia, as follows:

• IF the page exists on the local wiki, then bluelink to the page on the local wiki. Otherwise,
• IF the page does NOT exist on the local wiki, but it exists on Wikipedia, then bluelink to Wikipedia. Otherwise,
• IF the page does NOT exist on the local wiki, nor on Wikipedia, then redlink to the page on the local wiki.

Right now, the daemon I used to run to update the table of existing Wikipedia page titles is down, so I have simplified the extension to always bluelink to Wikipedia if the page doesn't exist on the local wiki. That extension needs some work before it's ready for prime time but you get the gist. It could be possible to make some other interesting and useful tweaks to it, to allow the reader to choose which wiki he wants to go to when he clicks on a redlink or bluelink. E.g., he might be notified that the page exists on both the local wiki AND Wikipedia, and given the option to choose. Or, in the event it exists on Wikipedia but not the local wiki, he could choose between visiting Wikipedia or creating the article on the local wiki. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:38, 7 August 2012 (MSD)

Keep the red links. I'm new here and I wouldn't even have bothered to join the project had it not had some obvious red links. I mean ya'll don't have a page on coercion I'm going to write it now. Anyway let me know what ya'll think about that. Peace be with you.Diax (talk) 06:17, 15 May 2013 (MSD)DiaxDiax (talk) 06:17, 15 May 2013 (MSD)

Main page revamp ideas

As per some discussion on the group message board, I agree the main page could stand some new additions...

First off, I think it's pretty obvious if this Bounty board incentive is going to be effective, we need to advertise. I think we should have either a section on the main page—perhaps replace one that is on there now, such as "this week in history"—or a prominent link to a full page that tells of all the projects going on, the articles that need creating and expanding, the promotions currently running, etc. And of course including all the useful links for that kind of thing (e.g. MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive, MisesWiki:Most wanted, MisesWiki:Typos, etc.)

I think it would be really nice to have a kind of quick overview of what's going on here and what specifically someone can do to help out. I think people would be more inclined to participate if they were aware of a requested article or some other project. Even aside from the prizes to be won, I think having a defined mission and objectives is really useful in helping someone feel like they're making a difference. Kind of like the "Operation Stub" drive. It's really motivating to see a request for a page that is currently a red link, and being able to see the instant result of having created a new stub and having the links go blue and seeing the article count increase...or seeing an article slowly but surely get more and more fleshed out as you collaborate with other editors and reach featured status. I think developing a sense of community would definitely entice editors to contribute as well as keep coming back, and a good way to do that is have a prominent display of what is currently being focused on.

Input? --John James 16:26, 29 July 2011 (MSD)

I very much agree. What about inserting a large "What can I do?" section into the middle of the main page, with links to the various projects and initiatives one can help out?

And yes, we'll need to do a lot of advertising - at the latest when the 'improvement drive' is finalized. Pestergaines 17:39, 29 July 2011 (MSD)

I like the ideas, but I don't like removing the only part of the main page that is regularly updated. I'd prefer dropping "current events," perhaps incorporating it into the "this week in history" box.

I think the Community Portal page should serve as the "full page" containing all the things going on. Go ahead and put together a box like Template:Current events (maybe call it Template:What can I do or Template:Get involved?) with a few of the important things you are talking about, along with a link to CP. The main page is very plug-and-chug, so you can just pull {{Current events}} off the main page and substitute your new one. --Forgottenman (talk) 17:57, 29 July 2011 (MSD)

Semantic wikis

Does anyone have experience with semantic wikis? I keep being recommended to introduce the feature to MisesWiki. I can see that it might be practical, but can't really tell what in the end the impact would be, besides a lot of work. Looking for some insight here. Pestergaines 16:59, 26 August 2011 (MSD)

I'll give an example of how this could be helpful. Let us say that we want a table that displays all countries by their indexes in the Infoboxes. In Template:Infobox Country, you would find where they ask for each index, and put a property tag such as[[Economic Freedom Index::{{{row 10 info|}}}]] (that template needs to be more semanticly named). Then, you would use the following code (with templates from http://dnd-wiki.org/):

{| style="text-align:left;" class="sortable"

|-

! Name !! Economic Freedom Index !! Corruption Perception Index !! Doing Business Ranking

{{#ask: [[Category:Countries]]

|?Economic Freedom Index

|?Corruption Perception Index

|?Doing Business Ranking

|format=template

|template=Table Row

|link=none

|limit=9999

}}

|}

And then the table would generate, and changing the facts on the individual pages would cause these tables to update (within 24 hours usually) automatically. It allows for Wikis to implement the policy of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). And as I've said a few times already, I've got quite a few templates for making SMW easier to deal with. --Havvy 23:05, 26 August 2011 (MSD)

What would be the effort needed to migrate the wiki, and keep it updated? How much would our users need to learn about the syntax and what will it do to the readability of the page source code? Pestergaines 14:17, 31 August 2011 (MSD)

The effort involved for migrating the wiki is as follows:

1. Installation and configuration. I've never installed SMW (or any other Mediawiki extension), but I don't expect this to take very long. Configuration might need to be done for which namespaces it is enabled on. I cannot recall. One choice that has to be made is whether or not to show properties at the bottom of a page.
2. Planning properties. This is where somebody (or a group of people) sit down and decide on the initial properties to have on the wiki. This can easily be streamlined by looking at the current category structure, and if there is the equivalent to a morpheme (for example, categories such as Books by Ludwig von Mises, Books by Bastiat, ect.) and turning those morphemes into properties (in this case, the property would be called Author).
3. Implementing properties. This is where the above plan is realized. Using the example from planning, one would look at the book articles in general, and see if there is a template where the author is placed. If so, that template is edited so that it adds the property to it. If done correctly, a content editor won't have to deal with the properties themselves. Also, categories have to be renamed. Books by X would be renamed to Books.
4. Implement navigation. If you can think of a table that would help users find information, it takes all of five minutes to create generally. Some of the queries you can think of (the ones you want specific to a certain entity) can be templated.

For the syntax, just knowing how to set properties is enough. Taking the dnd-wiki help page on it and modifying the examples at the bottom to fit this wiki should suffice. It doesn't go over tables, but copy & paste from a working table suffices for anybody who has needed to do so.

For the readability of the source code, it all looks like templates and links, and in many cases, is easier to read, since implementation details are hidden. --Havvy 17:35, 7 September 2011 (MSD)

Semantic MediaWiki has a number of advantages beyond making it easier for academics and others interesting in running queries to gather data. It can also be used for putting together dynamic tables within the wiki itself, creating more powerful templates, automating labor-intensive tasks, and more. I will offer the caveat, though, that as of a few years ago SMW had some troublesome bugs, and I'm not sure whether they have made a lot of progress since then.

A lot of sites that have SMW installed don't make much use of it. This may be partly because any templates imported from Wikipedia won't use it. To get the full benefit, you have to be willing to get creative in coming up with uses for it, and put in the work to implement those ideas.

The academic community is, of course, strongly in favor of SMW. I think it will do an important favor to the wikisphere and the world to be part of the effort to realize SMW's potential. That might have to include fixing some bugs. How much you want to focus on that, as opposed to more MisesWiki-specific concerns, is up to you. One last caveat — if you use caching, there may be some performance implications to consider.

Here are a couple examples of how I used SMW to make my life easier. On my wiki, we had a "Today's featured article" (TFA) page for each day. Perhaps you are familiar with how on the Wikipedia main page, the TFA blurb is followed by a list of three "Recently featured" articles — specifically, those from one, two, and three days ago.

It was a pain in the neck to enter those manually, and if I changed my mind and substituted a different featured article for a particular day, I had to edit three different featured article blurbs that referred to it as a recently featured article. To eliminate that chore, I put some sort of SMW code in each blurb — I think it was something along the lines of featured::Libertarianism if the article in question was libertarianism — and that associated that page with that featured article title. So then, all I had to do was use a bot to prepopulate a bunch of featured article blurbs with some SMW code telling it to grab the featured article title from the previous three days' blurbs. Specifically, Recently featured: {{#ask: [[Libertapedia:Today's featured article/May 14, 2010]]|?featuring=}} – {{#ask: [[Libertapedia:Today's featured article/May 13, 2010]]|?featuring=}} – {{#ask: [[Libertapedia:Today's featured article/May 12, 2010]]|?featuring=}} I could do that for a year in advance if I wanted, and it would eliminate the need to edit the "Recently featured" wikitext later on for any reason.

Another example was when I had a bunch of articles on political prisoners, and wanted to enter various data (such as mailing address) just once per page. E.g., I could change the data in the infobox template and it would change it in the article text, or vice versa. Unfortunately, this didn't work. I sought support from the listserv and they said it was probably a bug in SMW. At that time, I didn't feel like familiarizing myself with the SMW code and hunting down and fixing that bug, so I abandoned that project. There is still enough functionality that works, though, for you to accomplish some useful tasks with it. Nathan Larson 03:27, 9 July 2012 (MSD)

The Big One

It is coming... can you feel it? Pestergaines 19:15, 30 January 2012 (MSK)

You mean another Great Depression, or something even worse? I'm not sure if the conditions are ripe for that to happen. We have a lot of Keynesians in office, ready to worsen and prolong any economic slump that develops, but we don't have the equivalent of a Smoot-Hawley Tariff to destroy global trade. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:25, 7 August 2012 (MSD)

Sorry, didn't want to produce any panic. The Big One in question was the 1000th article on Mises Wiki. :) Pestergaines (talk) 03:41, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

Sysop promotion request

I request promotion to sysop so I can assist with maintenance of the MediaWiki namespace, vandalism cleanup, template importation, miscellaneous requests, etc.

We may want to consider being pretty liberal in giving out the sysop tools, since that is is accordance with the spirit of the "wiki way," which is to make mistakes easy to correct rather than hard to make. The more sysops you have, the faster vandalism gets deleted and so on. It tends to improve the quality of the wiki.

What makes sysops more of a detriment is when the rules of engagement are set up in ways that produce perverse incentives. E.g. if pages are allowed to be speedily deleted for questionable reasons, then the more sysops you have running around speedily deleting stuff, the more good content will tend to get deleted quickly. The sysops are similar to cops or security guards — if the laws (and overall system) are good, then these officers tend to be beneficial; but if the laws are bad, then the situation is similar to that described in the Declaration of Independence, of having "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." They can only harass and eat out the substance to the extent that the nature of the system allows and encourages that to happen. Here, our hierarchical system (ultimately reporting to the Mises Institute) and mistrust of mob rule prevents the kind of abuses we've seen on other wikis. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:25, 7 August 2012 (MSD)

Hallo Nathan,

the Mises Wiki is a bit conservative with awarding the Administrator privileges. These days - *fingers crossed* - the wiki is actually quite stable and does not need much of an administrating effort. Most mistakes are easy to correct for most users, and even templates are easy to create (in case you want to make some more involved changes in this area, John James is our template guru). We also don't tend to speedily delete pages, far from it! The biggest issue for admins has been the recent flood of spam, which was thankfully contained - in a large part also due to your help! I do not see a particular need to expand the ranks of Admins right now, I hope you understand.

Best regards, Pestergaines (talk) 16:38, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

Yeah, on a wiki with the type of user behavior patterns (largely molded by the wiki's culture, which in turn is greatly affected by its rules, including the wiki mission) that are encountered here, the issues that require sysop intervention do indeed tend to be few and far between. That is assuming spam problems remain solved; those spammers are always innovating, making it necessary to find new countermeasures. It's a continual arms race. Nathan Larson (talk) 19:23, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

Wiki configuration issues

Given our webmaster's other duties, does he have enough time to give wiki issues prompt service? I hope I'm not being too unreasonable by saying that and I apologize if I'm displaying lack of tact in how I'm addressing this. I just see certain issues, most notably the CAPTCHA problem (which is of critical importance to the wiki), remain unresolved for long periods of time, despite reminders.

I don't know what level of priority the Mises Institute wants to give the wiki at this point. Being such a wiki enthusiast, my own sentiments toward waiting till other matters have been dealt with to resolve wiki configuration issues tends to be rather similar to those expressed by Batman concerning post-production fixes. But I realize the Mises Institute and those who seek to help it also have other matters on their plates besides the wiki. So I'm just going to throw that out there and leave it at that. I don't know whether it would be appropriate to lobby for more technical assistance resources, or how would be the best way to go about that. Nathan Larson (talk) 19:23, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

Today in history

We could, if we wanted, have more than the a few entries available for each day's "Today in history". We could use mw:Extension:Random or a similar extension to select, say, two items out of a list for each day. That list could be hundreds long; the more the merrier, as long as they're high-quality, because that means more possibilities for users to see on different visits to the site. Nathan Larson (talk) 23:25, 5 October 2012 (MSD)

Mass imports

A lot of wikis, in their early stages, have done mass imports of content. E.g., Wikipedia imported a bunch of Census data on various localities. I wonder if we might do well to import, say, the contents of Mises Made Easier as articles. Although they would be a bunch of stubs, it might be better than nothing. Nathan Larson (talk) 19:54, 20 October 2012 (MSD)

MediaWiki 1.20

MediaWiki 1.20 has been released. Here are the full release notes. I didn't see anything major in there. MW 1.19 will continue to be supported for the next two years, so unless there is some capability v1.20 offers that we particularly need, it might be just as well to stick with what we have. Nathan Larson (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2012 (MSK)

Asirra cracked

Word has it that the spammers are starting to crack Asirra. We seem to be getting a spam rate of about one a day. I forget what it was like before Asirra; wasn't it about five a day? Anyway, another option would be to use mw:Extension:QuestyCaptcha. We could ask Austrian school-related questions like "The Ludwig von Mises Institute motto is tu ne cede _____ (fill in the blank)" or "What was the first name of the wife of Ludwig von Mises?" People knowledgeable about the Austrian school would have the reward of not needing to google for the answers, and those who did have to look it up would learn something. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:44, 11 November 2012 (MSK)

WikiNode

Wikiindex has an interesting idea about wikinodes. See http://wikiindex.org/WikiProject:Wiki-Noding : "We think every wiki needs a page (called "WikiNode") that briefly describes the wiki and the top 7 or so closely related wikis." Here is their wikinode. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but apparently it never caught on. Maybe it should. But what would be the most closely related wikis to this one? Nathan Larson (talk) 19:33, 20 November 2012 (MSK)

Voluntary Cooperation

I've created a new Call to Action: Voluntary Cooperation. Let's see if anyone dares to join! Pestergaines (talk) 17:10, 30 November 2012 (MSK)

I hope to complete the project soon. There is now an index page called Privately supplied public goods - please check it out and let me know what you think. Pestergaines (talk) 21:48, 25 February 2013 (MSK)

Early spring cleaning

Having some time at hand, I started to make a long overdue cleanup of last year's pages. Some need to be overhauled completely, some polished, some moved into Essays. It is a lot of work, so help is invited, as always. Pestergaines (talk) 18:57, 4 January 2013 (MSK)

Outreach

It is sometimes not easy to see what kind of impact these pages have. They may seem too obscure or not noticed by anyone. If that's the case, what's the point?

However, the Mises Wiki is being used as a resource, in arguments, debates and forum discussions all over the Internet. It could be certainly more, but it is out there. How can you find out? Google "wiki.mises.org" -site:mises.org. Then, with the search tools limit the results to last month or whatever criteria you prefer. Dig in.

The biggest hits can be surprising, like "Principle of non-aggression". :)

The wiki has also high Google rank on obscure keywords like regime uncertainty (#1!) and quite a few 19th century panics. Google ranks original content higher, and remixing of other content - instead of simply copying whatever is on Wikipedia or other articles. Diligent linking also pays off. Plus, for some articles - such as regime uncertainty or some of those panics, Wikipedia doesn't have anything or very little. It's not hard to be better than that.

So, don't get discouraged. This stuff is used by people out there. Pestergaines (talk) 21:55, 2 February 2013 (MSK)

As it turns out, Google is not the end-all resource to find out what links a page. There are websites better equipped for that - here's one (allows only a few limited views a day though). Turns out there's way more sites using this wiki! Pestergaines (talk) 16:33, 30 March 2013 (MSK)