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Poster: brewster Date: Mar 21, 2010 2:32pm
Forum: texts Subject: Re: one million nine hundred thousand free texts!

Thank you for the offer to help. There are some ways that are easier to help than others.

A few on texts: The Internet Archive Bookreader's code is on github and there is a launchpad project that records the bugs/features/and projects being worked on on that project. If anyone is inclined, this is a high impact project to help with.

The Open Library project could always use more marc records.

The Open Library project (upstream.openlibrary.org) is also on git hub and could use help and development. Further, there is a system of wikieditable code that we would like to see if others can use to make productive modifications to the UI.

Also the Open Library's pages are wikieditable, and we hope that the information gets filled out and corrected.

For those that can write bots, the Open Library has api's to get additions like links to reviews and the like. I think it would be really cool to be able to see the nytimes book review for tom sawyer from when it came out.

And we could always use more books uploaded to the archive. this is now easier to do from scripts because of an S3 interface we have, but if you can get a hold of collections of books we would love to host them.

anyway, I hope we are making it easier for people to participate because we certainly can not do it all.

-brewster


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Poster: stbalbach Date: Mar 21, 2010 10:34pm
Forum: texts Subject: Re: one million nine hundred thousand free texts!

Internet Archive source code projects (Bookreader, Open Library, etc..)

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Poster: Parsnip Date: Mar 22, 2010 3:50pm
Forum: texts Subject: Re: one million nine hundred thousand free texts!

Brewster

I am sure what you wrote makes absolute sense to you and the people who work at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, to anyone who would like to assist, it is totally unintelligible. How about an FAQ in plain English that explains where people could help, and how... with links? Someone also asked about how to volunteer to be a forum moderator some weeks ago, and got no sensible answer.

And while I'm on about the benefits of communication, how about getting the download counters working again? They've been out for nearly two weeks with not a word from anybody at IA about when it will be fixed, or even if you know about it.

Ta muchly.

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Poster: stbalbach Date: Mar 24, 2010 8:42pm
Forum: texts Subject: Re: one million nine hundred thousand free texts!

Good idea Parsnip. See my post above in a new thread about ways to help. If you see anything that needs change or clarification let me know and I'll update it. It's sort of very much "serve yourself" around here, and be happy with whatever is available :) But for anyone who is a programmer, the skies the limit on what can be done if you have the time and skills.

Stephen

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Poster: Time Traveller Date: Mar 22, 2010 4:23pm
Forum: texts Subject: Re: one million nine hundred thousand free texts!

These download counters rarely work well, up-loaders break all the time, whether or not they use the infamous FLASH, other times the servers are down.

Brewster, its time you looked at your existing staff to see if they are still qualified to work on today's WWW sites, and understand the coding and how it works.

I noted Gerry offering free help with the nuts and bolts of the Internet Archive, Brewster it was very rude of you to ignore his offer, and instead direct him to things he already knows about.

I think it is time you got people like Gerry in, who does seem to have the qualifications needed to be a asset to the Archive, certainly there are other people just as good.

Admittedly the Archive is now such a big resource that letting outsiders make changes will be a security issue, but what is wrong with taking on people like Gerry as volunteer consultants, and just let therm LOOK at the coding for the IA software?

You do use a lot of Open Source software, the beauty of such software is that its peer reviewed, I note Tracey Pooh gets Open Source code from other software writers, and then also maybe modifies it to suit the IA, but how many similar or more qualified people people review her work?

The security and usability of Open Source, Operating System Ubuntu comes from heaps and heaps of people constantly checking each others work.

Brewster, I suggest that for every person you have actually changing the coding on the Archive, that you have 5 to 10 consultants (Like Gerry for example) looking over your staff members shoulders, reviewing, criticising their decisions and coding, along with the right to make suggestions which YOU Brewster MUST take seriously.

Maybe a panel of independent unpaid consultants to review such suggestions, even suggestions coming from outsiders via the forums.

I have been quiet recently, I am having CT and MRI scans to find out why I suffer from constant vertigo, what the reports already show, is I am unusually young (54)to have this condition, I rely on sea sickness tablets to keep going.

But when I return to uploading, I want to see the IA to be once again USER FRIENDLY for downloads, uploads, forums etc, and no longer follow the personal ideas of just the few people you currently employ to run the IA.

Peter Melon Thrower!!!!