Special pages are broken

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Special pages are broken
by tepples on 2009-01-31 (#42613)

The wiki owner disabled new account registrations three weeks ago in preparation to investigate new measures against automated registrations "this weekend". He hasn't edited the wiki since. Did he forget about it?

When trying to investigate whether anyone still has the 'createaccount' privilege in order to create an account for a known good poster to the forum, I found that Special:Preferences and Special:Watchlist result in blank pages, and Special:ListGroupRights doesn't work on that version of MediaWiki.

by tepples on 2009-03-01 (#43806)

Another user on this forum has already run into problems. I've sent an e-mail to the address associated with Atarimike's wiki account, but what should we do if that fails? Or should we start over yet again on a new domain with new rules?

by Banshaku on 2009-03-01 (#43810)

If the current owner (Atarimike?) doesn't have time to maintain it, either we request a new admin to be elected and propose it to Atarimike or we have to create a new wiki.

If we do decide to create a new wiki, we should at least ask Atarimike if he doesn't mind about transferring the data, even asking him how does he feel about this since he must have put time from the beginning on it (just guessing, was not there when it was created). We should be diplomatic as much as we can since people invest their personal time on this and it kind of rude when someone tell you indirectly "we don't need you anymore" by moving things around.

My last comment on the subject is since the NesDev forum is on parodius, why is the wiki is on another site in the first place? Shouldn't it be on the same? That make more sense to me. Can we ask Koitsu if we could have a nesdev wiki on parodius and get an admin for this specific part? http://nesdev.com/wiki would make more sense to me then the current site.

by tepples on 2009-03-01 (#43814)

There used to be a wiki at the URL you just linked. As I understand it, contributors just grew frustrated with the limitations of WikkiTikkiTavi, and it was easier to start MediaWiki on a new server.

As for moving the text, it might be better to reword everything. The nesdevwiki.org contributors never got around to specifying a license for the original text.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-01 (#43817)

tepples wrote:
There used to be a wiki at the URL you just linked. As I understand it, contributors just grew frustrated with the limitations of WikkiTikkiTavi, and it was easier to start MediaWiki on a new server.

I see. I was not aware about that fact. It was easier to start it on a new server but it must still be possible to install it on parodius one I guess. If we could do that, that would be great.

by koitsu on 2009-03-02 (#43820)

If whoever maintains/"owns" the wiki wants a separate account (which I'd recommend since I think Memblers has some personal stuff on his account, which is where the nesdev site resides), and/or want to migrate a domain name to us for hosting it, that's fine.

I can make http://nesdev.com/wiki/ point to that separate account, that way the main nesdev site and the wiki portion are maintained under two separate accounts.

by blargg on 2009-03-02 (#43821)

If we're starting fresh with a well-defined license, it might be a good idea to also keep the current wiki available on a new server. This way there's not a rush to hastily rewrite content on the new Wiki; instead, it can be developed at a natural pace and with the goal of quality in mind.

If a new one is made from scratch, it would be really really nice if there were some planning beforehand.

- Reference material should be separate from programmer usage. So for example you'd have PPU reference pages that just cover what the registers do, and then "how-to" pages like the spiffy one Bregalad's been pimping lately. I also think electrical (hardware) information should be separate from software behavior reference. So you might have the 2A03's pinout and timing separate from the CPU and APU descriptions, also separate from CPU programming techniques and sound techniques. The point is to address different information needs in a focused way. Ones I can think of:

* building hardware - want electrical descriptions
* making an emulator - want behavior reference
* writing NES program - want how-tos when learning, then want behavior reference when some detail is forgotten
* general interest - want overview of architecture, then any of the above

- Pages should be fairly short. The main PPU page is a good example of the opposite of this, with way too much information crammed in one page.
- Common style templates should be decided on beforehand. Things like register descriptions should be in the same style on every page. Perhaps there's a way the Wiki can help us represent the information directly, and then have the Wiki automatically present it in an appropriate way. When working on the APU pages, I tried to use a register description style that was compact and clear, and not using some ugly text art (but we might prefer text; see next item).
- Consider making it easy to generate an text-only version of pages. I don't know about others, but I much prefer text files for referring to things, rather than web pages, as text editors are really fast and less clunky than a web browser. Doing this would rule out graphics and tables, though, unless there were a way to specify alternate text versions of such elements.
- Work out well-defined naming convention for the internal pages. Since the names are referenced in Wiki text, the names do matter to some extent. Do you name the page "APU", "NES_APU", etc.?

by Banshaku on 2009-03-02 (#43824)

Blargg beats me on this one (was going to write a message exactly about this). I totally agree with him. Before we start the wiki, lets define the structure of the site before hand to cover all common cases. It should be easy since it's not like the nes will "grow" with new features (except for peripheral like the powerpak which could have their own section).

Once properly defined and we decide some rules on the content (keep it short and simple), we should be able to rebuild it quite fast.

@Blargg: Regarding the style of the content, I'm sure there must be a way to apply some CSS to allow to switch from a graphical style to be more text friendly one. We should just check if the wiki software allow to do this. I tend to prefer some text document too.

@Koitsu: Great to see that we have the possibility. Thanks for the comment and support

by Dwedit on 2009-03-02 (#43825)

<nowiki> </nowiki>?

by Banshaku on 2009-03-02 (#43827)

Dwedit wrote:
<nowiki> </nowiki>?

But that would mean this specific paragraph would be without style at all. I would be interesting if you could apply different styles to the current content, like website that requires a different style when printing.

On another subject, once the new wiki structure is decided, we still need to decide who will be the admin of the site.

by frantik on 2009-03-08 (#44029)

just noticed this thread when i wanted to create a user account on the wiki

hope to see the new wiki started.. an area for "how tos" for basic stuff like proper nes initializations would be awesome

by koitsu on 2009-03-10 (#44092)

Reminder for those interested (Banshaku and others): just drop me a private note sometime on the forum about the account details and I'll do the necessary magic needed to get what was described.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-12 (#44199)

If we want to make it go forward, we have to make some decisions soon.

Should we vote on who should be the admin or just suggest it in this thread? We need an administrator that can maintain a wiki.

by frantik on 2009-03-13 (#44238)

The administrator of a wiki doesn't need to maintain the articles... any user can do that. in fact it's better if users adopt certain articles and make them "their baby" and work to improve them as much as possible. the wiki admin just needs to make sure everything is working, deal with technical issues, etc

I recommend adding information first and worrying about organization a little bit later. Waiting for organization to occur before information is added will just discourage people adding information. Organizing existing information is much easier than coming up with an all encompassing plan before hand. Obviously you can have some ideas in mind and directions you want to go, but I just mean "get the info out there" instead of dilly-dallying

I've got a fair amount of experience running MediaWiki wikis.. I currently have two running (http://3geez.wiki-tv.com/Main_Page , http://wiki.swiftlytilting.com/Main_Page ).. MW sites are really easy to set up and let anybody use. the current wiki would be fine if the admin would reopen the site

btw if you guys end up going with MediaWiki, I've developed a scripting language called 'Winter' which might be useful if the wiki ever gets to the advanced stages:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Winter

by Banshaku on 2009-03-13 (#44243)

frantik wrote:
The administrator of a wiki doesn't need to maintain the articles... any user can do that.

I'm aware of that point. It just we will need someone that knows how to install and maintain the Wiki (good chances the media wiki one). But the "tricky" part is to find someone that have been there for a while on the board an is willing to do it. This is one factor that could be used to define "how trustworthy" the person could be. I know this single factor is quite shallow but it may be hard to define other ones (I have no idea at the moment). Because of that, I cannot even elect myself since I only been here since last year.

Since Tepples is a moderator and like to balance things, maybe we should ask him is opinion on how to select the admin.

frantik wrote:
I recommend adding information first and worrying about organization a little bit later. Waiting for organization to occur before information is added will just discourage people adding information.

The way I understand the previous wiki, this is how it was done and nothing moves and people seems to find it messy. It's hard to find what you're looking for. So to define everything is not possible of course but at least some guidelines for categories for grouping information would be nice.

I already like Blargs idea since it seems to divide the information based on the targeted users.You should focus the information for your audience. This will help to find what you're looking for. We could already start around his idea.

On the other hand, the front page of nesdev is not a good example since it's one big chunk of information. This is what happened on many pages of the wiki. We would like to avoid this.

frantik wrote:
I've got a fair amount of experience running MediaWiki wikis..

MW sites are really easy to set up and let anybody use.

By experience do you mean "using" the wiki or "installing it"? If you do have experience in the installation phase then it could help the future admin if he doesn't have any.

frantik wrote:
btw if you guys end up going with MediaWiki, I've developed a scripting language called 'Winter' which might be useful if the wiki ever gets to the advanced stages:

I'm always wary to add any external module since we never know how much impact in can have on the security on the site (sorry if it seems like an attack directed at you but it's not). So unless the user have a good knowledge of this extension we may try to keep it as plain vanilla as possible.

Thanks for the comments, always appreciated

by frantik on 2009-03-13 (#44244)

Quote:
By experience do you mean "using" the wiki or "installing it"? If you do have experience in the installation phase then it could help the future admin if he doesn't have any.

I run those two wikis I mentioned (well I have a third private one) so obviously I'm familiar with the installation phase. It's pretty easy really.

Quote:
I'm always wary to add any external module since we never know how much impact in can have on the security on the site (sorry if it seems like an attack directed at you but it's not).

naturally. The extension offers a pretty wide range of admin definable functions to restrict use, and it prevents things like infinite loops and the like from hogging the server.

But it's definitely not something most wikis need.. it was more just a suggestion since there would be a fair amount of programmers on the site

by tepples on 2009-03-13 (#44253)

Banshaku wrote:
I'm aware of that point. It just we will need someone that knows how to install and maintain the Wiki (good chances the media wiki one).

I've installed MediaWiki before on two sites, one running Apache on Linux and the other running Apache on Windows. I have sysop rights on two others (tetrisconcept and DLDI).

Quote:
But the "tricky" part is to find someone that have been there for a while on the board an is willing to do it. This is one factor that could be used to define "how trustworthy" the person could be. I know this single factor is quite shallow but it may be hard to define other ones (I have no idea at the moment). Because of that, I cannot even elect myself since I only been here since last year.

Since Tepples is a moderator and like to balance things, maybe we should ask him is opinion on how to select the admin.

Preferably, we should have more than one admin to prevent something like this from happening again.

Quote:
frantik wrote:
I recommend adding information first and worrying about organization a little bit later. Waiting for organization to occur before information is added will just discourage people adding information.

The way I understand the previous wiki, this is how it was done and nothing moves and people seems to find it messy.

In Wikipedia, the information often comes before the organization. The editors end up writing a manual of style and other guidelines, and some of them toss message box templates at the top of pages that don't fit the guidelines yet. These templates put articles into cleanup categories, which the WikiGnomes help to maintain by reformatting articles to fit the manual of style.

Quote:
It's hard to find what you're looking for. So to define everything is not possible of course but at least some guidelines for categories for grouping information would be nice.

Those can be developed in talk pages once the wiki gets going.

Quote:
I'm always wary to add any external module since we never know how much impact in can have on the security on the site (sorry if it seems like an attack directed at you but it's not). So unless the user have a good knowledge of this extension we may try to keep it as plain vanilla as possible.

The extensions installed on en.wikipedia.org are probably safe though.

by blargg on 2009-03-14 (#44254)

I think we should find at least one admin, move the current site over to parodius, and continue to plan on a complete rewrite. One unavoidable need for the rewrite is a clear, permissive license. The current site can continue to be tweaked, so there's no pressure to quickly rewrite things. This would end up creating two Wikis for a while, but I hope that doesn't add too much overhead. The old Wiki should have some kind of name indicating it'll be gone at some point, so that the new Wiki has the "proper", clean name.

by tepples on 2009-03-14 (#44262)

blargg wrote:
One unavoidable need for the rewrite is a clear, permissive license.

I'm thinking we should just put the entire new work under the zlib license. That would solve the following problems:

The GNU Free Documentation License, used by Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia project, isn't designed for code samples because it has requirements that are incompatible with free software licenses. For this reason, the license text recommends dual-licensing all code samples under some free software license. There are also practical problems with the GNU FDL, such as the requirement to include a copy of the entire ilcense with any short quotation from a work. See also an essay about the license by a Debian contributor.

Creative Commons CC-BY and CC-BY-SA, used by Wikimedia Foundation's Wikinews project, are incompatible with GNU GPL and GNU FDL because of the "remove from the Collection any credit" requirement in the text of each of these licenses.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-14 (#44276)

tepples wrote:
I'm thinking we should just put the entire new work under the zlib license.

I just read the license. It quite simple but there is one thing I would like to clarify. Let say for example that I decide to use a code sample of a few line that just init the memory. Because of the license, I have to but that header in the file it was inserted or just keep it in it's own file separated (init code + license) so to make the management of it easier?

Isn't there any way to just put a reference to the license and author of the code or something similar in a readme instead? I just don't like "licence wart" everywhere in a code base. In many case of open source code, there is more information about the license in every file than comment regarding the code...

by frantik on 2009-03-14 (#44281)

Quote:
Creative Commons CC-BY and CC-BY-SA, used by Wikimedia Foundation's Wikinews project, are incompatible with GNU GPL and GNU FDL because of the "remove from the Collection any credit" requirement in the text of each of these licenses.

I think that part says you have to remove credit only if the person contacts you asking you to do so, which seems fair imo.

I think most code on the wiki should be 100% free with no restrictions unless the individual author specifies a license.

really though, does anyone who is planning on contributing to the wiki have the resources and desire to pursue legal action if a license is violated?

by blargg on 2009-03-14 (#44283)

If you just want to copy a few lines, rewrite them "in your own words". Only the particular expression of the idea is copyrighted, not the algorithm itself.

Quote:
I think most code on the wiki should be 100% free with no restrictions unless the individual author specifies a license.

I think everything on the Wiki should be under the same permissive license. If there's something substantial that a particular author wants under different terms, he can put it on his own site and have the Wiki link to it.

by koitsu on 2009-03-15 (#44298)

blargg wrote:
I think we should find at least one admin, move the current site over to parodius, and continue to plan on a complete rewrite. One unavoidable need for the rewrite is a clear, permissive license. The current site can continue to be tweaked, so there's no pressure to quickly rewrite things. This would end up creating two Wikis for a while, but I hope that doesn't add too much overhead. The old Wiki should have some kind of name indicating it'll be gone at some point, so that the new Wiki has the "proper", clean name.

Who actually owns the domain nesdevwiki.org? Are they a forum member here? WHOIS says it's someone named Michael Harris, but of course I have no idea who that is.

If the owner was willing to point the DNS A record to the same IP as nesdev.com, I could redirect nesdevwiki.org to nesdev.com/wiki/ (simple HTTP 301 redirect indicating permanent relocation; browsers would redirect automatically). Of course, this means we (Parodius) don't have control over the DNS for the domain (which I often prefer for a lot of reasons), but still...

by Roth on 2009-03-15 (#44303)

Man, come on. The system that we develop for is OLD AS HELL. Why does anyone give a shit what kind of license there is for anything that we do?.... seriously. I mean, sure, acknowledge if you get some help (a la music engine or something similar) in the credits or something, but in the end, why the hell does it matter what kind of license there is on code snippets or something? Do people feel _that_ freaking small that they have to be mentioned in anything that is so closely related to their code? I'm serious as shit. Quit being so shallow about this whole NES development thing. Sure, we all do our fair share of coding and such, but if there is something that works well for what we do, then I'm in the mindset of "just use it." I mean, what we dev for is a tough enough system to program for, given the RAM limits and what-not.

At one time (not too long ago) I was concerned that there were people grabbing code and making a buck off of it. I've come to the realization, though, that in the end it doesn't make a fuck what people do with this old system, because just the _fact_ that people still want to program for it is damned awesome. You know, most of us wouldn't know what the hell to do with the NES if it weren't for disassembling some of the older games in the first place...

Anyway, if there is _any_ kind of license put forth on (yet another wiki, much like a project that keeps getting recoded over and over) the wiki, then I seriously think the best license is something I saw another poster on this board talk about at one time:

http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/

If there is anyone that objects to this, then yes, have them point to their own website with their own license talking about it, but keep it off of the nesdev wiki. If people _really_ care that much about their own code for this defunct system, then I personally feel like they have issues, and should keep their own code to themselves and not contribute to this community anyway.

We are here to have fun, and program for an architecture that is outdated. Man, WHO CARES what license there is in the end???? This really, REALLY shouldn't be an issue. Just have fun, people. Quit being 'worry warts'.... HAVE FUN DOING WHAT WE DO!

OMFGBBQ who wrote this code in the first place and wants to have it for himself wrote:
: bit $2002
bpl :-

Everyone, we just need to get over ourselves and stop caring so much about _ourselves_ and just have some damn fun with this. Seriously.

by frantik on 2009-03-15 (#44304)

^ i tend to agree

Quote:
If the owner was willing to point the DNS A record to the same IP as nesdev.com, I could redirect nesdevwiki.org to nesdev.com/wiki/ (simple HTTP 301 redirect indicating permanent relocation; browsers would redirect automatically). Of course, this means we (Parodius) don't have control over the DNS for the domain (which I often prefer for a lot of reasons), but still...

why not just make a new nesdevwiki.parodius.com subdomain? then you're in complete control and you don't have to wait around for someone who is awol.

all i know is, it would take about 20 minutes to have a new wiki going and people could be adding stuff. I would do it myself on my site but then you might end up with the same problem if i were to disappear randomly lol

by tepples on 2009-03-15 (#44307)

koitsu wrote:
Who actually owns the domain nesdevwiki.org? Are they a forum member here? WHOIS says it's someone named Michael Harris, but of course I have no idea who that is.

"Michael" might be Atarimike.

Quote:
If the owner was willing to point the DNS A record to the same IP as nesdev.com

And if the owner were contactable...

Roth wrote:
why the hell does it matter what kind of license there is on code snippets or something?

Because people are still making and selling NES games through RetroZone. When compensation for your time is involved, "hope the other guy looks the other way" licensing isn't going to fly. But I see your point about WTFPL (essentially a public domain dedication) being a valid choice.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-15 (#44311)

Tepples wrote:
Roth wrote:
why the hell does it matter what kind of license there is on code snippets or something?

Because people are still making and selling NES games through RetroZone. When compensation for your time is involved, "hope the other guy looks the other way" licensing isn't going to fly. But I see your point about WTFPL (essentially a public domain dedication) being a valid choice.

I think the content of the wiki should be public domain. This is what I was looking for but forgot about the concept. There should be no string attached and I agree with Roth completely. If the user doesn't want it to be that way then it should be on their own site.

The site should contains code samples and not complete application so it should not be a problem. If some application (ex: Blargs blip api) is mentioned, there will be a link to the owner site and the application will have it's own license. That way, I don't see any problems.

Game are still sold but how many anyway and how much money are they making on the back of the information they took? And after reading Roth message, what is the purpose of that license, an ego boost? People should be free to use the information to their heart content. People that really care will mention where they took the information and write the names of the person concerned. People that are pirates will rips off the information without even mentioning anything so what will really that license bring?

Let's stop the bureaucratic crap and let get the ball rolling.

Edit:

Tepples, you want to be an admin? We could just start the wiki together then? I can try to spare some of my time when I'm available.

by koitsu on 2009-03-15 (#44312)

frantik wrote:
why not just make a new nesdevwiki.parodius.com subdomain? then you're in complete control and you don't have to wait around for someone who is awol.

Because there's already been a discussion about how the Wiki should end up at http://nesdev.com/wiki/ ? :-)

by tepples on 2009-03-15 (#44315)

So PD it is. It seems to work for the help pages at mediawiki.org.

Banshaku wrote:
Tepples, you want to be an admin? We could just start the wiki together then?

In that case, let's do this. The first thing we might have to do is blow away the Tavi that's already at that URL.

by blargg on 2009-03-15 (#44318)

Quote:
Man, come on. The system that we develop for is OLD AS HELL. Why does anyone give a shit what kind of license there is for anything that we do?....

I do; I don't want people making contributions to the Wiki, getting angry over something and later requiring that we go through and remove all of his contributions. Retarded? Sure. Other people using code from it might also want the same guarantees, thus we want to have a clear permissive license that contributors must put their work under. Under modern copyright law, there's NO WAY to create a work that's not under some kind of license, and without any license specified, it defaults to the most restrictive, i.e. no distribution allowed.

Quote:
Everyone, we just need to get over ourselves and stop caring so much about _ourselves_ and just have some damn fun with this. Seriously.

Who here releases his work under non-free licenses, or is arguing for non-free licensing of the Wiki? I release everything I can under free software licenses.

Quote:
all i know is, it would take about 20 minutes to have a new wiki going and people could be adding stuff. I would do it myself on my site but then you might end up with the same problem if i were to disappear randomly lol

All I know is that I want to make something higher quality than "let's just throw stuff together and pretend it'll work well, even though it hasn't so far".

Quote:
I think the content of the wiki should be public domain. This is what I was looking for but forgot about the concept. There should be no string attached and I agree with Roth completely. If the user doesn't want it to be that way then it should be on their own site.

Yes, except there's no public domain for any current works, so the closest is something like the modified BSD license, the zlib license that tepples linked to, etc. The advantage of these licenses is that they require modified works to be identified as such, so that we don't have the problem of people making their own versions of the Wiki material that isn't clearly not part of it, thus confusing others as to what the primary, reliable source is.

Anyone have a problem with the zlib license?

by loopy on 2009-03-15 (#44324)

I don't care what license is attached, I will ignore it entirely if I decide to use any code from the wiki (seriously). I predict most other people will as well. Knock yourself out, use whatever license gives you warm fuzzies.

(edit)
On second thought, I suggest using whatever license will encourage the most (or discourage the least) number of people to contribute.

by koitsu on 2009-03-15 (#44326)

For what it's worth (not much), I agree with loopy.

Generally speaking, people aren't going to adhere to whatever license is associated with Wiki content. It's kind of like locks on a door -- they only keep honest people out. A license won't stop the following scenario: Wiki individual XYZ finds some 6502/NES source code online which is copyright or under some license not permitting distribution, and puts it on the Wiki. Author of said code finds Wiki, gets super pissed off, demands logs, threatens legal action, etc... I would say that's much more of a likely situation than someone willingly posting their own code snippets, then 6 months later demanding they be removed for whatever reason.

That said, I don't see anything that's blatantly idiotic about the zlib license, and it seems more or less like it could apply to a Wiki site that contains source code samples/snippets.

Someone already linked the WTFPL, which I think generally is applicable.

Otherwise, I'd say just go with the 2-clause BSD license, which is pretty much "do whatever you want with this as long as you include said disclaimer/license". Because quite honestly, that's what people are going to do in reality (just look at how often people violate the GPL, owners get all pissed off, but nothing ever becomes of it because no one can personally afford to sue the other. You can claim license violations over and over, but it doesn't actually *stop* anyone from violation.)

by blargg on 2009-03-15 (#44328)

I still think many people are missing the point of a license on the Wiki; it isn't to restrict what USERS can do with the content; it's to avoid CONTRIBUTORS from each having individual control over contributed content. I really don't like people like loopy and Roth framing this as some silly issue, as if I and others want to have our special little Wiki that nobody can use content from unless they say "pretty please", when that's not the point at all. The name-calling and put-downs are really out of line; if you have a differing position, state it. I can't figure out why there is post after post addressing the issue of end-users. Who ever proposed a restrictive license for the Wiki, that generated all this?

Quote:
I would say that's much more of a likely situation than someone willingly posting their own code snippets, then 6 months later demanding they be removed for whatever reason.

Yes, exactly.

I like the additional restrictions the zlib license places, basically that anyone using the work make it clear that their work is not the original work, so that people seeking the original work can easily tell the difference.

by tepples on 2009-03-15 (#44330)

Look at it this way: The zlib license hasn't prevented people from copying zlib itself into, umm, pretty much anything that loads or saves a PNG file.

by Roth on 2009-03-15 (#44335)

blargg wrote:
I still think many people are missing the point of a license on the Wiki; it isn't to restrict what USERS can do with the content; it's to avoid CONTRIBUTORS from each having individual control over contributed content.

Okay, I understand now. Admittedly, I have no idea how these licenses work, so when I hear something about licenses, it immediately makes me think of limited use of content, if that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification on what the license for the wiki would be for.

by frantik on 2009-03-15 (#44337)

the only thing about zlib is i think any license which requires you to include the license itself with distribution is kind of annoying and i doubt many people would honor it

blargg wrote:
I still think many people are missing the point of a license on the Wiki; it isn't to restrict what USERS can do with the content; it's to avoid CONTRIBUTORS from each having individual control over contributed content.

how about a boilerplate like this: (modeled after wikipedia's page bout copyright

Quote:
If you contribute material to NESDEVWIKI, you thereby release the code into the public domain. In order to contribute, you must be in a position to grant this license, which means that either

* you hold the copyright to the material, for instance because you produced it yourself, or
* you acquired the material from a source that allows release into the public domain

In the first case, you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the public domain license for the copies of materials that you place here.

public domain could be replaced with WTFPL or whatever i suppose.

Quote:
All I know is that I want to make something higher quality than "let's just throw stuff together and pretend it'll work well, even though it hasn't so far".

fair enough, i just meant that a lot of the specifics could be ironed out while content is being added. I often see good ideas for sites get bogged down in the details so I was just encouraging some forward movement. but i'm new here so obviously i don't know all the reasons for why yall want things done certain ways

by tepples on 2009-03-15 (#44338)

frantik wrote:
well i think any license which requires you to include the license itself with distribution is kind of annoying

People who use the code should know their rights.

Quote:
how about a boilerplate like this

I'd recommend using a boilerplate that has been reviewed by people whose job is the law, such as Creative Commons Zero or Creative Commons Public Domain Certification.

Quote:
i just meant that a lot of the specifics could be ironed out while content is being added. I often see good ideas for sites get bogged down in the details so I was just encouraging some forward movement.

There's a word for this sort of discussion: bike shed. But copyright is one of the things that needs to be settled first because unlike pretty much everything else, it can't just be refactored out of the text of the wiki.

by frantik on 2009-03-15 (#44340)

Quote:
I'd recommend using a boilerplate that has been reviewed by people whose job is the law, such as Creative Commons Zero or Creative Commons Public Domain Certification.

sure.. i just copied and modified one i found on wikipedia but there might be better ones out there

Quote:
But copyright is one of the things that needs to be settled first because unlike pretty much everything else, it can't just be refactored out of the text of the wiki.

true, though i'm pretty sure you could start out with no restrictions or a public domain type license, and get more restrictive if that isn't suitable. but starting out with a restrictive license makes it tough to be less restrictive

i honestly think public domain is best because nobody is going to honor any restrictions they don't like anyways, and nobody has the resources to do much about it. knowing this, there really doesn't seem to be much point in worrying about the details of the license imo.

Just make it clear to contributors that once stuff is added to the wiki, that copy of the code is free for anyone to use or modify, and indeed the code may be modified on the wiki itself.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-15 (#44358)

blargg wrote:
I do; I don't want people making contributions to the Wiki, getting angry over something and later requiring that we go through and remove all of his contributions.

...

I still think many people are missing the point of a license on the Wiki; it isn't to restrict what USERS can do with the content; it's to avoid CONTRIBUTORS from each having individual control over contributed content. I really don't like people like loopy and Roth framing this as some silly issue, as if I and others want to have our special little Wiki that nobody can use content from unless they say "pretty please", when that's not the point at all.

I agree with this part. Once the content is available, the contributor shouldn't have any control on it: it's now available to the public without any strings attached and cannot be removed anymore.

blargg wrote:
Yes, except there's no public domain for any current works, so the closest is something like the modified BSD license, the zlib license that tepples linked to, etc. The advantage of these licenses is that they require modified works to be identified as such, so that we don't have the problem of people making their own versions of the Wiki material that isn't clearly not part of it, thus confusing others as to what the primary, reliable source is.

Anyone have a problem with the zlib license?

I'm no license expert so this is where I fail to understand which one is better.

zlib seems fine except for the fact that you need to have the license attached to everything. So I don't know to what extends you need to keep it. For example, that would be annoying to just copy the zlib license in a file for a few lines of code. I just want to find a license that allow me to use the content anyway I want, without the need to copy that license in any file that I may use the original code. I can thanks the contributors in the application, read me etc, in any way I find the most appropriate.

I think what I confuse is the meaning of content: what I'm mostly thinking right now is about the code sample aspect that often comes with tutorial, which I want them to be free of any licenses. The content explaining about something should have an appropriate license to know where the source come from and I have no issue with that.

by atarimike on 2009-03-18 (#44476)

Hey, guys, sorry about the terrible delay. Real life things.

What decisions have been made? Gonna start a new wiki from scratch to avoid the old relicensing problems? It would be nice to use the old content, but legally you have to contact every person who ever made an edit.

I'm gonna upgrade the wiki software to the current version and install the reCaptcha extension. People seem to have good luck with that, and it's pretty popular. If anyone needs an account created in the meantime, let me know and I'll do it.

I'm the owner of the nesdevwiki.org domain.

by atarimike on 2009-03-18 (#44477)

So reading all the posts, it seems like people want a BSD style free license, like Zlib or the CC Zero. Would it be worth it to try to email every person with a registered wiki account and ask them to re-license their contributions?

by Banshaku on 2009-03-18 (#44496)

atarimike wrote:
Hey, guys, sorry about the terrible delay. Real life things.

What decisions have been made? Gonna start a new wiki from scratch to avoid the old relicensing problems? It would be nice to use the old content, but legally you have to contact every person who ever made an edit.

I'm gonna upgrade the wiki software to the current version and install the reCaptcha extension. People seem to have good luck with that, and it's pretty popular. If anyone needs an account created in the meantime, let me know and I'll do it.

I'm the owner of the nesdevwiki.org domain.

Since we didn't have any news for a while, we were in the process of creating a new wiki on the parodius server. Right now only the accounts were created, no wiki installed yet so we still have time to change the current decision.

If we decide to go back on our decision, first we need another admin(s) for the wiki. The reason we were going to create a new one is because you were not reachable. By having more than one admin, this should ease up this issue when of the admin have some personal things to take care of.

Regarding the licensing, this is a good question. I don't know if it's legal to just apply a license to the current content. It seems a little bit wrong but it's not like we are dealing with company stuff: it's a hobby after all. If we decide to apply a license to all content and someone complain then we could see what we can do.

As for the link, I think it's no that important but it would be nice if the site could be redirected to nesdev.com/wiki. This would make things a little bit more consistent. I think Koitsu can do this but we should confirm again with him.

I don't mind to give up on making a new one if we can put more admin on the original site and we figure out what to do with the current content. I don't have any inclination for a specific side, either way is fine with me.

by koitsu on 2009-03-19 (#44515)

Banshaku wrote:
As for the link, I think it's no that important but it would be nice if the site could be redirected to nesdev.com/wiki. This would make things a little bit more consistent. I think Koitsu can do this but we should confirm again with him.

If you're referring to redirecting nesdevwiki.org to nesdev.com/wiki/ -- most of the work has to be done by atarimike. The four options as I see them:

1) His hosting provider might be able to set up a HTTP redirect (this is done on the webserver), or he himself might be able to (if it's Apache, you can accomplish it using .htaccess and Redirect/RedirectMatch directives)

2) Point the DNS A record for nesdevwiki.org and www.nesdevwiki.org to 72.20.106.40. I'd need to know when this was done, after which I could make changes to our web server configuration to redirect the above to nesdev.com/wiki/

3) Point the DNS servers for nesdevwiki.org to ns01.sc1.parodius.com, ns02.sc1.parodius.com, ns0.xname.org, and ns1.xname.org, and from then on I have authoritative control over where the DNS points, but atarimike himself would still own the domain. I'd need to know when this was done, obviously, since I'd have to make DNS server changes and web server changes on my side

4) I can request a domain transfer for ownership of nesdevwiki.org to my own DNS registrar, which gives me control over the whole thing from the ground up

It doesn't matter to me either way, but these are the options as I see them.

by blargg on 2009-03-19 (#44522)

Banshaku wrote:
Regarding the licensing, this is a good question. I don't know if it's legal to just apply a license to the current content. It seems a little bit wrong but it's not like we are dealing with company stuff: it's a hobby after all. If we decide to apply a license to all content and someone complain then we could see what we can do.

If you were claiming a changed license without contacting the authors, then the license isn't really changed, and the authors can still raise hell. That was the main point of a proper license change, to put everything on clear legal ground.

I wonder how practical it would be to mark current pages as "unknown license", and remove that message from any that have been rewritten. That would allow an incremental transition.

by tepples on 2009-03-19 (#44525)

blargg wrote:
I wonder how practical it would be to mark current pages as "unknown license", and remove that message from any that have been rewritten. That would allow an incremental transition.

That's the solution that Wikipedia image pages seem to use. Drop a template at the top, and a rewrite from scratch wouldn't use the template.

by frantik on 2009-03-19 (#44535)

well i've started adding stuff. I put a notice on my user page that all my contributions are 100% free.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-24 (#44718)

Now the site is not even working... Maybe we really need to make a new one after all. Anybody knows the cause this time? Upgrade? Network issue?

by koitsu on 2009-03-25 (#44731)

Banshaku wrote:
Now the site is not even working... Maybe we really need to make a new one after all. Anybody knows the cause this time? Upgrade? Network issue?

The authoritative nameservers for nesdevwiki.org are working correctly (they return an A record of 169.237.101.245 for nesdevwiki.org and www.nesdevwiki.org), so it's not DNS:

Code:
$ dig @C.DNS.GANDI.NET a nesdevwiki.org.

; <<>> DiG 9.4.3-P1 <<>> @C.DNS.GANDI.NET a nesdevwiki.org.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1998
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;nesdevwiki.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
nesdevwiki.org. 10800 IN A 169.237.101.245

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
nesdevwiki.org. 10800 IN NS c.dns.gandi.net.
nesdevwiki.org. 10800 IN NS b.dns.gandi.net.
nesdevwiki.org. 10800 IN NS a.dns.gandi.net.

;; Query time: 2627 msec
;; SERVER: 217.70.182.20#53(217.70.182.20)
;; WHEN: Wed Mar 25 00:45:19 2009
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 109

Traceroute/mtr shows that the network path to that IP goes to UCDavis, probably in a dorm room or something:

Code:
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Rcv Last Avg Best Wrst
1. gw.home.lan 0.0% 38 38 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.5
2. ???
3. 68.85.191.37 0.0% 38 38 10.6 13.7 8.7 26.5
4. te-8-2-ur02.santaclara.ca.sfba.co 0.0% 38 38 18.3 14.1 8.2 31.0
5. be-30-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcas 0.0% 38 38 23.5 16.1 10.4 33.0
6. pos-0-6-0-0-cr01.sacramento.ca.ib 0.0% 38 38 21.6 19.1 12.1 45.2
7. pos-0-9-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone 0.0% 38 38 18.4 19.9 15.4 32.0
8. 137.164.130.217 0.0% 38 38 19.5 27.2 15.7 148.3
9. calren2-cust.plalca01.transitrail 0.0% 38 38 25.7 20.3 15.6 33.4
10. dc-svl-core1--svl-peer1-10ge.ceni 0.0% 37 37 21.6 21.2 15.8 39.1
11. dc-oak-core1--svl-core1-ge-1.ceni 0.0% 37 37 31.1 23.6 17.4 38.4
12. dc-oak-agg2--oak-core1-ge-2.cenic 0.0% 37 37 17.4 21.0 17.4 33.7
13. dc-ucd--oak-dc2-ge.cenic.net 0.0% 37 37 22.7 24.8 18.6 45.0
14. ucd-dc-hpr--hpr-f.ucdavis.edu 0.0% 37 37 19.1 24.1 18.8 47.7
15. hpr-f--cdf2.ucdavis.edu 0.0% 37 37 20.9 24.3 19.4 37.1
16. cdf2--adf7-2.ucdavis.edu 0.0% 37 37 21.1 24.4 19.2 40.2
17. adf7-2--bdf7-5.ucdavis.edu 0.0% 37 37 21.0 24.4 18.8 37.6
18. ???

There's no packet loss between myself and that part of the ucdavis.edu network.

169.237.101.245 does not respond to ICMP (ping) traffic, nor does it appear to respond to any other kind of traffic (UDP or TCP). Likewise, 169.237.101.245 does not answer on TCP port 80 (TCP SYN, but no ACK). Of course, we don't know if this machine is normally pingable or not, so it's hard to determine what the root cause is. Possibilities:

1) Server has crashed or is powered off,
2) Web server process on server isn't running,
3) Ethernet port is shut off or there's an AC power problem somewhere,
4) University network admins shut off something,
5) IP address of server changed (since this a campus, they could use DHCP; we don't know).

This is all speculative. I had no idea this site was being hosted at UCDavis. And as much as I love the campus/uni (really, I've been there!), I do not think such things should be hosted in such environments. I have to assume this is hosted in a dorm room, which really isn't a good place for something like this (no offence).

by Banshaku on 2009-03-25 (#44735)

@Koitsu:

Thanks for doing some investigation regarding the issue, I really appreciate it.

If what you found is accurate then we need to confirm this with AtariMike ASAP and start to move it on a real server then. Why leaving it on a possible dom room machine when you are offering something a lot better?

by mattmatteh on 2009-03-25 (#44755)

perhaps the wiki could be hosted here on parodius ? only problem here was when search was broke.

matt

by koitsu on 2009-03-25 (#44766)

mattmatteh wrote:
perhaps the wiki could be hosted here on parodius ? only problem here was when search was broke.

matt

Read the past 2-3 pages of the thread (re: hosted here). :)

by Banshaku on 2009-03-26 (#44788)

An emergency wiki is being built at the moment. Once the wiki will be ready for the public the link will be published. I hope we can make it available soon.

Power outage
by atarimike on 2009-03-26 (#44796)

We had a major power outage, so sorry about the downtime. Should be back up in a sec.

In the future, feel free to PM me if something isn't right.

by atarimike on 2009-03-26 (#44819)

Edit: It's back up.

by Banshaku on 2009-03-26 (#44839)

atarimike wrote:
So unfortunately I can't get into the building the server is hosted at today. I've spoken with the management and I'll be able to get in tomorrow morning and get the server back up.

I'll let you all know when it's up.

Great, thanks for the follow-up.

Since the information is valuable for the nesdev community, should I suggest that we should make a mirror of this wiki? I could always figure out a way to make a read-only version hosted here.