There use to be lots of "handy" programs and toolbars for windows xp and internet explorer. You know, the kind of things no one in their right mind would install. I think people learned to code and wanted to make something?
My theory was that if you are going to make something you will at least try to make something useful. The free extra toolbar, context or menu button will need some selling point.
So I did what every senseless person would do and started gathering lots and lots of "handy" programs and "tools". I install them one by one and then I try to use them as if I was entirely serious about it.
IMHO the important part of the process is to identify useless things early (and convincingly) and get rid of it.
Quite a lot of them looked like someone put some real work into it and they all got to stay. It took quite some effort to learn to use all of them the way intended but to my complete surprise some of them were actually useful.
Besides google toolbar the only one I remember by name is slickrun[0]. Out of all addons competing for search this one also launched applications and opened folders by typing the first letters of a configured keyword and had a hot key.
One truly fabulous tool was an extra windows toolbar button that folded out a context menu with a full blown web directory with 10 layers of nested sub menus. What made it fabulous was the sheer amount of effort someone (or multiple someones) made in organizing and curating thousands of websites into sub sub sub sub menus. Every time I thought (for laughs) I'd try find something there it not just was there but it lived in a very obvious place, surrounded by related stuff worth checking out.
I had 3 different spelling and autocomplete tools competing for the best suggestion. IEspel usually won as they send all text input to the server. Most shocking was that if you shifted your hands one character to the right it guessed flawlessly what you wanted to type even if non of the characters were correct. I loaded one with some popular phrases.
One of the text complete tools also competed with several clipboard history laboratories.
Without a license one could install limited Microsoft desktop buddies[2] but after installing many trial applications that had them I gathered a big team of different ones that were shared between applications. This is important because some tools offered screen reading that worked really well in any application. Being "serous" about the process I carefully configured everything which naturally resulted in configuring trillian reading irc out loud, each user with a different voice and a different desktop buddy. IRC had transformed into theater. I just let it run all day and repeatedly cried from laughter. I couldn't remember all the names but different voices are hard to forget.
The context menu of "every firefox extension" was nowhere near as terrible as mine. Mine had arrows to scroll and it kept going.
Bayden SlickRun is still around, I use it daily for launching most of my programs (the only annoyance is the `hide` magicword gets interpreted as `hibernate` occasionally due to my typing `hi` and hitting enter). Unlike many other launchers, SlickRun uses minimal resources and can be configured to show useful information if you leave it on-screen (these days I have it set to auto-hide, as I have enough memory to not worry about it). Typing three keys to get auto complete and hitting enter is faster than searching the run menu (regardless of what implementation you use).
I was very annoyed when I installed windows 10 and had to change my hotkey. (Much like I'm now annoyed at Windows 11 for hijacking the printscreen key I use for ShareX)
A british inventor created a setup with two long vibrating plates with ferrofluid in between. A flaky powder made from garbage was dumped in on one side and came out the other end beautifully separated in many layers by density. (with one mixed layers in between that went back in at the beginning) Innitially he "knew" it was silly to use something as expensive as ferrofluid but planned to try other substances if it worked. It turned out the process produced a lot more ferrofluid than it used.
Calling it a resource suggests you don't contribute. It is hard to describe the process of contributing as the proof is in eating the soup. I could both describe it as easy to get started and a bureaucratic nightmare. Most editors are oblivious to the many guidelines which is specially interesting for long term frequent editors. This is the specific guideline of interest for your comment.
This rule, by itself, wouldn't pass muster in any ARBCOM proceeding I've ever witnessed, but if you've seen it work then by all means post a link to the proceedings.
> This rule, by itself, wouldn't pass muster in any ARBCOM proceeding I've ever witnessed, but if you've seen it work then by all means post a link to the proceedings.
I don't know that I've directly argued for IAR at ARBCOM, it's been too long ago. But my account hasn't been banned yet (despite all my shenanigans ;-) , which probably goes a long way towards some sort of proof.
To be sure, the actual rule is:
"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. "
The first part is REALLY important. It says the mission is more important than the minutiae, not that you have a get out of jail free card for purely random acts.
It's a bureaucratic tiebreak basically. Things like "I'm testing a new process" , or "I got local consensus for this" , or "This looks a lot prettier than the original version, right?" ... are all arguments why your improvement or maintenance action may be valid; even if the small-print says otherwise. Even so, beware chesterton's fence. Like with jazz, it's a good idea to get a good grip on the theory before you leap into improvisation.
That, and, if you mean well, you're supposed to be able to get away with a lot anyway. Just so long as you listen to people!
In the end, the only question that one should need to ask is: 'will this action or change I'm about to execute be the right thing to do for this project?'
It is not even required to know any of the rules or guidelines and they are just articles that you can edit.
It's rather fascinating actually.
If things are judged by their creator you are left with nothing to judge the creator by. If you do it by their work the process becomes circular. Some will always be wrong, some always right, regardless what they say.
If you have a shallow understanding of the project, as Bryan clearly does, then you are incapable of answering that question.
And while you are right in some sense, the rules that have sprung up over the years are information about what the community decided 'right' was at the time.
> rules or guidelines and they are just articles that you can edit.
? No, you [a random hn user popping over to try what you suggested] cannot edit those pages, they are meta and semi-protected, last I checked. You, confirmed wikipedian 6510, can, assuming you are fine getting a reverted and a slap on the wrist.
In this case, the only thing noteworthy about this incident [an AfD I assume] is that included a rather entitled bot, rather than the usual entitled person.
To be absolutely fair to Bryan, their understanding appears to be improving rapidly with leaps and bounds, and they are being invited to help with improving policy on this.
Depends what modifications of the guideline you suggest. If you have somewhat radical ideas an essay is probably a better idea.
To clarify, I think the line between user and LLM contributions will get increasingly blurry. If they are constructive contributions it shouldn't make a difference.
Say I have an LLM check an article with some proof reading prompt and it suggests 50 small changes that look constructive to me. Should I modify the article now?
I mostly agree. It's too bad that they had to lock down some of the policies against drive-by vandalism, but in the main they're still supposed to be editable. I used to edit them quite a bit. It's basically part of the workflow : if you learn something: document it. (at least from my descriptive perspective; others may disagree)
Turns out AAA banks and high tech industry also like this idea, so I've been lucky enough to be a consultant on process documentation there too.
The problem is that many care more about presentation than substance. The irony gets overwhelming where boring is usually the best solution and the least exciting.
I have no idea how it should work specifically but it seems there could be something like a hash to refer to ones account in public without disclosing your email address.
The internet is full of terrible experiences with companies. Even without much exposure someone working for the company might be curious what the hell is going on.
The implementation leaves much to be desired but the EU actually requires reviews from real customers. Or more specific, you cant publish a review if you cant prove it is from a real customer.
Before he left I use to enjoy enraging a manager several layers above me. In one instance I explained that asking us to cut a few corners to get things done was fine, usually we can figure out acceptable ways of doing it. But then, it is your job to take those fake numbers and figure out how we are doing. No matter how much effort you make if bullshit goes in you know what will come out.
Now imagine an entire economy working like that. Like say, LLM's are good enough to run entire companies but you don't get to run a company because you are good at it. LLM's can perfectly manage employee schedules but the real job is more like marriage counseling or group therapy. Somewhere along the road we forgot which jobs make the economy go. They are probably the ones with the lowest salaries as those lack the effort of conjuring the job into existence.
Humanity needs obvious things cloths, food, housing, transportation etc but that isn't where the money is. The people cooking the books have the money and they are looking for something like a book cooking book. The market for openAI will be in lying convincingly for the benefit of the investor. Reality must be auctioned off like domain names or search engine placements. Altman is really the perfect guy for the job no one wants. ha-ha
Alternatively we could humble ourselves, ask the Chinese how reality works and attempt to steal their fu. It's just a thought.
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