User talk:Bill Taylor

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Happy to see even minor edits happening on what I've posted so far; wish someone other than you did any.

I've been busy recently, between running art shows and not managing to retire (that is, I *did* retire - and they promptly hired me back again as a consultant. Which I expect to continue until the end of this year).



Hey, Bill. I like the idea of this wiki, and I'll do what I can to help as I have time. I've just done a major brain dump of a bunch of stuff related to nonprofit and tax-exempt status for fannish organizations, based on a recent post I did for the SMOFs list. (In the process, I'm afraid that I significantly messed with a bunch of pages you created and wrote. Nothing personal.)

Looking forward to seeing this grow!

--JohnPomeranz 09:06, 12 August 2006 (PDT)

Thanks for the site

Thanks for putting together a great site. I plan to contribute some good content. Could I ask how this site came to be, how it is funded, and if funding issues place it at risk? Are we at risk of it just disappearing one day, due some understandable personal reason on your part, or matters beyond your control? Is the content we collaborate on being backed up at all? I ask because I would hate to see something happen to it, after all the work we put into it.--Tbmorgan74 16:15, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks for the support.
It came to be when I decided I wanted to actually do something about documenting good con running practices, and then decided that Mediawiki was probably the best tool I was going to come up with. Books were too static, and the SMOFS mailing list (and other mainiling lists too) was both too specific (one question answered at a time) and a tad too contentious. A newbie probably doesn't even know what questions to ask, let alone how or where. The list of dead conrunners that took most of the information with them was growing all the time, and it had to be slowed. I can't keep them alive, but I can milk them for information.
Funding comes out of my pocket, and the site is hosted at a good ISP. To the extent that I don't go bankrupt, they don't do anything technically stupid, and assuming the site isn't overrun Slashdot style, the site will be here for quite a while. I do occaisonal backups, whenever I do a major site change, and the ISP does them regularly. I've been meaning to write an "instructions to survivors" letter, in case they find my body slumped over the keyboard and the ISP bill hasn't been paid. Pray I stay healthy until I get around to it.
In the far future, when the wiki is fully populated, I plan to abscond with the data and use it to live like a king in Patagonia. But you will all have to do a lot of work in order for me to rise to the level to which I hope to become accustomed. There is plenty to do here until then. --Bill Taylor 11:35, 22 February 2007 (PST)
Having said my host is reliable, I am now informed that they will be down on Sunday morning. Midnight to 4am Pacific time, 25 Feb 2007. Some kind of electrical reliability upgrade. --Bill Taylor 16:37, 23 February 2007 (PST)

wysiwyg

I noticed and appreciated the upgrade to mediawiki 1.9. Then I started investigating wysiwyg table editors. I found some documentation here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FCKeditor

That seems to be able to be installable over mediawiki 1.9. Would that be something your interested in?--Tbmorgan74 16:15, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Looks experimental. That big red Security tag was not encouraging. I'll look at it some more. --Bill Taylor 11:40, 22 February 2007 (PST)