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Austrian Business Cycle Theory

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{{See also|Argumentation:ABCT|Austrian Business Cycle Theory learning materials}}

The [[business cycle]] describes regularly occurring booms and busts observed in the economy and the '''Austrian Business Cycle Theory''' (sometimes called the "hangover theory"<ref name="Cochran_ABCT">John P. Cochran. [http://mises.org/daily/630 "The Hangover Theory?"], Mises Daily, Friday, March 16, 2001, referenced 2009-11-14.</ref> or simply '''ABCT''') is an explanation of this phenomenon from the [[Austrian School]]. Originally developed by [[Ludwig von Mises]] in the 1912 ''[[Theory of Money and Credit]]'' it was elaborated on by [[Friedrich Hayek|Hayek]] and others.<ref name="Rothbard_business_cycle">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/pdf/austtrad.pdf "The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays"] (pdf), "Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure", p.58-81, referenced 2009-10-27.</ref> In one classical rendition:
Banks expand credit well beyond their own assets and by the funds of their clients, often supported or encouraged by the setting of low interest rates by a central bank. This additional credit flow into the economy from increased borrowing for capital projects stimulates economic activity. Projects which would not have been started before, seem now profitable, creating [[malinvestment]]. They increase demand for production materials and for labor and their prices rise, which, in turn, leads to an increase in prices of consumption goods. If the banks would stop the extension of credit, the boom would be rapidly over. To prevent the sudden halt of this boom (and the resulting collapse of prices), the banks must create more and more credit, and the prices will rise even more.

But this expansion of credit cannot continue forever. There is no additional capital or labor; there is only more money (and debt). The means of production and labor which have been diverted to the new enterprises have to be taken away from others. Society is not sufficiently rich to permit the creation of new enterprises without taking away from others. As long as the expansion of credit is continued this will not be noticed, but it can't be pushed indefinitely. The inflation and the boom can last only as long as the public thinks that the prices will stop rising in the near future. When the public becomes aware, that there the inflation will not end, and that prices will continue to rise, panic sets in. Eventually, people may give up the currency and rush to exchange money for goods, buying things they have no use for, just in order to get rid of the money (the so-called "[[flight into real values]].")<ref name="Mises_business_cycle">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [http://mises.org/pdf/austtrad.pdf "The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays"] (pdf), "The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle", p.23-32, referenced 2009-10-27.</ref>

==History==
The regularly occurring booms and and busts were observed from approximately late eighteenth century, along with the start of the [[Industrial Revolution]]. Sudden economic crisis, when some king made war or confiscated the property of his subject were known; but there was no sign of the modern phenomena of general and fairly regular swings in business fortunes, of expansions and contractions.<ref name="Rothbard_business_cycle" />

The Austrian cycle theory began with the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and economist [[David Hume]], and with the eminent early nineteenth century English classical economist [[David Ricardo]]. These theorists observed another crucial institution developing in the mid-eighteenth century, alongside the industrial system. It was the institution of banking, with its capacity to expand credit and the money supply (first, in the form of paper money, or bank notes, and later in the form of demand deposits, or checking accounts, that are instantly redeemable in cash at the banks). It was the operations of these commercial banks which held the key to the mysterious recurrent cycles of expansion and contraction, of boom and bust, that had puzzled observers since the mid-eighteenth century.

The English "[[British Currency School|Currency School]]" has tried to explain the boom by the extension of credit resulting from the issue of banknotes without metallic backing. But the school did not see that current accounts which could be drawn upon at any time via checks, play exactly the same role in the extension of credit as bank notes. Because of the legislation inspired by the Currency School (like the [[Robert Peel|Peel]]'s [[Bank Act of 1844]] and similar laws in other countries), to prevent other economic crises, the issue of banknotes without metallic backing was restricted, but the expansion of credit through current accounts was unregulated. From this it was wrongly concluded that the English School's attempt to explain the trade cycle in monetary terms had been refuted by the facts.

The Currency School has also restricted its analysis to the case where credit is expanded in only one country while the banking policy of all the others remains conservative. The internal rise in prices would encourage imports and paralyse exports. Metallic money would drain away to foreign countries. As a result the banks would face increased demands for repayment of the instruments they have put into circulation (such as unbacked notes and current accounts), until they have to restrict credit. Ultimately the outflow of specie checks the rise in prices. The Currency School analyzed only this particular case; it did not consider credit expansion on an international scale by all the capitalist countries simultaneously. In the second half of the 19th century, this theory of the trade cycle fell into discredit, and the notion that the trade cycle had nothing to do with money and credit gained acceptance. The attempt of [[Knut Wicksell|Wicksell]] (1898) to rehabilitate the Currency School was short-lived.<ref name="Mises_business_cycle" />

== Questions Addressed ==

The Austrian business cycle theory attempts to answer the following questions about things which Austrian theorists, notably [[Murray Rothbard]], believe appear during the business cycle:<ref>[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd/chapter1.asp#boom_and_depression America's Great Depression], Murray Rothbard</ref>
* Why is there a sudden general cluster of business errors?
* Why do [[capital good]]s industries and asset market prices fluctuate more widely than do the [[consumer good]]s industries and consumer prices?
* Why is there a general increase in the quantity of money in the economy during every boom, and why is there generally, though not universally, a fall in the [[money supply]] during the depression (or a sharp contraction in the growth of [[credit (finance)|credit]] in a recession)?

== The Theory Explained ==
{{Wikipedia text}}
According to the theory, the boom-bust cycle of malinvestment is generated by excessive and unsustainable credit expansion to businesses and individual borrowers by the [[bank]]s.<ref name="econlib.org">[http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msT.html Theory of Money and Credit], Ludwig von Mises, Part III, Part IV</ref> This [[money creation|credit creation]] makes it appear as if the supply of "saved funds" ready for investment has increased, for the effect is the same: the supply of funds for investment purposes increases, and the [[interest rate]] is lowered.<ref>[[The Mystery of Banking]]. [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref> Borrowers, in short, are misled by the bank [[monetary inflation|inflation]] into believing that the supply of saved funds (the pool of "deferred" funds ready to be invested) is greater than it really is. When the pool of "saved funds" increases, entrepreneurs invest in "longer process of production," i.e., the capital structure is lengthened, especially in the "higher orders", most remote from the consumer. Borrowers take their newly acquired funds and bid up the prices of capital and other producers' goods, which, in the theory, stimulates a shift of investment from consumer goods to capital goods industries. Austrians further contend that such a shift is unsustainable and must reverse itself in due course. Proponents of the theory conclude that the longer the unsustainable shift in capital goods industries continues, the more violent and disruptive the necessary re-adjustment process.

The preference by entrepreneurs for longer term investments can be shown graphically by using any [[discounted cash flow]] model. Essentially lower [[interest rates]] increase the relative value of cash flows that come in the future. When modelling an investment opportunity, if [[interest rates]] are artificially low, entrepreneurs are led to believe the income they will receive in the future is sufficient to cover their near term investment costs. In simple terms, investments that would not make sense with a 10% cost of funds become feasible with a prevailing interest rate of 5% (and may become compelling for many entrepreneurs with a prevailing interest rate of 2%).<ref>[http://mises.org/story/2810 Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster], Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.</ref>

The proportion of [[Consumption (economics)|consumption]] to saving or investment is determined by people's [[time preference]]s, which is the degree to which they prefer present to future satisfactions. In a stable money environment<ref>[http://mises.org/daily/1186 Sound Money and the Business Cyle], John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> the interest rate is the price signal reflecting the balance of consumption and saving. If the goods and services presently on offer encourage people to spend, interest rates will be higher, reflecting people's short-term time preferences. If the goods and services presently on offer do not encourage people to spend, interest rates will be lower, reflecting people's desire to save their money (and spend their money on goods and services in the future). Thus, interest rates in a stable money environment<ref>[http://mises.org/daily/1186 Sound Money and the Business Cyle], John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> are determined by the time preferences of depositors.<ref>[http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msT.html Theory of Money and Credit], Ludwig von Mises, Part II</ref>

In an environment where the money supply is continually expanding through the issuance of credit, interest rates no longer reflect people's time preferences, as interest rates are set by the [[central bank]].<ref>[http://mises.org/daily/1186 Sound Money and the Business Cyle], John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> Because the debasement of the [[means of exchange]] in a low interest rate environment is universal, many entrepreneurs can make the same mistake at the same time (i.e. many believe investment funds are really available for long term projects when in fact the pool of available funds has come from credit creation - not real savings out of the existing money supply). As they are all competing for the same pool of capital and market share, some entrepreneurs begin to borrow simply to avoid being "overrun" by other entrepreneurs who may take advantage of the lower interest rates to invest in more up-to-date capital infrastructure. Mises suggests that a tendency towards over-investment and speculative borrowing in this "artificial" low interest rate environment is therefore almost inevitable.<ref name="econlib.org"/>

This new money then percolates downward from the business borrowers to the factors of production: to the landowners and capital owners who sold assets to the newly indebted [[entrepreneurs]], and then to the other factors of production in wages, rent, and interest. Austrian economists conclude that, since time preferences have not changed, people will rush to reestablish the old proportions, and demand will shift back from the higher to the lower orders. In other words, depositors will tend to spend money on consumption items, capital investors will find their projects are unsustainable, banks will then ask their borrowers for payment and interest rates and credit conditions will deteriorate.<ref name="econlib.org"/>

Austrian economists theorize that capital goods industries will find that their investments have been in error; that what they thought profitable really fails for lack of demand by their entrepreneurial customers. Higher orders of production will have turned out to be wasteful, and the malinvestment must be liquidated.<ref name="Human Action">[http://mises.org/pdf/humanaction/pdf/humanaction.pdf Human Action], Ludwig von Mises, p.572</ref> In other words, the particular ''types'' of investments made during the monetary boom were inappropriate and "wrong" from the perspective of the long-term financial sustainability of the market because the price signals stimulating the investment were distorted by [[fractional reserve banking]]'s recursive lending "ballooning" the pricing structure in various capital markets.

This concept is captured by the term "heterogeneity of capital", where Austrian economists emphasize that the mere macroeconomic "total" of investment does not adequately capture whether this investment is genuinely sustainable or productive, due to the inability of the raw numbers to reveal the particular investment activities being undertaken and the inherent inability of the numbers to reveal whether these particular investment activities were appropriate and economically sustainable given people's real preferences.

The boom then, is actually a period of wasteful [[malinvestment]], a "false boom" where the particular kinds of investments undertaken during the period of fiat money expansion are revealed to lead nowhere but to insolvency and unsustainability. It is the time when errors are made, when speculative borrowing has driven up prices for assets and capital to unsustainable levels, due to low interest rates "artificially" increasing the [[money supply]] and triggering an unsustainable injection of [[fiat money]] "funds" available for investment into the system, thereby tampering with the complex pricing mechanism of the [[free market]]. "Real" savings would have required higher [[interest rates]] to encourage depositors to save their money in term deposits to invest in longer term projects under a stable money supply. According to von Mises's work, the artificial stimulus caused by bank-created credit causes a generalized speculative investment bubble, not justified by the long-term structure of the market.<ref name="econlib.org"/>

[[Ludwig von Mises]] stated that the "[[financial crisis|crisis]]" (or "[[credit crunch]]") arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired allocation of saving and consumption at prevailing interest rates.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org"/> The "recession" or "depression" is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the monetary boom, and reestablishes efficient service of sustainable consumer desires.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org"/>

Since it takes very little time for the new credit-sourced money to filter down from the initial borrowers to the recipients of the borrowed funds (the various factors of production), why don't all booms come quickly to an end? Continually expanding bank credit can keep the borrowers one step ahead of consumer retribution (with the help of successively lower interest rates from the [[central bank]]). In the theory, this postpones the "day of reckoning" and defers the collapse of unsustainably inflated asset prices.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="goldensextant.com">[http://www.goldensextant.com/SavingtheSystem.html Saving the System], Robert K. Landis, 21 August 2004</ref> It can also be temporarily put off by price deflation or exogenous events such as the "cheap" or free acquisition of marketable resources by market participants and the banks funding the borrowing (such as the acquisition of land from local governments, or in extreme cases, the acquisition of foreign land through the waging of war).<ref>[http://mises.org/story/3010 War and Inflation], Lew Rockwell</ref>

The "false" monetary boom ends when bank credit expansion finally stops - when no further investments can be found which provide adequate returns for speculative borrowers at prevailing interest rates. It is asserted that the longer the "false" monetary boom goes on, the bigger and more speculative the borrowing, the more wasteful the errors committed and the longer and more severe will be the necessary bankruptcies, foreclosures and depression readjustment.<ref name="Human Action"/>. There is also a notion of capital consumption contributing negatively to the readjustment period, which has been discussed in works such as ''[[Human Action]]''.<ref name="Human Action">[http://mises.org/pdf/humanaction/pdf/humanaction.pdf Human Action], Ludwig von Mises, Chp. 18</ref>

[[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]] warned of a major economic crisis before the [[Great Depression]]. Hayek made his prediction of a coming business crisis in February 1929. He warned that a financial crisis was an unavoidable consequence of reckless monetary expansion.

===The role of central banks===

All Austrian theorists consider the unsustainable expansion of bank credit through [[fractional reserve banking]] as the driving feature of most business cycles. However, Murray Rothbard paid particular attention to the role of central banks in creating an environment of loose credit prior to the onset of the [[Great Depression]], and the subsequent ineffectiveness of central bank policies, which simply delayed necessary price adjustments and prolonged market dysfunction.<ref>''[[America's Great Depression]]'', [[Murray Rothbard]]</ref> Rothbard begins with the assertion that in a market with no centralized monetary authority, there would be no simultaneous cluster of malinvestments or entrepreneurial errors, since astute [[entrepreneur]]s would not all make errors at the same time and would quickly take advantage of any temporary, isolated mispricing. In addition, in an [[openness|open]], non-centralized (uninsured) capital market, astute bankers would shy away from speculative lending and uninsured depositors would carefully monitor the balance sheets of risky financial institutions, tempering any speculative excesses that arose sporadically in the finance markets. The cycle of ''generalized'' malinvestment is therefore caused solely by ''centralized'' monetary intervention in the money markets by the [[central bank]].

Rothbard asserts that this over-encouragement to borrow and lend is initiated by the mispricing of credit via the [[central bank]]'s ''centralized'' control over interest rates and its need to protect banks from periodic [[bank run]]s (which Austrian economists believe then causes interest rates to be set too low for too long when compared to the rates that would prevail in a genuine non-[[central bank]] dominated [[free market]]).<ref name="econlib.org"/><ref name="mises.org">[http://mises.org/story/2810 Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster], Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007</ref>

===The element of risk===
[[Interest rate]]s pushed below the natural rate can have another serious damaging effect. They can distort the appreciation of [[risk]]. Austrian economists have claimed that interest rates include a risk premium in addition to valuing future over present consumption. It follows that interest rates below the natural rate can create an unwarranted
bullishness that leads to systemic "appraisal optimism." Error prone "marginal entrepreneurs" receive resources which would not have been available to them in ordinary circumstances.

This mistaken optimism leads to reductions in precautionary assets or "reserve assets", which businesses hold against untoward events. Businesses conclude that they are in a less risky business environment than they had thought. The resources released by the reduction in precautionary assets can be used to maintain the boom. It is important to note that the drawdown of precautionary assets can only continue for a limited period. At some stage, precautionary assets will be reduced to a minimum below which businessmen will be reluctant to let them fall. (As an example, in the period between the 1870s and the late 1930s, commodity stocks, which may constitute an important part of precautionary assets, were at their lowest point at the end of the boom and were at their highest just before the recovery.)

Risky investments will be concentrated at the beginning of the boom when stocks of precautionary assets are high. As holdings of precautionary assts are diverted into maintaining production in excess of the sustainable production frontier, businesses gradually realize that their resilience to adverse shocks has been reduced, and shift their attention to what they perceive to be less risky but more roundabout investments. It may also help explain how the boom could become self-reinforcing. As the boom progresses, precautionary assets are reduced as they are used to sustain the exuberance of the boom and businessmen’s confidence and optimism increases. Ten years after the start of a boom, businessmen may be more optimistic than they were five years earlier merely because the boom has lasted so long and fears of recession have faded.

Following the crisis, it is natural for businesses to rebuild their precautionary assets. Until these stocks are rebuilt, the economy will lack resilience and remain unduly vulnerable to untoward events.<ref name="Miller_Systemic">Robert C. B. Miller. [https://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae15_4_13.pdf "Systemic Appraisal Optimism and Austrian Business Cycle Theory"] (pdf), ''The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics'', Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 2012. Referenced 2013-01-21.</ref>

==Other theories==
Since the cycles appeared on the scene at about the same time as modern industry, [[Karl Marx|Marx]] concluded that business cycles were an inherent feature of the capitalist market economy. Many current schools of economic thought, regardless of other differences and the different causes that they attribute to the cycle, agree on this vital point: That the business cycle originates somewhere deep within the free-market economy, and it can be only solved by some form of massive government intervention.<ref name="Rothbard_business_cycle" />

===Innovations===
It is sometimes held, that [[Innovation|innovations]] cause the ups and downs of the business cycle. The most prominent defender of that view was probably [[Joseph Schumpeter]]. He stated that booms are due to technological or other innovations whose implementations at first seem to promise high profits. After a while, more and more entrepreneurs copy the strategy of the pioneer firms until competitive behavior forces profits to go down again and a depression begins, in which the market is cleaned of unprofitable firms. This is a brief description of the well-known process of "[[creative destruction]]" — a term made famous by Schumpeter himself. The new state of equilibrium is only maintained until a new innovation creates the foundation for another boom.

The industrial revolution, the appearance of railway tracks, or the rise of cheap automobiles can be interpreted as examples. Furthermore, the [[dotcom bubble]] at the end of the last decade could have been due to innovations like the internet. Even the current crisis can be regarded as the result of financial innovations.<ref name="Kahler_Innovations">Malte Tobias Kahler. [http://mises.org/daily/3998 "Do Innovations Cause Business Cycles?"], Mises Daily, January 07, 2010, referenced 2010-01-07.</ref>

However, it is not technological innovation that generates the boom, but the general boom that makes it possible for more and more firms to implement their innovative ideas. In every moment there exist many ideas for possible innovations and improvements. The latest innovation has not yet been implemented in every business. If there are always many ideas whose only problem is to get enough funds, then it is not technology, but [[Saving|savings]] that limit development. To implement them, the companies need capital. Society has to save first and then grant credit.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with using credit for an innovative project. The problem only appears when these credits are created out of thin air, thus inducing [[malinvestment]]s. In an environment of monetary expansion, many innovative projects can be started that are in fact not sustainable. The clusters of innovative activities that seem to be the cause of inevitable depressions are in fact a symptom of the distortion of the market process that is introduced by fractional-reserve banks.

From a policy point of view, using political means to push forward new innovations (like "renewable energy sources") will not suffice to get the economy out of the slump. Moreover, it can be highly dangerous for the aid for such innovations to be flanked by expansive monetary policy.<ref name="Kahler_Innovations" />A recent study suggests that this was the case in Spain where a "green" bubble went boom and bust<ref name="Mariana_Renewable_Spain">Instituto Juan de Mariana. [http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf "Study of the Effects of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources"] (pdf), pp. 19–20. March 2009, referenced 2010-01-08.</ref> — with all its destructive side effects, including unemployment.<ref name="Schwartz_Unemployment">Nelson D. Schwartz. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/business/global/01jobless.html "In Spain, a Soaring Jobless Rate for Young Workers"], published December 31, 2009, referenced 2010-01-08.</ref>

===Mania theories===
An alternative class of explanations for booms and busts, might be categorized as mania theories. In a mania, investors become entranced by some particular investment—[[Tulip mania|tulip bulbs]], [[Mississippi Bubble|French colonial trading ventures]], Florida real estate, the "[[nifty fifty]]" stocks, or [[Dot-com bubble|Internet companies]]—and begin a self-perpetuating process of bidding more for the asset, seeing its price rise, bidding even more for it, and so on. Like a manic-depressive who can only maintain his manic phase for so long before crashing, eventually investors begin to have doubts about the focus of their mania, at which point the bubble bursts.

There is nothing in most mania theories that contradicts an Austrian account of boom and bust. The two theories look at the same phenomenon from the vantage point of two different disciplines: social psychology and economics. They may, in fact, prove to be complementary. The Austrian theory offers a coherent explanation of the onset of the mania—a credit expansion—and the onset of the depression—the cessation of the expansion. After all, the mere fact that people are excited about French-Colonial North America or the Internet cannot create a speculative bubble by itself. The funds to speculate with must come from somewhere, and the Austrian theory identifies where. On the other hand, mania theories might help to explain the reason that booms often seem to be channeled into certain faddish investments.<ref name="Callahan_Dot">Gene Callahan and Roger W. Garrison. [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_2_3.pdf "Does Austrian Business Cycle Theory Help Explain the Dot-Com Boom and Bust?"], ''The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics'', Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer 2003). Referenced 2010-01-10.</ref>

==Criticisms==
These are some of the more frequent or known criticisms of the theory.

===Central banking===
{{See also|History of money and banking in the US}}

Some critics point out, that the theory blames the [[business cycle]] on central banks, but the cycle has been well known throughout 19th century, well before [[central bank]]ing in the modern sense and the 20th century growth of the state. One particular example are the United States and its wide range of monetary and banking systems.<ref name="Quiggin_Austrian">John Quiggin. [http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/05/03/austrian-business-cycle-theory/ "Austrian Business Cycle Theory"], posted on May 3rd, 2009, referenced 2009-11-11.</ref>

Many casual expositions of '''ABCT''' say things like, "The business cycle is not a feature of the free market, but instead is caused by the manipulations of the central bank." But it is far more accurate to say that ABCT blames the boom-bust cycle on [[fractional reserve banking]]. Specifically, when banks are allowed to issue paper money (or increase customers' electronic bank deposits) without an actual act of saving by somebody in the economy, then the resulting drop in interest rates is artificial. The false interest rate sets in motion an unsustainable boom period, which leads people to erroneously consume [[capital]] and which creates the inevitable bust.

Government intervention is still very much involved here. Were it not for legal privileges granted to banks, the practice of fractional-reserve banking would be "regulated" by market competition. Even if banks were legally allowed to extend more loans than they had cash (or gold) in the vaults, they would be very cautious with their overissue so long as a [[bank run]] would spell ruin. Yet time and again, even before the establishment of central banks, governments would allow the banks to "suspend specie payment" during panics. This practice of absolving privileged bankers of their legal obligations was simply institutionalized (in the United States) with the creation of the Federal Reserve. It is no coincidence that the worst boom-bust in US history occurred sixteen years after the formation of the modern American central bank.
<ref name="Murphy_Quiggin">Robert P. Murphy. [http://mises.org/story/3466 "Correcting Quiggin on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory"], Mises Daily: Monday, May 25, 2009, referenced 2009-11-11.</ref>

===Rational Expectations===
"If investors correctly anticipate that a decline in interest rates will be temporary, they won't evaluate long-term investments on the basis of current rates. So, the Austrian story requires either a failure of rational expectations, or a capital market failure that means that individuals rationally choose to make "bad" investments on the assumption that someone else will bear the cost. And if either of these conditions apply, there's no reason to think that market outcomes will be optimal in general."<ref name="Quiggin_Austrian" />

First off, free individuals often make mistakes — even systematic mistakes. But even perfectly rational entrepreneurs who know a boom is underway cannot prevent their more reckless competitors from taking cheap (or now free) government loans and bidding away scarce resources. Workers don't care whether their paychecks come from genuine saving or from the printing press, and every few years there is always a fresh crop of naïve employers willing to borrow money and start new projects.

Second, Austrians emphasize that interest rates ''communicate information'' to entrepreneurs. In some critiques it seems that "everybody knows" that the true interest rate ought to be 5 percent, and so the central bank's efforts to push it down to 3 percent should be easily corrected. Yet nobody knows what the truly free-market [[interest rate]] is. That's why market prices are important in the first place, and why government distortions of these prices lead to real imbalances in the economy.<ref name="Murphy_Quiggin" />

Entrepreneurs don't need to speculate about a change in consumers’ "rate of [[time preference]]", or about the "supply of capital goods". An individual entrepreneur is concerned only with a very small set of market prices, namely, the prices of the inputs she will need for her projects, and the prices for which these products will sell. That’s the whole point of relying on the market rates of interest and other prices — it eliminates the need for individuals to speculate about aggregates that are far too complex for any single mind to comprehend.

Also, some expositions of ABCT assume an initial free market state, and then analyze the impact of a one-shot [[intervention]]. But in reality the government of each major country intervene permanently in the credit market by the creation of a central bank (or a centralized system of banks). Actors in these economies have no idea what the free market rate of interest would be in the absence of such interference; even if the rates were raised, the new rate could still be below the "natural rate".<ref name="Murphy_rational">Robert P. Murphy. [http://consultingbyrpm.com/files/2009.05.14%20ABCTRatExp%20Excerpt.pdf "The Rational Expectations Objection to Austrian Business Cycle Theory: Prisoner’s Dilemma or Noisy Signal?"] (pdf), last updated May 25, 2005, referenced 2009-11-12.</ref>

===Investment vs. Consumption===
If booms are driven by mistaken beliefs that investments have become more profitable, and labor and other resources are channeled into projects not compatible with the overall level of real savings, then consumption should go down, say some critics. But booms are characterized by high, not low, consumption. If the government can't make the economy more productive by pushing down interest rates, how could businesses possibly produce more investment and consumption goods during the boom?<ref name="Quiggin_Austrian" /><ref name="Cowen_ABCT">Tyler Cowen. [http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10/paul-krugman-on.html "Paul Krugman on Austrian trade cycle theory"], posted on October 14, 2008, referenced 2009-11-14.</ref>

The answer is in the Austrian approach to [[capital]] theory. The low interest rates of the boom period mislead entrepreneurs into borrowing too much, but they also mislead consumers into borrowing too much and saving too little. This is physically possible because resources that otherwise would have gone into replenishing the capital structure are instead devoted to new projects or additional consumption goods. This "eating of the seed corn" can take a while to manifest in a complex, modern economy.<ref name="Murphy_Quiggin" />

====Unemployment in the boom====
In a similar vein, it is pointed out that there is generally no period of high [[unemployment]] when resources are transferred out of consumption-producing sectors into investment goods-producing sectors. There is no necessity that the transfer of resources out of investment goods-producing sectors be accompanied by high unemployment.<ref name="DeLong_ABCT">Brad DeLong. [http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/04/what-is-austrian-economics.html "What Is Austrian Economics?"], April 2010, referenced 2010-04-27.</ref>

Suppose we start in an original equilibrium position, where unemployment is at the "natural" rate, reflecting the normal turnover of workers as some businesses fail, etc. Then a $100 billion in crisp new bills is printed, and handed out to bankers. The banks lend the new money to employers, who enter the labor market with the fresh wads of cash in their pockets. Armed with the money that was just created out of thin air, the employers bid up wage rates. Seeing the higher pay, many workers quit their current jobs and take new positions in the expanding sectors. Also, some previously unemployed workers end their job search and take positions with the employers who got their hands on the new $100 billion. There is no reason for unemployment to go up in the scenario just described.

But when the the influx of new money is cut off, the underlying economic fundamentals will reassert themselves. The workers who had been drawn into the expanding sectors by new money weren't ''supposed'' to move to those sectors. The employers in the boom sectors will lose their advantage over their competitors in other sectors. Without being propped up artificially by cheap money, the bloated boom sectors will realize their unprofitability. They will cut back on operations and lay off workers.

And why don't the laid-off workers move seamlessly back into the original niches from which they came? Why does a massive reservoir of unemployed workers build up after the bust, when no such reservoir built up during the boom? The answer is pretty simple: Workers are more eager to quit and take a better job than to be laid off and take a worse job. During the boom, workers are drawn into the expanding sectors by the promise of higher wages. They aren't forced into the expanding sectors by getting let go from their original position; instead they voluntarily leave. No less important is the '''capital consumption''' during the boom period. Society "eats the seed corn" through [[malinvestment]].<ref name="Murphy_explain">Robert P. Murphy. [http://mises.org/daily/3387 "Austrians Can Explain the Boom and the Bust"], Mises Daily, March 2009, referenced 2010-04-27.</ref>

===There was no inflation as measured by the CPI===
Some critics point out, that if prices did not rise (the CPI did not rise excessively) there was really no inflation. There was no wave of rising consumer price inflation in the 2000s.<ref name="DeLong_ABCT" />

However, as the [[CPI]] is an arbitrary index of prices, it does not necessarily capture the "true" inflation picture.<ref>[http://dailyreckoning.com/why-you-shouldnt-trust-the-core-cpi-numbers/ You shouldn't trust the CPI numbers]</ref> For example, in the 2000s, there was an unprecedented spike in house price inflation fuelled by credit growth. This is a form of inflation, but was not fully picked up in the inflation figures, which focus more on consumer goods.

Expansionary monetary policy makes prices higher than they otherwise would have been. For example, the extraordinary interventions in late 2008 — in which the M1 measure of the monetary stock rose 12 percent over a three-month period — went hand-in-hand with falling prices. Prices should have fallen in response to the bursting bubble. Prices would have fallen more, were it not for a floor under them with an aggressive influx of new money. At the same time, house prices rose at unusual rates during the boom years.<ref name="Murphy_Fed">Robert P. Murphy. [http://mises.org/daily/3252 "Evidence that the Fed Caused the Housing Boom"], Mises Daily, December 2008, referenced 2010-04-27.</ref><ref name="Murphy_explain" />

Murray Rothbard stressed that the stock-market [[Late 1920s bubble|bubble of the late 1920s]] — fueled by the Fed's policies — did not coincide with rampant ''consumer''-price inflation - but did produce "inflation" if the term is used to describe a situation in which the money supply is expanding and the dollar is losing value.<ref name="Murphy_Chicago">Robert P. Murphy. [http://mises.org/daily/4875 "The Fed: The Chicago School's Achilles Heel"], see also [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&chart_type=line&graph_id=&category_id=&recession_bars=On&width=630&height=378&bgcolor=%23B3CDE7&graph_bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&preserve_ratio=true&fo=ve&id=CPIAUCNS&transformation=l graphic]. ''Mises Daily'', December 13, 2010. Referenced 2010-12-14.</ref>

===Magnitude of a depression===
Some critics and adherents of the ABCT misunderstand it if they think it is some sort of comprehensive theory of the boom, breaking point, and length/depth of the bust. It isn't. The theory by itself is a theory of the unsustainable boom. It is a theory that explains why driving the market rate of interest below the natural rate through expansionary monetary policy produces a boom that contains endogenous processes that will cause that boom to turn to a bust.

ABCT tells us nothing about exactly when the boom will break and the precise factors that will cause it. The theory claims that eventually costs will rise in such a way that make it clear that the longer-term production processes falsely induced by the boom will not be profitable, leading to their abandonment. But it says nothing about ''which'' projects will be undertaken in ''which'' markets and ''which'' costs (other than perhaps the loan rate) will rise, and it tells us nothing about the ''timing'' of those events. We know it ''has to happen'', but the where and when are unique, not typical, features of business cycles.

Once the turning point is reached, ABCT tells us little to nothing about how the bust will play out. Yes, we know that further inflation and interventionist attempts to prevent the necessary reallocation of resources will make matters worse, but the theory by itself doesn't tell us a priori how this will play out in any given historical circumstance. The ABCT is ''not a theory of the causes of the length and depth of recessions/depressions, but a theory of the unsustainable boom''.

For one example, the ABCT cannot explain the entirety of the [[Great Depression]]. What ABCT can explain (at least potentially) is why there was a recession at all in 1929. It argues that it was the result of an unsustainable boom initiated by an excess supply of money at some point in the 1920s. The bigger the boom, ''[[ceteris paribus]]'', the worse the bust, but even that doesn't tell us much. Once the turning point is reached, there's not a lot that ABCT can say other than to let the healing process unfold unimpeded.

The same can be said of the most recent boom and bust, where ABCT can help us explain why the boom was unsustainable and necessitated a bust, but it cannot, by itself, explain why the housing market was front and center and why it turned into a financial crisis as well. Nor can it explain the lingering slow recovery in and of itself. Note that if the ABCT is a theory of the unsustainable boom, then a recession caused by other factors would not invalidate the ABCT.<ref name="Horwitz_Cannot">Steven Horwitz. [http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2012/02/what-the-austrian-business-cycle-theory-can-and-cannot-explain.html "What the Austrian Business Cycle Theory Can and Cannot Explain"], ''Coordination Problem'', February 11, 2012. Referenced 2013-01-04.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==See also==
*[[Ponzi scheme]]

==Links==
* [http://mises.org/Community/wikis/economics/austrian-business-cycle-theory-learning-materials.aspx Full collection] Austrian Business Cycle Theory learning materials and resources at [[Mises.org]]
* [http://mises.org/daily/672 "Austrian Business Cycle Theory: A Brief Explanation"] by Dan Mahoney, May 2001
* [http://mises.org/daily/2673 "Why Don't Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Business Cycle?"] by Brian J. Stanley, August 2007
* [http://mises.org/daily/4730 "Are the Austrians Too Harsh?"] by [[John P. Cochran]], October 2010
* [http://mises.org/daily/4682 "Putting Austrian Business-Cycle Theory to the Test"] by Robert P. Murphy, October 2010
*[http://www.anarcocapitalista.com/JHSLSE10.htm "Financial Crisis and Economic Recession"] by [[Jesus Huerta de Soto]]
* [http://mises.org/resources/666 "Austrian Business Cycles, Plucking Models, and Real Business Cycles"] by John P. Cochran, 2001
* [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.196.6182&rep=rep1&type=pdf Empirical Evidence on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory] (pdf) by James P. Keeler, 2001
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCmwRN5gjOo ABCT described by Tom Woods] (video)
* [http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/behind-business-cycles Behind Business Cycles] (video) by Steve Patterson, October 2013
* {{cb|2013/08/mises-and-hayek-at-columbia-and-the-bank-of-international-settlements/|Mises and Hayek at Columbia and the Bank of International Settlements|John P. Cochran|August 2013}}
* [https://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae15_1_1.pdf A Reformulation of Austrian Business Cycke Theory in Light of the Financial Crisis] (pdf) Joseph T. Salerno, 2012

* {{wplink}}

[[Category:Austrian School of Economics]]
[[Category:Economic concepts]]

Austrian Economics Wiki:Commons

2014-01-08T16:36:48Z

GMedich: /* Linked discussion threads */ response

<div class="messagebox" style="width:100%; padding:.5em;">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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__NEWSECTIONLINK__
[[Category:Mises Wiki|Commons]]
{{archive box collapsible|
*[[MisesWiki:Commons/Archives/2010|2010]]
*[[/Archives/2011|2011]]
*[[/Archives/2012|2012]]
}}

{{TOC right}}

For older discussions, enter the [[/Archives|archives]].

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! [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk: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! [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 09:52, 17 May 2013 (MSD)

: Hallo Diax! I have reverted the change after some consideration. The reason is that fiat notes ''are'' money (even if it's paper money). Check the definition of [[money]] for more details, but in short it is a commonly used [[medium of exchange]] - i.e. whatever is widely used for that purpose at the moment. But of course, the real question is whether fiat notes are a '''''good''''' form of money - and that's where we can put in some good arguments. :) Cheers, [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 14:18, 19 May 2013 (MSD)

Yes money is a medium of exchange but I'm also fairly sure that Mises talks about the promissary note being different from "pure" money in ''Human Action''. Of course it isn't a big deal. [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 04:23, 22 May 2013 (MSD)
: I think he refers to a situation when there exists the 'pure' money (gold, silver, etc.) and there are also promissory notes. While only the first is 'actual' money, both can circulate side-by-side. Confusing the two can have dangerous consequences, as Mises shows.
: These days, the dominant form of money are fiat notes that are not backed by anything. No confusion there. :) [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 10:44, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

== Red links ==

New issue for discussion...a user recently [http://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Austrian_School&curid=42&diff=11623&oldid=11614&rcid=11779 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 [[Wikipedia:WP:RED|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]]. --[[User:John James|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. --[[User:Forgottenman|Forgottenman]] ([[User talk: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. --[[User:John James|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. [[User:Pestergaines|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. {{nowrap|--[[User:John James|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. --[[User:Forgottenman|Forgottenman]] ([[User talk: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 [[wikipedia:WP:PJ|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 "[[wikipedia:Template:Wikify|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. {{nowrap|--[[User:John James|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) [[mw:Extension:RPED|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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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.[[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 06:17, 15 May 2013 (MSD)Diax[[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 06:17, 15 May 2013 (MSD)

I expanded the Negative Rights and the Positive Rights articles. However I do not know how to add references. If someone could let me know I would appreciate it. Sorry for the inconvience. Peace be with you! [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 04:48, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

: No problem! In short, check out other pages - see e.g. this [[Jay Cooke|recent one]]. Click on Edit and see what's in there - note the 'Reflist' section close to the end of the page, that's what will produce the whole references block. Then note the 'ref' sections that look like this:
::<nowiki><ref name="Britannica_Cooke">Encyclopædia Britannica Online. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/136088/Jay-Cooke "Jay Cooke"], referenced 2013-05-21.</ref></nowiki>
: ([https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Footnotes Here's] the official documentation.)
: The 'name' part is only necessary if you reuse a reference. Often, you can get away with something like this:
::<nowiki><ref>Encyclopædia Britannica Online. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/136088/Jay-Cooke "Jay Cooke"].</ref></nowiki>
: So it involves a little typing, but after you do it once or twice, references are easy. I've added them to the [[Negative right]] page. Check the changes I've made and try it for yourself - and let me know how it works out for you! (See also [[Essay:How to make good wiki pages|here]] for some more tips on how to make good pages.) Cheers, [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 10:32, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

So I saw that you said that the part about the founders pulling alot from John Locke needed to be cited (this is in the [[negative rights]] article). I'll agree that it would be nice if such a citiation existed but I'm not sure that it does. I put that in there because it's fairly obvious. "Life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" is essentially a direct quote from Locke; "life, liberty, and property". You know that's so obvious that someone has to have expressed it somewhere before... Just got to find it.[[Special:Contributions/70.59.102.81|70.59.102.81]] 19:49, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

== Main page revamp ideas ==

As per [http://groups.google.com/a/mises.com/group/wiki/browse_thread/thread/f632e1305a0b4f4f# 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 [[MisesWiki:Bounty board|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? --[[User:John James|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. [[User:Pestergaines|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 {{tl|Current events}} off the main page and substitute your new one. --[[User:Forgottenman|Forgottenman]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:Pestergaines|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<nowiki>[[Economic Freedom Index::{{{row 10 info|}}}]]</nowiki> (that template needs to be more semanticly named). Then, you would use the following code (with templates from http://dnd-wiki.org/):

:<nowiki>{| style="text-align:left;" class="sortable"</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|-</nowiki>
:<nowiki>! Name !! Economic Freedom Index !! Corruption Perception Index !! Doing Business Ranking</nowiki>
:<nowiki>{{#ask: [[Category:Countries]]</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|?Economic Freedom Index</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|?Corruption Perception Index</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|?Doing Business Ranking</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|format=template</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|template=Table Row</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|link=none</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|limit=9999</nowiki>
:<nowiki>}}</nowiki>
:<nowiki>|}</nowiki>

: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. --[[User:Havvy|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? [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] 14:17, 31 August 2011 (MSD)

:::The effort involved for migrating the wiki is as follows:
:::#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.
:::#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).
:::#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''.
:::#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 [http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeons_and_Dragons_Wiki:Ask_Syntax 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. --[[User:Havvy|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 <code>featured::Libertarianism</code> 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, <nowiki>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=}}</nowiki> 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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] 03:27, 9 July 2012 (MSD)

== The Big One ==

It is coming... can you feel it? [[User:Pestergaines|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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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. :) [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 03:41, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

I had the misfortune to walk into the living room whilst the roomies were watching the news the other day and CBS was refering to the '08 bubble as the "Great Recession". I found that highly entertaining. [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 20:11, 22 May 2013 (MSD)[[Special:Contributions/70.59.102.81|70.59.102.81]] 19:51, 22 May 2013 (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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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, [[User:John James|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, [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 19:23, 12 August 2012 (MSD)

Do people seriously bother to create bots to put up nonsense pages? Seems a little ridiculous that someone would waste their time like that... Perhaps I'm just not cynical enough...[[Special:Contributions/70.59.102.81|70.59.102.81]] 19:56, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

: They do, but mostly it's just spam, where the motivation is cold hard cash. I assume most of the edits that are complete nonsense are simply the generation of 'plausible' traffic to cover up other spam. For some people this is clearly worth the effort. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 01:59, 24 May 2013 (MSD)

:: Then again, someone (or rather some''thing'') just posted a remarkably coherent and quite polished page about Essays. I have deleted the page, but actually hope that it ''was'' a spambot and not a misguided human (and that I just didn't fail the {{w|Turing test}}...).
:: So this may be the future of spamming - lots of crap with some well-written borderline cases that creep up on websites and sometimes slip through. Guess it's only gonna get worse. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 00:11, 29 May 2013 (MSD)
:::http://xkcd.com/810/ Wow, [http://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Essay&timestamp=20130528091338 that essay] on essays truly was a class act; it even used the word "learnt". I was very impressed at their subtlety. Also, it wasn't that long ago that an IP spammer hit the "undo" button on my revert of his spam. It made me take a second look at what was posted, because that's ordinarily behavior only humans have engaged in. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:03, 26 November 2013 (MSK)

==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 [[MisesWiki:Configuration#Asirra|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 [http://i.qkme.me/3q3j8b.jpg 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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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 ''[http://mises.org/easier/easier.asp Mises Made Easier]'' as articles. Although they would be a bunch of stubs, it might be better than nothing. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 19:54, 20 October 2012 (MSD)

I actually signed up because I was couldn't work out what "catalactics" meant. It was only as I started trying to figure out how a wiki works that I found this reference to Mises Made Easier and found the answer there. Mises Made easier is more like a dictionary than an encyclopedia, but if it provides the stubs from which stuff branches out, mass importing it sounds like a great idea. [[User:Labcoat|Labcoat]] ([[User talk:Labcoat|talk]]) 02:49, 22 November 2013 (MSK)
:Someone will have to actually muster the initiative to actually implement this idea, though. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 05:06, 22 November 2013 (MSK)

:: For things like these I suggest to create a [[MisesWiki:Call to Action|Call to Action]]. Mises Made Easier was already considered at some point (see the [[MisesWiki talk:Call to Action|talk]] page) but other topics seemed more attractive at the time. @Labcoat - if you were equipped with tools that would make the import easier, would you be willing to work on it? (It would still involve going through all the topics manually and doing some editing, but the copying and pasting would be taken care of. That doesn't mean you have to ''do'' everything by yourself, the question is only if you are willing to do some of it.)

:: (And aside - if you've learned a bit about catalactics, feel free to create a page or at least a stub about it. ;) ) [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 17:36, 24 November 2013 (MSK)
:::For the [[catallactics]] article, one could start by borrowing [[wikipedia:Catallactics|Wikipedia's content]]. I think an automated tool would be the best way to import ''Mises Made Easier''. We could program a bot to do it, or we could run a script on the server. It's probably better to use a bot; the code would then be more reusable for other purposes, because it's easy for bureaucrats to create bot accounts, but only a few people are going to have shell access to the server.

:::I see this as requiring a few steps: (1) convert the ''Mises Made Easy'' page into a format that can be used by the bot. Ultimately, it's going to be turned into [http://us3.php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php an array] of glossary entries. It'll be necessary to convert the HTML into wikitext and make a few other changes (e.g. making the page titles bold); that shouldn't be too hard, because it'll be only a few kinds of things such as italics and hypertext that need to be converted. It might be good to go through that list and decide what categories you want those pages to be in; we can then include those from the beginning rather than later going through page by page and making edits one by one. (2) Create a clone of Mises Wiki as it exists right now and do a test import of the articles to it. Wait, say, a week for everyone to have a chance to review the new pages for problems before we do the import here.

:::(3) Create a new namespace on this wiki, e.g. MME:, to which we will import all this content. This will allow us to easily undo the changes if needed; e.g. if we discover problems at this point that we missed earlier, we can do a mass deletion of everything in that namespace, if needed, without disturbing our existing mainspace. I've generally found it's easier and cleaner to delete a bunch of robotically-implemented mistakes than to revert them. (4) Move everything from MME: to mainspace, unless there are already articles there with those names. (5) See what remains in MME:; either incorporate it into existing articles or delete it. (6) Get rid of the MME: namespace, once there is nothing left in it that's of further use.

:::I mentioned below the possibility of switching to a new glossary system enabled by {{w|Semantic MediaWiki}} or [[mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon]]. Prior to the importation of all those articles would be an excellent time to go that route, if we're going to do it. I've been pretty pleased with how it's been working out on my other wikis (PolyWiki.org, ChildWiki.net, and SuicideWiki.org) because it's such an efficient system for creating glossaries, quote lists, etc. and main page summaries simultaneously. However, those are all one-editor sites, and the extension was just created last month.

:::Also, I think we'd want to discuss what the templates should look like. E.g., should the parameters have names (like in [[:Template:Cite web]], which has parameters "url", "title", etc.) or should they be numbered (like in template [[:Template:Md]]? The latter is what I've been doing because it saves typing and is perhaps easier to read, but it makes it harder to change the parameters later, because you have to migrate all the transcluding pages over. One of MediaWiki's main weaknesses is that it doesn't have much metadata functionality; this is one way to solve that. The other alternative would be Semantic MediaWiki, which has a larger community of users.

:::[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=to+be+honest To be honest], if I were you, I'd go with SMW, because then you're not dependent on me for maintenance of the extension. MediaWiki upgrades are always breaking extensions, so that the developers have to write new versions. The idea BedellPenDragon embodies is a good and useful one, and there needs to be an extension with that functionality, but there are no other developers maintaining that extension, and I don't know how long I'm going to be around. Maybe for years, maybe not. Then again, we could say that about anyone.

:::I just noticed, some of this is going to need some manual intervention. E.g. [http://mises.org/easier/V.asp#4 Verstehen] should be a redirect to [[understanding]], not its own separate entry. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 07:29, 25 November 2013 (MSK)

:::: I was thinking of doing something smaller, since it will require some editing on every page (not just categories, but also linking to other pages, if no further editing is necessary). And if we have to pre-decide which article gets which category, it means we'll have to revisit each page at least two times anyway.

:::: That being said, having a universal import bot/script would be really neat, the significant time investment is my main concern here; I may not be able to help out with it much. Will we make use of it again?

:::: As for Semantic MediaWiki BedellPenDragon - the first is worrying as it is a one-way ticket that makes things more complex for new users (higher barriers to entry), the other is a indeed a new product with little support and no user base. I've been skeptical about these extensions for a while; then again, I'm mainly focused on (or to be honest, obsessed) with content and not as much with the presentation side of things.

:::: My general preference is to make things simple and easier to maintain. These days, I don't expect too much activity, more of steady slow growth with occasional bursts, which I'd like to accommodate. We'll see! [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 02:37, 26 November 2013 (MSK)

:::: And here's a link for the whole thing: [[MisesWiki:Call to Action/Mises Made Easier]] [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 02:51, 26 November 2013 (MSK)
:::::Yeah, it's easier (and in fact inevitable, to some extent) to follow Wikipedia's lead, as far as extensions are concerned. Then there's pretty much a guarantee that it will be well-supported and that it will be compatible with any content, templates, etc. we might import from Wikipedia.

:::::It is indeed a one-way ticket when we implement a metadata solution — theoretically. It could be undone and migrated to a different system using a sufficiently sophisticated bot. We don't have a lot of bot developers around here, though. I think once [[wikipedia:Wikidata|Wikidata]] comes fully online, we'll end up integrating with it (much as we already integrate with the [[wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons|Wikimedia Commons]]) and maybe setting up our own MisesData installation to supplement it. Unfortunately, it might be a long time before they get around to finishing the Wikidata implementation. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:10, 26 November 2013 (MSK)

:::: [[MisesWiki:Call to Action/Mises Made Easier|Updated]]. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 02:01, 10 December 2013 (MSK)

== MediaWiki 1.20 ==

MediaWiki 1.20 has been released. Here are the [https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/core.git;a=blob;f=RELEASE-NOTES-1.20;hb=REL1_20 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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:44, 11 November 2012 (MSK)

You could always ask simple math problems but declare said equations as a string so that the bot won't be able to interpret the numbers.[[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 19:59, 22 May 2013 (MSD)
:I've seen that done. I forget which wiki it was. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 05:07, 22 November 2013 (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 [http://wikiindex.org/WikiIndex:WikiNode 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? [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 19:33, 20 November 2012 (MSK)

== Voluntary Cooperation ==

I've created a new Call to Action: [[MisesWiki:Call to Action/Voluntary Cooperation|Voluntary Cooperation]]. Let's see if anyone dares to join! [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 21:48, 25 February 2013 (MSK)

:: Moved project into the inactive ones, could certainly have more content but it is more or less complete. Anyone feel free to reopen it. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 10:23, 26 November 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. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 18:57, 4 January 2013 (MSK)

I'd love to help ya mate just not sure how. I don't have any expierence working on wiki's etc... [[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 23:35, 22 May 2013 (MSD)

: The cleanup is basically finished. If you wanna help out with the messy bits, there is a whole [[MisesWiki:WikiProject Cleanup|Cleanup project]]. But if you want something more topical, check out the current project [[Robber baron]]s, there's quite a few of those guys left.
: Learning how to use a wiki isn't hard - it's only matter of dilligence and finding the topics that really interest you and you want to learn about more. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 02:09, 24 May 2013 (MSD)

== 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 [[Financial crisis#History|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. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk: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 - [https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks-new/subdomains/wiki.mises.org/29-3-2013/all-all here's one] (allows only a few limited views a day though). Turns out there's way more sites using this wiki! [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 16:33, 30 March 2013 (MSK)
::Just so you know, we have [[mw:Manual:$wgNoFollowLinks]] set to false on this wiki, so we are also giving a pagerank boost to the pages our articles link to. There was a debate about the wisdom of doing this throughout the wikisphere; virtually all developers said "hell no" when I [[bugzilla:42594|suggested]] changing the default for MediaWiki. However, I have always had that configuration settings switched off on all my other wikis, and have never had a spam problem. I suspect that Google may reward us for keeping it switched off, but it's hard to tell.

::Using your query as an example, I just did some similar searches involving my favorite wikis, essays, etc. that I've created/written. It was kinda depressing, almost as bad as when I've done [[wikipedia:Egosurfing|vanity searches]] of my name or looked up the code I've written (e.g. [[wikiapiary:Extension:InterwikiMap]]) on WikiApiary. I would say, it makes me feel small and uninfluential, except that could be construed as evidence of [[wikipedia:Narcissistic personality disorder|narcissism]].

::The only reason I would want to avoid that perception, though, is because of how the mainstream looks at vain people. I am fond of many narcissists and egomaniacs, and tend to agree with [[wikisource:The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/Section One|Benjamin Franklin's sentiments]] concerning vanity (viz. that "it is often productive of Good to the Possessor & to others that are within his Sphere of Action"). People like Donald Trump make for great entertainment, IMO. Sigh, I just need to hurry and create Inclupedia, so that I will feel like I've accomplished something sufficiently important to justify incurred costs. I did [http://stats.grok.se/ grokse] some of the Wikipedia articles I spent hours/days painstakingly writing; some paid off much better than others. E.g., [[wikipedia:Removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act]] gets a lot of hits, even though it needs to be updated to reflect [http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/11-1265/11-1265-2013-01-22.html this decision]. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:23, 26 November 2013 (MSK)

== The Regression Theorem and Bitcoin ==

So I'm dong research for a paper and I can't seem to find a place which makes the arguments for why Bitcoin violates the regression therom etc... Was wondering if ya'll could direct me to where that argument is made? Also someone with more knowledge than I should probably add a "Critism" section to the Bitcoin page and talk about the regression therom there. Thanks for your time. Peace be with you all! - Diax

So what exactly is the argument about that Bitcoin violates the regression therom or some such? It would be nice to

: Don't know where that particular claim comes from, here's [http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/7761841-patrik-korda/1616371-bitcoin-bubble-2-0 one] article that comes close, and [https://smilingdavesblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/bitcoin-all-in-one-place/ this] list seems to be a good one to go by, but that's just two bloggers. [http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.de/2011/06/why-are-libertarians-against-bitcoin.html This] one links to many other articles where other critiques may be found.
: Otherwise, it seems like most articles speak about some anonymous 'Austrian economists' that keep doing that somewhere and fail to provide a link.
: If you find good articles about [[Bitcoin]], critiques or not, please add them to the page! (If they are not as good, but still contain valid points, throw them on the Talk page.) Someone may sort them out one day. Any Bitcoin experts out there? (Follow through with your research and may become one as well. :) ). Cheers, [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 01:32, 29 May 2013 (MSD)

It's Mises that created the Regression Therom in [i] The Theory of Money and Credit[/i] (1912) It's him expanding on Menger's theory on the origin of moeny. The basic argument as far as I can tell is that in order to transition from a barter economy to a money economy it would be necessary for a commodity to have utility in trade beyond it's barter value and thus it becomes a medium of exchange.

I think the claim is that because bitcoin does not have a commodity backing it cannot be money (in the long run) and just like fiat is doomed to fail...[[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 01:43, 29 May 2013 (MSD)

: The [[Regression theorem|concept]] is well-known (hmm, that page could also use some improvement...), the question is where the claim about Bitcoin violating it comes from. Need to do some more googling! [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 10:20, 29 May 2013 (MSD)

:: As far as I can tell the claim that Bitcoin violates it comes from the idea that because the regression theorem says that money must be commodity backed and bitcoin violates this principle therefore Bitcoin is not money.[[User:Diax|Diax]] ([[User talk:Diax|talk]]) 21:58, 29 May 2013 (MSD)

::: As many of the articles about this topic explain, that is not what the regression theorem says. What I am wondering now though, seeing all that hoopla about it, is there any notable Austrian economist that claims this, or is it really just a few bloggers sniping at each other? One day we'll know it all. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 01:59, 30 May 2013 (MSD)

== Where to contribute ==

The question has been asked repeatedly. Where should one add to or create more new pages?

The simplest answer is to find something you are really interested in, it's the most fun and you probably already know a lot about it. And if not, it's only natural to want to learn a bit more - and help others as well. But let's offer some inspiration:

* [[Special:WantedPages|Most wanted pages, by missing links]]: This list shows which nonexistent articles have the most links pointing to them (some are just obscure links from templates and the like).
* [[MisesWiki:Most wanted|Most wanted pages, by vote]].
* A long list of desired topics is [[Category talk:Economic concepts|here]].

* Check out the [[MisesWiki:Call to Action|Call to Action]] (and it's talk page) - it contains several projects and suggestions for more, and there's plenty of things that can be still added. [[MisesWiki:Call to Action/Voluntary Cooperation|Voluntary Cooperation]] is particularly wide. The current project is [[Robber baron]]s, there's quite a few of those guys left.
* For those who don't mind to get their hands dirty, check out the [[MisesWiki:WikiProject Cleanup|Cleanup project]].

* If you are interested in a particular [[:Category:Countries|country or countries]], there is a good base to expand on. What is going on in that particular corner of the world anyway? How intrusive is the state? How's free is the life over there (and what's the quality of life)? What's of special interest to Austrians or libertarians?

* Are you more of a single-issue person, interested in a particular organization, person, or concept? Well, then see if a corresponding page already exists, how extensive is it, and what about all the related topics?

* Are you interested in a larger, overarching topic or a group of topics? See if there's a summary page and what subtopics can be created or brought up to the level.

* Are you into history? ([[Gilded Age]]? [[Great Depression]]? [[Financial crises]]? [[History of money and banking]]?) Writing a wiki page is a great way to learn about history.

* Are you more into the theoretical aspects of [[economics]] and [[praxeology]]? Create away whatever is still missing.

* Would you like to create good arguments for or against whatever discussion is currently raging on the Internet? There is [[Category:Argumentation|place for that]] as well!

And there's so much more...

(Anyone has more ideas? Add them here!) [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 21:31, 3 June 2013 (MSD)
:People can also offer constructive criticism about what they would like to see changed or added to the site so that it will better serve their and others' needs. It's useful to get input even from those who don't edit the site on a regular basis. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 17:00, 4 October 2013 (MSK)

== 1400 pages ==

Rather quietly, the wiki has just reached 1400 pages with the [[‎Second Bank of the United States]]. Good news in what is otherwise a period of downtime. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 13:39, 10 July 2013 (MSD)

== Teaching Austrian Economics ==

Are there any Austrian School Textbooks that can be used to teach college leval Macro & Micro economics. Everything iv'e found teaches Keynesian Economics.

:I'd say if you start with [[Human Action]] and [[Man, Economy and State]] you should be well provided for a start (of an advanced education), but I've asked this question [http://libertyhq.freeforums.org/college-level-textbooks-t943.html elsewhere] to see if there's a better answer. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 01:32, 15 July 2013 (MSD)

::Check out the link above, there are some good answers in the forum thread now. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 10:17, 17 July 2013 (MSD)

== Upgrade to MW 1.21 ==

If there is no objection, I will upgrade the site to [[mw:Release_notes/1.21#MediaWiki_1.21.2|MediaWiki 1.21]]. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 04:10, 4 October 2013 (MSK)
:Upgrade complete. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 10:31, 5 October 2013 (MSK)

== Debate -> Dialog, Fun -> Miscellany ==

I changed the namespace names from Debate: to Dialog: (see [[rationalwiki:Debate:Should_it_be_Dialogue]] for some thoughts on that) and from Fun: to Miscellany:. I figured Miscellany: would be a good repository for any off-topic or otherwise hard-to-classify stuff. Debate: and Fun: are still available as [[mw:Manual:$wgNamespaceAliases|namespace aliases]]. The main downside I can think of is that the name of the "Dialog talk:" namespace sounds slightly redundant. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 16:58, 4 October 2013 (MSK)
:I'm going to retire the Dialog: namespace and move all the content to Miscellany: if there's no objection. Even RationalWiki: has found that the Debate: namespace is kinda pointless; [[rationalwiki:Help:Namespace|they write]], "For some reason this namespace is not very well used. The function is largely usurped by talk pages." [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 00:58, 29 December 2013 (MSK)

== Another libertarian wiki ==

For later study, found by chance: "[http://v.i4031.net/Home A Voluntaryist Wiki]", appears to be a rather private affair focused mainly on argumentation. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 23:44, 20 October 2013 (MSK)
:Added to the [[MisesWiki:Wikinode|wikinode]] (and to [[wikiindex:A Voluntaryist Wiki|wikiindex]]). [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 04:57, 21 October 2013 (MSK)

== [[mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon]] ==

Hello, I've written [[mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon]], which adds metadata, glossary, essay list, and quote list features to MediaWiki. Perhaps the best way to explain it is by example. All of these features you can see either displayed or available from the [http://polywiki.org/ PolyWiki main page].
*'''Articles:'''
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:FASummary Template:FASummary] to add themselves to [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Category:Featured_articles Category:Featured articles], from which are chosen the '''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:Randomly_featured_article Randomly featured article]'''.
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:InvisiblePageSummary Template:InvisiblePageSummary] to add entries to:
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Special:Glossary Special:Glossary]'''.
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:New_articles Recently added articles]'''.
*'''Essays:'''
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:FESummary Template:FESummary] to add themselves to [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Category:Featured_essays Category:Featured essays], from which are chosen the '''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:Randomly_featured_essay Randomly featured essay]'''.
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:InvisiblePageSummary Template:InvisiblePageSummary] to add entries to:
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Special:EssayList Special:EssayList]'''.
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:New_essays Recently added essays]'''.
*'''Quotes:'''
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:FQSummary Template:FQSummary] to add themselves to [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Category:Featured_quotes Category:Featured quotes], from which are chosen the '''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:Randomly_featured_quote Randomly featured quote]'''.
:*Transclude [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:InvisiblePageSummary Template:InvisiblePageSummary] to add entries to:
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Special:QuoteList Special:QuoteList]'''.
::*'''[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:New_quotes Recently added quotes]'''.
Examples of how this is done:
*[http://polywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Values_within_polyamory&action=edit Article example] (view source)
*[http://polywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Essay:Friendship_as_the_foundation_of_romantic_relationships&action=edit Essay example] (view source)
*[http://polywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Quote:Security_comes_first_from_inside...&action=edit Quote example] (view source)
I was thinking this could be useful on Mises Wiki. Perhaps we could enhance the main page by showing new content as well as randomly selected content that's an unpredictable mix of the old and new. Also, this data could be queried by other parts of mises.org or even sites external to mises.org using [[mw:API:Properties#pageprops_.2F_pp|the API]]. Another advantage is that vandals and spammers almost certainly won't know to use the templates that will cause content to be seen on the main page. We could use this as a means of new page screening for the Mises Globe on the main mises.org page as well.

Also, we can create sidebars similar to RationalWiki's [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Template:Sex Template:Sex] that display a random list of x articles in a given category. So, for example, the article on [[fractional reserve banking]] could have a <nowiki>{{banking}}</nowiki> sidebar with a list of 12 randomly selected banking articles. This way, users who revisit the article will be exposed to new content each time.

There's other stuff that could be done with this extension too, such as creating "Did you know?" tidbits of information for display on the main page; we could then create another special page to display a master list of those items. It's not all that much different from what [[wikipedia:Semantic MediaWiki|Semantic MediaWiki]] was intended to do (except that SMW is more powerful); I just haven't had good experiences with SMW, or I would recommend using it, since it's the application that academicians tend to favor and to have more enthusiasm about. They've been fantasizing for a long time about what they could do if Wikipedia would switch to SMW.

To make BedellPenDragon be useful for us, we would need to (after installing the extension) start adding the featured summary and regular summary templates to pages we create. Since this would be a fairly significant change in how we do things, I wanted to see what your thoughts were and make sure there's a consensus before proceeding. Another option would be to use SMW; if we were to pick that option, I might switch my focus from improving BedellPenDragon to improving SMW, although I'm not sure how much success I would have getting that community to accept proposed changes. I have control over BedellPenDragon's development; I don't control SMW. I've often found than code review can be a bottleneck and that it can be quite hard for an outsider to get his changes approved due to inertia and lack of interested reviewers.

If we were to want to reverse this change later, it would not be too hard. We would just need to change the templates so that they either do nothing at all or so that they do nothing but display the text that is entered into them as parameters. Thanks, [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 07:27, 11 November 2013 (MSK)

== Script error on page ==

There is a script error [http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Sweden#Links here] on what appear to be flags. Don't care much for the flags, but perhaps it can be fixed easily. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 02:09, 26 November 2013 (MSK)
:Those red "script error" messages are clickable; that one informed me that we needed to import [[Module:Yesno]]. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:02, 26 November 2013 (MSK)

== $wgUsersNotifiedOnAllChanges ==

Anyone care to be added to [[mw:Manual:$wgUsersNotifiedOnAllChanges|$wgUsersNotifiedOnAllChanges]]? [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 03:17, 14 December 2013 (MSK)

: Is there anything in it that Recent Changes doesn't cover? Otherwise it seems like just getting more emails. [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 14:11, 15 December 2013 (MSK)
::Nope, it's for people who want to get emailed everything that's in Recent Changes (except the changes they themselves make). But actually, at this point you can just use the preferences checkbox implemented by [[mw:Extension:EmailAllChanges]] if you want to be emailed all those notifications. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 14:15, 15 December 2013 (MSK)

== Happy New Year! ==

Haven't been much on recently but will come back for a spring cleaning. Meanwhile, enjoy Merry belated Christmas and especially a Happy New Year! Big thanks to everyone for holding the torch! [[User:Pestergaines|Pestergaines]] ([[User talk:Pestergaines|talk]]) 13:45, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

== Linked discussion threads ==

Although I prefer central discussion areas for wiki communities, I have always found the single-page format rather cumbersome when multiple topics are covered. I am curious how users would respond to using a threaded style discussion forum on the Commons page. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 18:12, 7 January 2014 (EST)
:Are you thinking about subpages or something like [[mw:Extension:Flow]] (the successor to [[mw:Extension:LiquidThreads]])? The Dialog: namespace was created basically for the purpose of holding discussion threads, but on most wikis it ends up not being used very much. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 18:14, 7 January 2014 (EST)
::Improving the visual order of the central discussion portal is my main point, I suppose. I think keeping the actual discussion pages in a dedicated namespace is a good idea, and can help finding older, archived threads when needed. Obviously, there is not much conversational traffic at present, but this would probably help keep track of the few separate topics we have underway at any given time.
::A fairly simple example can be found on [http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Forum:Index Shout Wiki] and on [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Index Fallout Wiki]. They both use the same basic, template-generated forum which you might have seen elsewhere. ''Shout Wiki'' uses a simple version while ''Fallout Wiki'' has chosen to dress it up a bit. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 11:36, 8 January 2014 (EST)

User talk:GMedich

2014-01-08T15:24:51Z

GMedich: /* Minor vandals */ response

==Welcome!==

Hello, GMedich, and welcome to the [[Mises Wiki:About|Mises Wiki]]! Thanks for signing up – we're glad to have you! If you need help [[Help:Getting started|getting started]], take a look at our [[Help:Contents|help pages]].

Community discussion takes place at the [[Mises Wiki:Commons|MisesWiki Commons]], so feel free to post any questions you might have there or on my talk page. Please sign your messages on talk and discussion pages using four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Again, welcome!

Hi, thanks for the redirect fixing. We can also use [[mw:Manual:FixDoubleRedirects.php|a script]] for that, by the way; I just hadn't run it in awhile (actually ever) because no one requested it. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 01:04, 28 December 2013 (MSK)

:Thanks for the welcome, Nathan. Although I've worked on a few wikis in my past, I prefer to ease into them by making a few minor edits at first. I believe it warms me up a bit to some of the underlying patterns used by the community. There weren't really that many double redirects, and I kind of enjoy housekeeping a little bit on the wikis I try to support. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 01:16, 28 December 2013 (MSK)
::Yeah, I just ran the script: "No double redirects found." Looks like you were pretty efficient at your [[w:Wikipedia:WikiGnome|wikignoming]]! The situation you observed was atypical in that I had created a bunch of articles in mainspace that more properly belonged in an Essay: namespace, but it didn't exist yet. After it was created, [[User:Pestergaines]] moved them in there. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 01:24, 28 December 2013 (MSK)
:::I stopped with the "broken" redirects after I realized they probably would be better deleted than maintained as redirect pages. I don't imagine many users would actually search out some of those terms. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 01:27, 28 December 2013 (MSK)

== MediaWiki ==
Hi GMedich,
How familiar are you with the technical side of MediaWiki (e.g. configuration, troubleshooting, etc.)? Once in awhile we run into some glitches that I have trouble figuring out how to fix. Thanks, [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 01:45, 29 December 2013 (MSK)

:My most technical endeavors have included a small amount of css customization and stretching the capabilities of wikicode. I have only recently begun trying to reverse engineer some basic semantic MediaWiki functions. I would probably be at most rated as a talented dabbler. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 07:28, 29 December 2013 (MSK)
::Actually, I was just attempting to decipher some CSS today, and figure out what is making those headings on the left sidebar so undesirably big. We have a custom skin; see [[Special:ViewFiles#main.css]] and [[MisesWiki:Vector.php]].

::Are you referring to the SMW described at [[mw:Semantic MediaWiki]]? There have been several discussions about whether we should switch to that system; see [[MisesWiki:Commons#Semantic_wikis]] and [[MisesWiki:Commons#Mass_imports]]. Also, I came up with my own system, [[mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon]], which is in use at PolyWiki.org, ChildWiki.net, and SuicideWiki.org. The "[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:Randomly_featured_article randomly featured article]" rotation, "[http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:New_articles new articles]" feed, and [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Special:Glossary Glossary] are generated using [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:PageSummary Template:PageSummary] and [http://polywiki.org/wiki/Template:FASummary Template:FASummary]. That's all stuff that could probably also be done using SMW.

::More input at those Commons discussions would be welcome, once you reach a point at which you would feel familiar enough with the wiki to be comfortable weighing in. Thanks, [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 09:35, 29 December 2013 (MSK)

:::I imagine your headings are simply using the default settings of h5. You might try something similar to:
<pre>
.portal h5 {
padding:0 1em 0 .5em; /* example only */
font-size:90%;
font-weight:normal;
}
</pre>
:::I could not test this on a personal css file here since creating such files appears to be prohibited. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 00:30, 30 December 2013 (MSK)
::::Okay, I changed [[mw:Manual:$wgAllowUserJs|$wgAllowUserJs]] and [[mw:Manual:$wgAllowUserCss|$wgAllowUserCss]] to true. That should allow you to try it. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 02:28, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

:::::I see where you added this, but I am still being prevented from creating either User:GMedich/common.css or User:GMedich/misesskin.css subpages. The system keeps me logged in, but the "Create account" and "Log in" options replace the user options which are typically displayed there. The message I receive continues to read "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page." I could not see another option in the LocalSettings.php which would prevent my access. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 02:56, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

:::::Oops! I just found the Preferences>Appearance tab now provides this access. I have been accustomed to adding it directly. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 03:00, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

:::Well, that seemed to work fine for me in my personal common.css file, Nathan. The navigation headers were normal weight and slightly smaller. I did not play with the padding values to see what variations could be produced. This should work for you in the general css file if you intend to adjust the appearance of these headers. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 03:44, 30 December 2013 (MSK)
Excellent! That looks much better. Thanks. A few other small issues: (1) the watch/unwatch star to the right of the Edit button is hanging down where it's not supposed to. (2) I think the blue portion of the background is supposed to extend all the way to the bottom of the screen. Do you think that would look better? Right now, the Ludwig von Mises image is hanging off the edge into the white. (3) [[Widget:YouTube]] isn't working, even on videos that play on other sites. See, e.g.:
{{#widget: YouTube|id=FR2LWUM8in8}}
This works at Nathania.org: http://nathania.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte/Mises_Wiki_interview You have access now to play with [[Widget:YouTube]]. Thanks again, [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 04:49, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

::::I have been using the "Inspect element" option in my browser in an attempt to ferret out the root of these issues. I noticed that the von Mises image can be adjusted by increasing the padding in the footer-wrapper to 40 px (on line 212):
<pre>
div#footer-wrapper {
width: 100%;
margin: 10px auto 0;
padding: 40px 0;
height: 300px;
}
</pre>
::::Although I did notice the unexpected change in my user rights, I cannot seem to edit the main.css file to make this change. The watch/unwatch star appears to be due to js features rather than css coding. The inspect element does show the icon size being larger than its intended positioning, but there is no related css coding I can find to adjust it. Several error codes show when inspecting the js side, including some missing bits. I am not very familiar with javascript functions, unfortunately...usually just a cut-and-paste feature in my past experience. Any thoughts? [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 18:04, 30 December 2013 (MSK)
Yeah, main.css is not in the MediaWiki namespace; it's in the file system, and is edited from the shell. I'm not sure there's any way to override it from within MediaWiki. I did make the change you suggested and it seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks!

Maybe the star has something to do with js. It could also be related to something in Vector.php. See, e.g.:
<source lang="php">
if ( $wgVectorUseIconWatch ) {
$mode = $this->getSkin()->getUser()->isWatched( $this->getSkin()->getRelevantTitle() ) ? 'unwatch' : 'watch';
if ( isset( $nav['actions'][$mode] ) ) {
$nav['views'][$mode] = $nav['actions'][$mode];
$nav['views'][$mode]['class'] = rtrim( 'icon ' . $nav['views'][$mode]['class'], ' ' );
$nav['views'][$mode]['primary'] = true;
unset( $nav['actions'][$mode] );
}
}
</source>
Our Vector.php was written for some obsolete version of MediaWiki; right now we're using the cutting-edge v1.23alpha. The recent upgrade from v1.21 caused those glitches to start appearing. [[mw:MediaWiki_1.22#Upgrades_to_Vector_and_other_skins]] might have some useful info pertaining to that. The star is not an incredibly big deal since it only is displayed to logged-in users, and we don't have very many of those. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 18:30, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

:I understood "Vector" to be the latest default skin for MediaWiki. Is the custom skin you previously mentioned built upon Vector as its foundation? [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 18:52, 30 December 2013 (MSK)
::They have some similarities. I know nothing about the history of our Vector.php, other than that this custom skin has been around since at least v1.18. You can see the file reference for MediaWiki's Vector.php [https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/master/php/html/Vector_8php.html here]. I see that the PHP code snippet above is identical to what's in the MediaWiki codebase's version. [[User:Nathan Larson|Nathan Larson]] ([[User talk:Nathan Larson|talk]]) 19:09, 30 December 2013 (MSK)

:::While I have been able to identify the coding which lowered the placement of the watch/unwatch star icon, I have not been able to find a solution. I did learn that this feature's default value was changed from false to true in v1.21, the time you stated the problem began. The offending portion of the code is:
<pre>
#ca-unwatch.icon a, #ca-watch.icon a {
padding-top: 3.1em;
}
</pre>
:::3.1em of padding pushed the icon too far down. By live editing the html, I found 1.7em to be a good match with text in the adjacent boxes. Unfortunately, adding this to my personal css page does not affect this. I also cannot locate the origin of the #ca variable. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 23:56, 2 January 2014 (MSK)
::::I created a {{w|tar.gz}} of the skins folder, in case you want to {{w|grep}} through it in search of what you're looking for. See http://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/miseswiki-skins.tar.gz [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 10:17, 3 January 2014 (MSK)

Thanks, Nathan. I just conducted a text search on some of the files, and seemed to locate the culprit. The '''vector''' folder contains a file named '''screen.less''' which created the 3.1em padding in question. The lines are near the bottom of the file under the dual heading: '''#ca-unwatch.icon a, #ca-watch.icon a '''. If you change the padding to '''1.7em''', I expect the star will relocate properly. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 19:41, 3 January 2014 (MSK)
:It works! Yay! [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 20:13, 3 January 2014 (MSK)

== Gadgets ==

I forgot to mention, most of the [[mw:Extension:Gadgets|gadgets]] are probably broken too. I didn't import any gadget-related stuff from Wikipedia except the MediaWiki: namespace pages that started with MediaWiki:Gadget. If you (or another sysop) can fix those, and make a note of how they were fixed, then we can expand the Gadgets section of [[mw:Manual:Using content from Wikipedia]] (or maybe create a new page, [[mw:Manual:Using gadgets from Wikipedia]]). That would be very helpful to the whole non-WMF wikisphere. A lot of the gadgets seem to use code from people's userspace, and there doesn't seem to be a central list of what all those pages are.

The WMF-specific gadgets, of course, we can dispense with entirely. The gadgets extension was only installed a few weeks ago, so if none of us gets around to fixing the gadgets, we haven't really lost any functionality. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 06:37, 31 December 2013 (MSK)

:Yes, I had noticed that many gadget functions do not seem to be currently accessible. I cannot help but think that backing out some of these gadgets would be a very good idea. Adding and accessing content is typically the primary function of a wiki. Time spent tweaking widgets, gadgets and "who's its" can easily undermine such productivity. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 19:15, 31 December 2013 (MSK)
::It depends on the gadget. Some, like HotCat and CharInsert, are pretty useful, and editors appreciate having them. Having a bunch of broken and/or superfluous features makes it look like we're not [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=on%20top%20of%20your%20game on top of our technical game], though, so probably the majority of those should indeed be eliminated. Widgets are useful for putting important videos, etc. inline. It lets us have some of the same functionalities as other content management systems.

::Wikipedia doesn't like to have those kinds of widgets because they introduce external dependencies. Aside from caching-related concerns, I don't see what the objections would be; I doubt YouTube will exclude Wikipedia from accessing those videos, for instance. Wikipedia seems suspicious of any relinquishing of control or influence to a third party; it's one of the reasons why they apply [[metawikipedia:nofollow|nofollow]] to external links. They're kinda selfish that way. Fortunately, they're very generous in a lot of other ways (e.g. giving away their software and content for the whole wikisphere to use).

::Actually, any meta-aspect of a wiki (not just the tech aspects) can become a distraction if it becomes the focus of all the attention. E.g., sometimes people get caught up in discussions of wikiquette, wiki-philosophy, bureaucratic procedures, or power structures. Those things are important, and some people devote themselves entirely to them, but a wiki's mainspace (or, more broadly, content namespace) content is ultimately what outsiders care about. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 19:33, 31 December 2013 (MSK)

:::At least in the case of actual Widgets, we only have one to deal with at the moment. That should be a definitely solvable problem, and very helpful for including Mises related talks, etc. I have had no initial success in identifying any particular problem at this point. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 19:26, 1 January 2014 (MSK)
::::It would seem to be a problem with widgets in general, since [[Widget:MediaWiki]] isn't working either. I'll google later to see if anyone has encountered this type of issue before. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 20:46, 1 January 2014 (MSK)
:::::The YouTube widget does look rather strange to me in that so much of the code is enclosed in comment tags. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 01:24, 2 January 2014 (MSK)
::::::I've never had a problem with widgets on other wikis. There are some other ways I can try to troubleshoot this issue. I can copy over the file system and database to another server and see if I can replicate the problem there. I can try upgrading to the latest development version of MediaWiki and see if that helps. I can try disabling all the other extensions and returning to the default configuration. These issues usually don't stay unsolved forever, if one is determined enough to keep looking for solutions. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 06:46, 2 January 2014 (MSK)
I've confirmed that the issue is (apparently) something to do with our server. See http://mises.inclumedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GMedich#MediaWiki , where the widget is working fine. The file system and database are virtually identical there; there's something else going on that's keeping the widget from working. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 04:35, 5 January 2014 (EST)

==A barnstar for you==
{| style="border: 1px solid {{{border|#00FF00}}}; background-color: {{{color|#122317}}};"
|rowspan="2" valign="middle" | [[File:Barnstar - technical works.svg|{{{px|200}}}px]]

|rowspan="2" |
|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em; color: #00FF00;" | '''The Technical Barnstar'''
|-
|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid #00FF00; color: {{{font-color|#00FF00}}};" | '''Thanks for your help! Your css-fu has been invaluable in getting the wiki looking good again after the upgrade.'''{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#ifeq:{{{cursor|yes}}}|no||_ 
[[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 20:13, 3 January 2014 (MSK)}}
|}
[[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 20:13, 3 January 2014 (MSK)
:I'm glad that you were so quick to get to work on that stuff and find the solutions, because for at least the time being, we no longer have the ability to implement such fixes. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 08:08, 8 January 2014 (EST)

== Minor vandals ==
We could also use the {{w|Template:Test}} for those minor vandals, especially on the first offense. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 13:59, 7 January 2014 (EST)
:Not a bad idea. I don't see how warnings can be issued to anons, so I figured a 24 hour block would give other admins an opportunity to chime in without the anon repeating the offense after the rollback. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 18:06, 7 January 2014 (EST)
::Like [[User talk:5.150.101.104|that]]? Hopefully we can get [[mw:Extension:AbuseFilter]] configured so that we can identify and throttle vandalism more easily. I lost shell access in the server move and my request for access to the new server is pending at this time; unfortunately I didn't get the configuration set up to grant sysops access to [[Special:AbuseFilter]] before that happened. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 05:05, 8 January 2014 (EST)
:::Yes, I knew such messages could be posted, but I am doubtful of their effectiveness on anon pages. I suppose it could aid in explaining the reasoning behind a rollback. [[User:GMedich|GMedich]] ([[User talk:GMedich|talk]]) 10:24, 8 January 2014 (EST)

2013-12-31T15:15:59Z

GMedich: /* Gadgets */

MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js

2013-12-30T17:59:28Z

GMedich: Fixed minor typo after rollback; v.3 had no appreciable difference other than renaming "mysandbox" as "sandbox"

/* _____________________________________________________________________________
* | |
* | === WARNING: GLOBAL GADGET FILE === |
* | Changes to this page affect many users. |
* | Please discuss changes on the talk page or on [[WT:Gadget]] before editing. |
* |_____________________________________________________________________________|
*/

/**
* Add a "My sandbox" link to the personal portlet menu.
* Dependencies: mediawiki.util, mediawiki.Title, mediawiki.Uri
*
* @source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/MySandbox
* @version 2
*/
( function ( mw, $ ) {

$( document ).ready( function () {
var conf, title, url;

// Customize/Translate this to your needs
conf = {
subpageName: 'sandbox',
portletLabel: 'Sandbox',
portletTooltip: 'Go to your sandbox',
editintroPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox',
preloadPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox/preload'
};
// Don't alter the code below

// Use Special:MyPage (as opposed to mw.user.getName()) so that it
// works for logged-out users as well.
title = new mw.Title( 'Special:MyPage/' + conf.subpageName );

url = new mw.Uri( title.getUrl() );
url.extend({
action: 'edit',
redlink: 1,
editintro: new mw.Title( conf.editintroPagename ),
preload: new mw.Title( conf.preloadPagename )
});

mw.util.addPortletLink(
'p-personal',
url,
conf.portletLabel,
'pt-mysandbox',
conf.portletTooltip,
null,
'#pt-preferences'
);
});
}( mediaWiki, jQuery ) );

MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js

2013-12-30T17:58:13Z

GMedich: Reverted edits by GMedich (talk) to last revision by Leucosticte

/* _____________________________________________________________________________
* | |
* | === WARNING: GLOBAL GADGET FILE === |
* | Changes to this page affect many users. |
* | Please discuss changes on the talk page or on [[WT:Gadget]] before editing. |
* |_____________________________________________________________________________|
*/

/**
* Add a "My sandbox" link to the personal portlet menu.
* Dependencies: mediawiki.util, mediawiki.Title, mediawiki.Uri
*
* @source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/MySandbox
* @version 2
*/
( function ( mw, $ ) {

$( document ).ready( function () {
var conf, title, url;

// Costomize/Translate this to your needs
conf = {
subpageName: 'sandbox',
portletLabel: 'Sandbox',
portletTooltip: 'Go to your sandbox',
editintroPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox',
preloadPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox/preload'
};
// Don't alter the code below

// Use Special:MyPage (as opposed to mw.user.getName()) so that it
// works for logged-out users as well.
title = new mw.Title( 'Special:MyPage/' + conf.subpageName );

url = new mw.Uri( title.getUrl() );
url.extend({
action: 'edit',
redlink: 1,
editintro: new mw.Title( conf.editintroPagename ),
preload: new mw.Title( conf.preloadPagename )
});

mw.util.addPortletLink(
'p-personal',
url,
conf.portletLabel,
'pt-mysandbox',
conf.portletTooltip,
null,
'#pt-preferences'
);
});
}( mediaWiki, jQuery ) );

MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js

2013-12-30T17:53:43Z

GMedich: Overwritten with version 3 from original source; older version creating some warning notices in code

/* _____________________________________________________________________________
* | |
* | === WARNING: GLOBAL GADGET FILE === |
* | Changes to this page affect many users. |
* | Please discuss changes on the talk page or on [[WT:Gadget]] before editing. |
* |_____________________________________________________________________________|
*/

/**
* Add a "My sandbox" link to the personal portlet menu.
* Dependencies: mediawiki.util, mediawiki.Title, mediawiki.Uri
*
* @source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/MySandbox
* @version 3
*/
( function ( mw, $ ) {

$( document ).ready( function () {
var conf, title, url;

// Customize/Translate this to your needs
conf = {
subpageName: 'sandbox',
portletLabel: 'Sandbox',
portletTooltip: 'Go to your sandbox',
editintroPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox',
preloadPagename: 'Template:User_sandbox/preload'
};
// Don't alter the code below

// Use Special:MyPage (as opposed to mw.user.getName()) so that it
// works for logged-out users as well.
title = new mw.Title( 'Special:MyPage/' + conf.subpageName );

url = new mw.Uri( title.getUrl() );
url.extend({
action: 'edit',
redlink: 1,
editintro: new mw.Title( conf.editintroPagename ),
preload: new mw.Title( conf.preloadPagename )
});

mw.util.addPortletLink(
'p-personal',
url,
conf.portletLabel,
'pt-sandbox',
conf.portletTooltip,
null,
'#pt-preferences'
);
});
}( mediaWiki, jQuery ) );

User:GMedich/sandbox

2013-12-30T17:39:59Z

GMedich: Created page with "Youtube widget test: {{#widget:YouTube|id=Ukytqe9pwDM}}"

Youtube widget test:

{{#widget:YouTube|id=Ukytqe9pwDM}}

User talk:GMedich

2013-12-30T14:52:00Z

GMedich: /* MediaWiki */

2013-12-30T05:45:14Z

GMedich:

User:GMedich/common.css

2013-12-30T05:44:20Z

GMedich:

/*.portal h5 { */
/* padding:0 1em 0 .5em; */ /* example only */
/* font-size:90%; */
/* font-weight:normal; */
/*}

#ca-unwatch.icon a, #ca-watch.icon a {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
outline: none;
display: block;
width: 26px;
margin-top: 0;
margin-top: -0.8em;
height: 0;
}

2013-12-30T02:27:27Z

GMedich: Testing position of "watch" icon

/*.portal h5 { */
/* padding:0 1em 0 .5em; */ /* example only */
/* font-size:90%; */
/* font-weight:normal; */
/*}
#ca-watch.icon a {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
outline: none;
display: block;
width: 26px;
padding-top: 2.1em;