User talk:Pestergaines

Welcome!

Hello, Pestergaines, and welcome to the Mises Wiki! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay.

Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, ask me!

DickClarkMises 01:17, 5 November 2010 (CDT)

Linking

What do you think about using red links instead of links to Wikipedia? We don't want readers who find us to go off to Wikipedia--we want them to stay here. Even now, red links are allowed on WP (see WP:RED), but when Wikipedia was younger and less developed, red links were strongly encouraged, because they helped new contributors find an article to create. For these reasons I think it makes more sense to use red links as much as possible. Sure, Wikipedia's article on Tennessee will be more developed than ours ever will, but we can at least shoot for a simple stub that gives readers the basics, with an external link at the bottom to WP's article. --Forgottenman (talk) 07:32, 9 November 2010 (CST)

Good question. My take is, that this page is in many respects more focused than Wikipedia - on specific topics, it will provide more information, and specifically biased information - on many others, it will provide less information (at least in volume) with a specific spin or focus. On a great many topics, there will be no page at all.

For an example, I see no need for an article or Tennessee - unless there is a reason for it. So in that case I would link to Wikipedia. (Or even not link at all!) I have actually linked very liberally to WP's articles and consider it a strength, not a weakness - it points to more resources and (possible) alternative viewpoints, both of which make a resource richer IMO.

I will raise this in the mailing group, since it is an interesting strategic question, and deserves to be addressed by others as well. Thanks! Pestergaines 07:55, 9 November 2010 (CST)

Book sources and other crazy WP stuff

I managed to figure out what the issue was with Special:BookSources. The pages to change are MisesWiki:Book sources and MediaWiki:Booksources-text.

All the citation stuff is in place except for that dumb cite journal template... I just can't figure out why it refuses to accept a link-free work. --Forgottenman (talk) 14:36, 16 November 2010 (CST)

See [1]. Especially: "links regarding the book according to the contents of the page "Book sources" in the project namespace." So MisesWiki:BookSources isn't doing anything. --Forgottenman (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2010 (CST)

Thanks! Pestergaines 14:42, 16 November 2010 (CST)

Anniversaries

I've been using past tense for the anniversary pages, in order to distinguish their entries from those of the "current events" box. --Forgottenman (talk) 09:33, 9 December 2010 (CST)

Right you are, thanks for fixing my first attempts! Pestergaines 10:31, 9 December 2010 (CST)

On the International Project

A bit of discussion here.  :) -- RayBirks 14:20, 8 January 2011 (CST)

Check-in

Not much to report here. --RayBirks 11:03, 24 February 2011 (CST)

Vandals

I did some research and found that our spammers are using open proxies, i.e., fake IP addresses that change constantly. Wikipedia blocks such proxies as fast as they appear, so I don't think there's any issue with blocking the IP addresses that the accounts use. --Forgottenman (talk) 07:48, 11 March 2011 (CST)

Thanks for the research - and good work keeping those bastards out! Pestergaines 03:12, 12 March 2011 (CST)

Decided to go with it

This was the idea: The Trail of interventions. -- RayBirks 05:19, 10 April 2011 (MSD)

edit summaries

What does "+res" mean? --John James 16:11, 1 June 2011 (MSD)

:) "resource" Pestergaines 16:29, 1 June 2011 (MSD)

I would have never guessed that. Do you ever use a different abbreviation? I think that may get too easily confused with "response". I guess that may not really matter, but if we're using the summaries, it would make sense for them to be understandable/distinguishable. --John James 02:24, 2 June 2011 (MSD)

I made my way through all sorts of variations of "link added" and similar, but 'link' doesn't always seem like the best characterization of the page linked to, so I finally stuck with 'resource' and it eventually shrunk to 'res'. Seems pretty conclusive, and isn't hopefully confused for a response (which is used on a Talk page anyway). So it should be fine. Pestergaines 17:17, 6 June 2011 (MSD)

Quick notes

Technically, you're counting articles...not pages ;) --John James 05:40, 18 June 2011 (MSD)

You do have a point sir, substitution performed. (Thanks!) Pestergaines 14:24, 18 June 2011 (MSD)

Recommended...any images you have that are free license (like barnstars), you might go ahead and upload them to the Wikimedia Commons so that others might be able to use them on their wikis as well. All images at the commons can be used on any wiki installation just as if they were uploaded locally. --John James 02:24, 18 October 2011 (MSD)

Hello

Thank you for the welcome. Would you happen to know if it's possible for me to edit my username so both words are capitalized? I submitted it as "stephanie_herman" and ended up with "Stephanie herman" on screen. Stephanie Herman 00:01, 16 September 2011 (MSD)

Hi Stephanie, that will require a bit of tinkering. I've requested the necessary functionality to be installed, hope it will be around fast. Best regards, Pestergaines 02:34, 16 September 2011 (MSD)

It's much easier to register again with the correct user name. --Forgottenman (talk) 02:52, 16 September 2011 (MSD)

That's probably right, but now it's done. You are renamed! Pestergaines 11:39, 17 September 2011 (MSD)

Awards

		Mises Wiki Motivation Award
		This Motivation Award is presented to you in recognition of your work in promoting the Mises Wiki and rallying the troops to help move the project forward. Keep up the good work. --John James 00:25, 7 October 2011 (MSD)

Thank you very much. It can be very hard to stay motivated sometimes - and this helps! I only hope we can grow our user base some more and keep people coming back. Glad to see you coming back as well! Pestergaines 02:24, 8 October 2011 (MSD)

		The Anti-Spam Barnstar
		This Anti-Spam Barnstar is presented to you in recognition of your tremendous work in keeping the Mises Wiki free of unwanted solicitations disguised as annoying stories and pretentious informationals. Keep up the great work! --John James 17:51, 18 January 2012 (MSK)

Thanks, man, these things can get boring quickly. Appreciate the award! Pestergaines 17:26, 19 January 2012 (MSK)

		The Anti-Spam Barnstar
		You deserve another one of these. I can't imagine how messy this wiki would be without your diligent efforts. They are not unnoticed, and certainly not unappreciated. --John James 01:27, 7 July 2012 (MSD)

Thank you! I'm starting to think whether we should block new users completely and only allow them to post after an additional verification (say via the mailing list or the forums). Other than that I'm not sure what else we can do to discourage the spamming. Pestergaines 10:52, 7 July 2012 (MSD)

Question regarding re-directing

I was wondering if you could help with re-directing a page; I just completed the stub for A priori proposition and was thinking that maybe also searches fom A priori knowledge should point there as I could have probably used either title. I am not sure how to re-direct a page, or whether all users can do so, so was wondering if you could help me out if you agree with my suggestion? Also thanks for the Barnstar! Matthew 00:17, 24 October 2011 (MSD)

Hi Matthew, redirects are actually quite easy and everyone should be able to create them - see help, all you need to do is put the redirect code into the page, nothing else is needed. (Check for example the code of this page.)

And no need to thank for the barnstar (though you certainly deserve it!) - it was promised as a reward for the contest, it only took me a while to put it up. :) Pestergaines 14:18, 24 October 2011 (MSD)

You are right redirects are pretty basic, thanks. Matthew 17:29, 24 October 2011 (MSD)

mises.org bio links

Why did you change the links to some of the bios? --John James 00:23, 10 February 2012 (MSK)

It was a side effect of fixes needed in this thread, there was a page with some wrong names and links. Things should be better now, but if I got something wrong, please fix it (or tell me). Pestergaines 10:08, 10 February 2012 (MSK)

helpful

Wanted to make sure you were aware of these. They make adding links a bit easier by handling the formatting autmatically:

• {{md}}
• {{mb}}

--John James 02:50, 18 February 2012 (MSK)

Hi! I know about these two, just never got around to actually learning their use (once I copy the basic data from a MD, it's easier for me to shuffle it around and create a link). Sorry, will see if it can be done more efficiently. Pestergaines 11:36, 18 February 2012 (MSK)

That's what I'm saying...those templates were created to make it more efficient. Basically they just allow you to input the data without having to mess with formatting. Just check out the parameters. You'll see. --John James 19:41, 18 February 2012 (MSK)

Since I'm too lazy to memorize those things, plus I needed a bit of coding exercise, I've made this script:

1. On a (daily) article or blog page of the Mises.org page, a "Remember Article..." or "Remember Blog..." button appears on the top right.
2. Clicking on it will let the script remember that specific page (no alert, add one if desired).
3. On a Mises Wiki page that is currently being edited, the buttons "Insert Reference..." and "Insert Link..." appear.
4. Clicking on them adds a reference to the remembered article or the corresponding link template.

Hope it is useful for others as well! Pestergaines 11:04, 20 February 2012 (MSK)

Now also supports the Circle Bastiat blog. Pestergaines 10:45, 5 May 2012 (MSD)

mises insert script

Such a brilliant little tool. Did you code this yourself? One quick fix...the old blog articles (blog.mises.org/xxxxxx/) redirect to archive.mises.org, so you might update the script for that. It's literally just a find/replace for "blog.mises" with "archive.mises". --John James 06:43, 29 June 2012 (MSD)

Thanks! :) I've updated the script as recommended. Perhaps we should update the blog template as well? Pestergaines 14:25, 29 June 2012 (MSD)

Gold oxide?

I thought that one of the advantages of gold is that it never rusts or tarnishes. And yet here you are, polishing it anyway! Nathan Larson 05:48, 10 July 2012 (MSD)

badum-tss --John James 12:12, 10 July 2012 (MSD)

I'm trying more of a transmutation thing here - polish something enough and it might turn into a diamond. :D Pestergaines 14:12, 10 July 2012 (MSD)

ReCaptcha, cont'd

I notice that it says here, about the captcha: "Unfortunately, as of 2011, some spammers appear to have figured out a way to bypass it, either through character recognition or by using humans. For that reason, it is not necessarily recommended." Maybe a stronger anti-spam measure would be Asirra? One way or another, the spammers have obviously figured out a way to edit the site despite the current Captcha. Nathan Larson 07:03, 13 July 2012 (MSD)

They did, and we need to adapt. Thanks for the idea! Pestergaines 09:13, 13 July 2012 (MSD)

While you're at it, you may want to consider these suggestions as well, to cut down on the amount of "friendly fire," so to speak, from ConfirmEdit. Nathan Larson 09:33, 13 July 2012 (MSD)

Another recommended tweak

Changing the content of MediaWiki:Signature to [[{{ns:user}}:$1|$2]] ([[{{ns:user_talk}}:$1|talk]]) (as it is at MediaWiki.org) would give each user's signature by default a link to their talk page. Kinda like mine. Nathan Larson (talk) 09:41, 13 July 2012 (MSD)

CategoryTree broken

FYI, Special:CategoryTree is broken. I googled the error message and didn't see anything (except for that google-indexed page on our wiki). Therefore, all I can recommend is downloading and upgrading to the latest version of MediaWiki, which is currently 1.19.1 (we have 1.18.2); downloading the latest version of CategoryTree and copying it over the old files; and seeing if that fixes it. Nathan Larson (talk) 01:31, 14 July 2012 (MSD)

Good find! I've forwarded the issue to our support people. Thanks again for all your help and contributions! Pestergaines 15:00, 14 July 2012 (MSD)

You're welcome. And thank you! I'm having a lot of fun here, and seem to be making a lot of progress. Nathan Larson (talk) 18:35, 14 July 2012 (MSD)

Student assignments

Do we know any professors who have assigned their students to write for Mises Wiki (or other wikis)? Perhaps we can have someone write a guide for other professors to crafting and managing these assignments in ways that will serve useful pedagogical goals, while adding value to the wiki. It would probably be much easier than having them write for Wikipedia (which some professors do), since we're a friendlier community to writers of the Austrian school. Maybe the student could be given a choice of assignments, one of which would be to write a wiki article of a certain length.

I'm not sure what other ways we could use to draw in participants. A lot of people have gotten turned off by Wikipedia's policies and those in charge of it, but haven't discovered or gotten involved in Mises Wiki yet. We've certainly advertised the wiki on mises.org plenty of times, and the reaction is often that it's a great resource with a lot of potential. But, despite all the well-wishers, not too many people get heavily involved.

In other news, I see this week's Time had a big article about the growing acceptance of polygamy. I feel ahead of my time for writing about it here before I saw it anywhere in the mainstream press. Who knows, maybe we'll all think of ourselves as ahead of our time for being Austrian economists before it became the trendy ideology of the future. Right now, we're more like hipsters. (Bow ties are so ironic!) Nathan Larson (talk) 07:56, 29 July 2012 (MSD)

Damn! Sometimes things really need a set of new eyes. The idea of having students write their assignments for the wiki comes from Jeffrey Tucker who seemed to eagerly advertise it before his departure from the Institute. I thought "Cool!" and happily continued working on the content. I thought with the Mises Academy it was only a question of time until the teachers start using it. And then, of course... nothing happened.

So we could complain about that, OR we could actually write a guide for teachers on how to use this resource. Why didn't we think of this before? :) Let's see what we can whip up... Pestergaines (talk) 12:09, 29 July 2012 (MSD)

What about Mises University? Wouldn't that be a logical place to start? I sent pat@mises.org this message:

Hi Pat,

Over at the Mises Wiki, we have been trying to figure out ways to encourage more participation in writing articles. One possibility we are working on is inviting students to help:

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/MisesWiki:How_can_teachers_and_students_use_it%3F

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/MisesWiki:Handout_for_students

We are still hashing out exactly what should go in both of those pages, by the way. But in the meantime, I was wondering, what ways, if any, there might be to get information about Mises Wiki to students, especially those who express interest in getting involved in helping further the Austrian School's goals. For instance, might there be an opportunity to give the Mises University students a handout on the subject, or for someone to deliver a quick speech explaining what the wiki is about, and how they can get involved?

If we could get about 5 or 10 regular contributors, we might be able to double the number of articles within a year. It really does not take very many dedicated editors to greatly enhance a wiki's coverage and quality. But it's often hard to find them. Nathan Larson (talk) 12:12, 30 July 2012 (MSD)

For what it is worth, we previously discussed getting Mises Academy students to write articles as assignments. We got a few contributions but the idea didn't pick up steam with the professors. The help page describing this is at MisesWiki:Academy. Forgottenman (talk) 20:33, 31 July 2012 (MSD)

Ah, dammit. :/ Do you see any real chance of pitching this anew? Pestergaines (talk) 20:59, 31 July 2012 (MSD)

Economies of scale

Sometimes it seems that economics of scale crush the smaller wikis. There are a lot of advantages of editing at Wikipedia, rather than at a smaller wiki. For one thing, one can more thoroughly wikify articles. I can, for instance, put double brackets around Columbia Law Review in hopes that the article will someday exist. Maybe some subjects won't ever exist here, or if they do (as in the case of countries or U.S. states), it's difficult to make the coverage as comprehensive as Wikipedia's.

Then of course there is categorization, page existence detection, and so on, which haven't yet been integrated cross-wiki as the template and file transclusions have. Wikipedia is sort of like the Wal-Mart that drives most of the mom-and-pop companies out of business. The question always arises, What the heck do we offer that Wikipedia doesn't?

E.g., does Wikipedia really crush the Austrian point of the view to the point that Austrian writers have to find sanctuary here? Not really. Anarcho-capitalism was (and is) a featured article on Wikipedia, and there is a lot of coverage of Austrian School subjects, such as Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and their books. Which is probably one of the reasons why even some of the editors who were enthusiastic about this wiki spend most of their wikitime over there.

Yeah, there were some skirmishes, e.g. over the Stephan Kinsella article, but it ultimately survived. I have never had a topic on libertarianism deleted for lack of notability, except when it was about, say, a minor libertarian candidate, and we have competition from LPedia for the hosting of that sort of content. LPedia is the official wiki of the LP, so it would naturally tend to draw that sort of content there.

Sometimes I edit Libertapedia just because my ownership of it means that I can be a scofflaw and post a lot of copyrighted content (images and such) without worrying about it getting deleted. That site isn't affiliated with an organization like the LP or LvMI that has to worry about its reputation and about getting sued. I'm pretty much judgment-proof. And I don't allow BetacommandBot to operate on my wiki. Also, I liberally strew interwiki wikilinks to Wikipedia all over my articles (we have mw:Extension:RPED installed over there).

Well, I'm rambling a bit, but basically the main question that comes to my mind is, What really sets us apart? We can compete on either cost or quality. Maybe in some ways, it's less costly to edit here, because users don't have to worry about the ArbCom and a host of other meddlers. On the other hand, it's more costly to duplicate work that's already been done on Wikipedia. As for quality, our scope is narrower than Wikipedia's, so it'll never be the same kind of one-stop information source for almost everything one could want to look up. The best-selling encyclopedias tend to be the more comprehensive ones.

I came up with a proposed solution to all these issues, which was my Inclupedia proposal for complete interwiki integration with Wikipedia. Now it's just a matter of coding it. I like editing these smaller wikis, but I've just never seen any of them be particularly viable. Even the Mises Wiki main page provides information that, for the most part, could be just as easily provided by a Wikipedia portal on Austrian economics. Ironically, if Wikipedia were not such a good wiki, Mises Wiki would probably have more activity. Nathan Larson (talk) 06:56, 1 August 2012 (MSD)