Difference between revisions of "Main Page"

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==Recent Blog Posts==
 
==Recent Blog Posts==
I would have ended this page with a simple link to [[User:MichaelSlattery/Blog|Michael Slattery's Blog]]. However, I summarize below recent posts from the blog in order to help maintain this page in the Google listings. For an angry reaction to the way Google works, see [[RainDog's Second Rant]].
 
 
*On 22 October 2007 this website's Main Page '''is listed''' on the French Google. For the history of this page's listings see [[Google Log]].
 
*The Google robot last crawled this website on '''11 October 2007'''.
 
 
  
 
'''18 October 2007 - Steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve'''
 
'''18 October 2007 - Steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve'''
  
 
We're talkin' steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve, gang. This refers to a post on my [http://slattery.ouvaton.org personal blog] dated 19 September 2007, entitled [http://slattery.ouvaton.org/index.php?2007/09/19/7-exponential Exponential], which begins: "We're talkin' steep part of the learning curve, gang." I just [[ReFactoring|refactored]] this site's [[Main Page]] to add a narrative summary of the contents of the site. In the process, I drastically expanded the site's scope. In addition to categories for [[:Category:Wikis|Wikis]], [[:Category:Convivial Tools|Convivial Tools]] and [[:Category:Open Design|Open Design]], there are now categories for [[:Category:FOSS|Free and Open Source Software]], [[:Category:Whole Earth|Whole Earth]], [[:Category:Appropriate Technology|Appropriate Technology]] and [[:Category:Hacker Generation|Hacker Generation]]. When will I ever find time to fill in all of these categories with relevant information?
 
We're talkin' steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve, gang. This refers to a post on my [http://slattery.ouvaton.org personal blog] dated 19 September 2007, entitled [http://slattery.ouvaton.org/index.php?2007/09/19/7-exponential Exponential], which begins: "We're talkin' steep part of the learning curve, gang." I just [[ReFactoring|refactored]] this site's [[Main Page]] to add a narrative summary of the contents of the site. In the process, I drastically expanded the site's scope. In addition to categories for [[:Category:Wikis|Wikis]], [[:Category:Convivial Tools|Convivial Tools]] and [[:Category:Open Design|Open Design]], there are now categories for [[:Category:FOSS|Free and Open Source Software]], [[:Category:Whole Earth|Whole Earth]], [[:Category:Appropriate Technology|Appropriate Technology]] and [[:Category:Hacker Generation|Hacker Generation]]. When will I ever find time to fill in all of these categories with relevant information?
 
 
'''18 October 2007 - WhoCares'''
 
 
Who really cares? This thought reminds me of a page from [[Richard Drake]]'s wiki [[WhyClublet]], entitled [http://clublet.com/c/c/why?WhyWouldOneBother WhyWouldOneBother]. It's been more than a month since [[RainDog's Editorial|RainDog's First Rant]] observed that I was writing for no one. Since then this site received a brief flurry of internet attention, after it first appeared on Google. (It got on Google due to reverse indexing from the [[CommunityWiki]] site, after I ''referred to'' them in my blog.) But most of the new attention came in the form of a [[Spam Attack]]. From my rage was born the project [[GING|GING is not Google]], but nothing has changed. I'm still producing all of this content mostly for myself. [http://clublet.com/c/c/why?WhyWouldOneBother WhyWouldOneBother]? WhoCares?
 
  
  
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My sister Miranda sent me this link to a [http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery cloud appreciation website].
 
My sister Miranda sent me this link to a [http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery cloud appreciation website].
 
 
'''14 October 2007 - Damned lies and statistics...'''
 
 
The statistics concerning this site are dreary. Other than myself, there was one visitor yesterday, and two the day before. It's too depressing. The solution is just to stop looking at the statistics.
 
 
 
'''14 October 2007 - English Google and French Google'''
 
 
It occured to me recently that this site is probably only listed on French Google, not on the English Google. When we were in the States last summer, I discovered that the home page of the [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia] site was unlisted there, whereas it had been listed in France. When I try to connect to http://google.com I get automatically redirected to http://google.fr. Is there some way I can prevent the redirect?
 
  
  
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'''12 October 2007 - This [[Main Page]] is finally on Google'''
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'''12 October 2007 - The "History of Wikis" article is already on Google'''
  
This Main Page of the toolswiki site is finally on Google. '''For how long?''' See [[Google Log]].
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I launched again the Google search for my new Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of Wikis], using the following character chain, which should find it and nothing else: "WikiWikiWeb snowballed." Bingo. The article is already listed on Google, and I only posted it yesterday!
 
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'''12 October 2007 - And so is the "History of Wikis" article'''
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I launched again the Google search for my new Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of Wikis], using  
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the following character chain, which should find it and nothing else: "WikiWikiWeb snowballed." Bingo. The article is already listed on Google, and I only posted it yesterday!
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'''11 October 2007 - The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] is on Wikipedia'''<br>
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'''11 October 2007 - The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] is on Wikipedia'''
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Today I posted my big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article on Wikipedia. This evening I [http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=%22history+of+wikis%22&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta= Googled "History of wikis"] to see if the article would appear, although I knew from experience that it will take a few days before the new article is crawled. The number one search result was the Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wiki], with a tag in the "history" section saying "Main article: History of wikis." I just added that tag today! The Wikipedia article on "Wiki" was thus crawled today '''after''' I added the tag. Coincidence? Or are certain Wikipedia articles crawled every day?
 
Today I posted my big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article on Wikipedia. This evening I [http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=%22history+of+wikis%22&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta= Googled "History of wikis"] to see if the article would appear, although I knew from experience that it will take a few days before the new article is crawled. The number one search result was the Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wiki], with a tag in the "history" section saying "Main article: History of wikis." I just added that tag today! The Wikipedia article on "Wiki" was thus crawled today '''after''' I added the tag. Coincidence? Or are certain Wikipedia articles crawled every day?
  
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'''11 October 2007 - Google speaks "Elmer Fudd"'''<br>
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'''11 October 2007 - Google speaks "Elmer Fudd"'''
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For my blog post that told the above story about searching for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article, I needed to capture the sentence "Your search ... did not match any documents" in English. Since my Google speaks French, I went to the [http://www.google.fr/preferences?hl=en Google settings page] to change the language, and discovered that the list of available languages includes "Elmer Fudd." I set it to that, and the fruitless search mentioned above gave this result:
 
For my blog post that told the above story about searching for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article, I needed to capture the sentence "Your search ... did not match any documents" in English. Since my Google speaks French, I went to the [http://www.google.fr/preferences?hl=en Google settings page] to change the language, and discovered that the list of available languages includes "Elmer Fudd." I set it to that, and the fruitless search mentioned above gave this result:
  
 
::Youw seawch - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!
 
::Youw seawch - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!
  
They're a load of laughs, they are, those Google guys. [[Scwewy Wabbit]]!
 
  
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'''10 October 2007 - Tweaking MediaWiki'''
  
'''10 October 2007 - Tweaking MediaWiki'''<br>
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Sometimes this site seems very slow. I did a Google search with "Mediawiki faster," and got a [http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4338 forum page] that said I should enable caching, install APC (or a similar product) to pre-compile the php, and do a Google search for "mediawiki performance." The latter leads to [http://dammit.lt/2007/01/26/mediawiki-performance-tuning Five minutes of MediaWiki performance tuning], which tells how to install [http://fr3.php.net/manual/en/ref.apc.php APC], Alternative PHP Cache. But how do I execute the commands that are shown? And is APC installed on my Ouvaton server? To be continued...
Perhaps this site would have more visitors if it were faster. I did a Google search with "Mediawiki faster," and got a [http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4338 forum page] that said I should enable caching, install APC (or a similar product) to pre-compile the php, and do a Google search for "mediawiki performance." The latter leads to [http://dammit.lt/2007/01/26/mediawiki-performance-tuning Five minutes of MediaWiki performance tuning], which tells how to install [http://fr3.php.net/manual/en/ref.apc.php APC], Alternative PHP Cache. But how do I execute the commands that are shown? And is APC installed on my Ouvaton server? To be continued...
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'''09 October 2007 - GING is not Google'''<br>
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'''06 October 2007 - [[WikiSpam]]'''
A few days ago I came up with the idea of "[[GING]] is not Google." Modelled on Richard Stallman's original free software project "GNU is (not) Unix," [[GING]] is a project to use P2P software to pool thousands of PCs together to provide
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enough computing power to create an alternative to the [[GoogleMafia]]. But in order for anyone to know about [[GING]], the pages describing it will first have to be listed on Google...
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'''06 October 2007 - [[WikiSpam]]'''<br>
 
 
The toolswiki has been spammed. It started a week ago, when this site started to show up just a little bit on Google, but I only discovered  it today. Fortunately the site had been configured to require creating an account before editing. The spammers were discrete, and created only a few pages, to avoid being detected. Consulting the page histories, I recreated the following record:
 
The toolswiki has been spammed. It started a week ago, when this site started to show up just a little bit on Google, but I only discovered  it today. Fortunately the site had been configured to require creating an account before editing. The spammers were discrete, and created only a few pages, to avoid being detected. Consulting the page histories, I recreated the following record:
  
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'''05 October 2007 - [[GoogleMafia]]'''<br>
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'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia article unknown to Google'''
I discovered that my [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia] website has already completely disappeared from the Google ratings. This saddening discovery prompted [[RainDog's Second Rant]]. See also [[GoogleMafia]] and [[GING|GING is not Google]].
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'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia article unknown to Google'''<br>
 
 
I tried to Google "Sunir Shah" to see if my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunir_Shah Wikipedia article] about him has started to show up yet. I searched deep into the Google listing but never found the article. I finally put together a foolproof combination: "Sunir Shah" with "Early Life." That only brought up a couple of pages of Google listings, and the article wasn't there. So it hasn't even been crawled by the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebot Google robot] yet! I put that article on Wikipedia more than two weeks ago. Apparently Google waits to find an external link before it crawls a new Wikipedia article. How long will that take? (Happy added note: on 8 October 2007 the Sunir Shah article is listed by Google and appears in '''eighth place''' for the search entry "Sunir Shah".)
 
I tried to Google "Sunir Shah" to see if my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunir_Shah Wikipedia article] about him has started to show up yet. I searched deep into the Google listing but never found the article. I finally put together a foolproof combination: "Sunir Shah" with "Early Life." That only brought up a couple of pages of Google listings, and the article wasn't there. So it hasn't even been crawled by the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebot Google robot] yet! I put that article on Wikipedia more than two weeks ago. Apparently Google waits to find an external link before it crawls a new Wikipedia article. How long will that take? (Happy added note: on 8 October 2007 the Sunir Shah article is listed by Google and appears in '''eighth place''' for the search entry "Sunir Shah".)
  
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'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia "Recent changes"'''<br>
 
'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia "Recent changes"'''<br>
 
I suppose every Wikipedia contributor has tried this at least once: when I finished saving an edit, I went straight to "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges Recent changes]" to see it listed there. In the few seconds it took me to open "Recent changes," some thirty edits had been saved on other articles, showing up on the list on top of mine.
 
I suppose every Wikipedia contributor has tried this at least once: when I finished saving an edit, I went straight to "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges Recent changes]" to see it listed there. In the few seconds it took me to open "Recent changes," some thirty edits had been saved on other articles, showing up on the list on top of mine.
 
 
'''04 October 2007 - Googling "toolswiki"'''<br>
 
I Googled "toolswiki" as a way to find this website (the URL includes "toolswiki.ouvaton.org"). There are several varieties. "ToolsWiki" in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_case CamelCase] belongs to a [http://www-theory.lbl.gov physics site], although the wiki itself seems broken. The page called [http://www-theory.lbl.gov/toolswiki/index.php?title=Monte_Carlo_Generators Monte Carlo Generators] on that site is a long list of links to porn sites. This seems to be [[WikiSpam]]. My site shows up as "toolswiki" all in small letters. For "toolswiki" the Google list includes the main page of [http://communitywiki.org CommunityWiki]. Not because "toolswiki" is listed anywhere on that CommunityWiki page (it isn't), but because Raindog's Blog '''points to''' CommunityWiki. Just how does Google work anyway?
 
  
  

Revision as of 16:39, 23 October 2007