[Lnc-business] L-Pedia

[David Demarest]

Caryn, I would be happy to co-sponsor the motion you suggest below.

 

Celebrate Life, Set the Bar High and LIVE FREE!

 

The War on Cronyism Begins Now!

 

~David Pratt Demarest

Region 6 Representative, Libertarian National Committee

Secretary, Nebraska Libertarian State Central Committee

David.Demarest at LP.org <mailto:David.Demarest at LP.org>  

Secretary at LPNE.org <mailto:Secretary at LPNE.org> 

DPDemarest at centurylink.net <mailto:DPDemarest at centurylink.net>  

David.Demarest at firstdata.com <mailto:David.Demarest at firstdata.com> 

http://www.LP.org  

http://www.LPNE.org

Cell:       402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

Office: 402-222-7207

 

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of Caryn Ann Harlos
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016 8:09 PM
To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org
Cc: James Gholston <jamesg at dimensionality.com>
Subject: [Lnc-business] L-Pedia

 

I do not recall this being brought up, and this seems like an issue who's time for addressing is far overdue.  I inquired with James Gholston who has been an administrator of accounts there, and he provided me with this information and request.   I'd like to get this discussion going, and perhaps if there is interest, speak with some of you about co-sponsoring a motion to get this going.

 

====

As probably everyone I'm sending this email to knows, our party has a history-centric wiki (since 2005) that has very high PageRank and shows up heavily in searches. It is likely the biggest online repository that lists names of people who have participated in the Libertarian Party (with access to some party data, we could crank out a lot of biographical articles).

 

Situation: MediaWiki is not designed to be maintained without shell and ftp access, but only paid contractors and staff have this level of access. Meanwhile, the LNC Staff does not have time to maintain react-text: 196 LPedia.org /react-text  <http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FLPedia.org%2F&h=IAQGLgKMN> , and the party doesn't have the resources to pay someone to maintain it. 

 

What problems do we have that result? Two big ones are visible on the front page. Three years ago account creation was temporarily locked down when we were getting more than 100 garbage articles and accounts added per minute and it's still temporarily down. Also, a needed image permission is broken on the server preventing image uploads while the wiki settings prohibit linking to external images. The really pixellated image of John Hospers isn't really an image. It's a table. ...And it's roughly a third of a megabyte. A PNG or JPEG would be a tiny fraction of the size and would look far nicer, but it hasn't been possible to add one of those for a few years.

 

Additional problems: The version of MediaWiki we're using is eight years out of date -- and that update seven years ago was done by the LNC staff spending money. Extensions are needed -- both to add features to handle the data on react-text: 205 LPedia.org /react-text  <http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FLPedia.org%2F&h=wAQH_h6KR> and to control attacks (our PageRank makes us a high value target).

 

Our main tool for controlling attacks is a bot that runs on my personal desktop (written four and a half years ago when successful attacks were exceeding what could be humanly controlled in a reasonable amount of time as a workaround for lack of server access) -- and stops running whenever my machine or Internet connectivity are down, allowing garbage to accumulate. We have no meaningful extensions to stop things (a decade-old CAPTCHA that's easily bypassed -- especially with the version of MediaWiki we're running). With the bot ( react-text: 211 http://lpedia.org/User:WHUMP /react-text  <http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Flpedia.org%2FUser%3AWHUMP&h=mAQEXDhYU> ) it's possible to continue to allow anonymous contributions (most of our contributions have always been anonymous -- many very substantial) and I can bug people for usernames and email addresses and add the manually when I know about them or personally recruit them, but reliance on these steps is not optimal.

 

Also, what do we do when a PHP or SQL update breaks MediaWiki 1.12 altogether?

 

My suggested fix: Move react-text: 220 LPedia.org /react-text  <http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FLPedia.org%2F&h=KAQGIW0iR> to a server where trusted volunteers are allowed under-the-hood access. It doesn't need to be anything even remotely fancy or expensive: A shared hosting DreamHost account would be more than sufficient. Additional volunteer-maintainable party domains -- presently existing or merely potential -- could be hosted on the same server and also be maintained by volunteers (and/or staff and contractors, time permitting). The LNC staff can retain control when they see a need or find time to exercise it, yet not be a bottleneck when there's simply too many things to do, not enough staff, and not enough time for even just the essentials. 

 

There are other historical concerns and things that might be relatively easy to do to help the volunteers who participate with react-text: 226 LPedia.org /react-text  <http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FLPedia.org%2F&h=QAQES3Arj> (I'd like to change the default licence to public domain and I'm concerned about the mold/mildew risk to our unscanned surviving archival documents after the basement flood), but let me focus on just this one thing right now.

 

======= 

 

I have cc'd James on this message so he can keep track and feed me relevant information.  

 

 

-- 

In Liberty,

Caryn Ann Harlos

Region 1 Representative 

(Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington)

Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org <mailto:Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org> 

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