David McCabe's Summer of Code Blog

Well, today the Google gig is over. Don't worry; I intend to stick with the project at least until LQT is on the English Wikipedia. The status of the project is:

• There is an alpha that works now.
  
• I am refactoring the program; it will be significantly more flexible and maintainable in a week or two when that is finished.
  
• LQT will need to work in multiple modes and configurations. For example, on some sites they don't want nested threads, but on others they need it. With the new design I just mentioned, both groups can be satisfied.
  
• We are scrapping several features, most notably the arbitrary ordering of comments, for the time being. Nobody seems to care about them, they're difficult to protect from abuse, and they can be added later.
  
• I am contemplating how categories or something like them could be used together with saved searches or something like them to make life on Wikipedia a lot easier.
  

Advice for next year's SOC mentors: Send your students to a conference!

Here I am at Wikimania! For the first three days, called Hacking Days, we are meeting at the OLPC office. Amazing, amazing place. I am surrounded by famous, brilliant people. The number of wizards here -- not to mention the number of laptops! -- is truly unbelievable. A few months ago I would have envied my present self.

Yesterday we went to SIGGRAPH. More brilliant people and amazing technology. My favorite demo was an interactive, tactile, graphical, digital musical instrument. But there were dozens of amazing demos -- far too many to list them.