Regarding the IA: they have a significant interest in working with the Wikimedia projects, a lot more experience than the Wikimedia projects have caching absolutely tremendous quantities of data, a willinness to handle a degree of legal risk that would be inappropriate for the Wikimedia projects to take on, and a willingness to adapt their services to better fit our needs (even when it rquires engineering time ) A large chunk of the infrastructure needed to do something like this is already in place on their end, and they're willing to work with Wikimedia projects to ensure it is actively useful for us. Because of the source of their financing and mission, they're pretty much guaranteed to stay around for the long term, which is certainly important in us considering a partner. I've spoken with them about various Wikimedia-collaborations before (including meetings at WMF's offices,) and would be more than happy to either act as a liaison with them about this or to simply make appropriate introductions.
To me, at first glance at least, partnering with an established organization that has the financing, desire, technical skills to pull this off without much of a hitch, and has already built out much of the required infrastucture, seems likely to be a better idea than trying to establish the capability ourselves from the ground up (especially when the total amount of storage this will need is _greater_ than the total amount of storage than toolserver, across all projects, had.) Best, Kevin Gorman On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 1:06 PM, Andrew Gray <[email protected]> wrote: > On 4 July 2014 01:00, James Salsman <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I don't think it's a donation if you're getting something (a survey) > in return. > > > > How could the Foundation possibly not benefit from understanding > > contributors' opinions about general strategic goals for improving > > participation? > > > > I also want development of accuracy review. If there are any reasons > > that the Foundation would not benefit from that, the survey, or a > > reflinks cache which includes enough room to fit a category adjacency > > map in, then please bring them to my attention. > > The survey *again*? Oh, dear. It was a bad idea before, and it's still > a bad idea when we're bribed into agreeing to it with hardware > donations. > > James, this is getting a bit sad to see. You've raised this idea of a > political issues survey a dozen or more times on the mailing list over > a couple of years, and the responses tend to be along the lines of > "no, that's inappropriate" or "no, that's irrelevant", both from the > community and from Foundation staffers; at least one person honestly > seemed to think it was satirical! > > I don't think these responses were particularly ambiguous, so it's a > bit odd that you seem to think that people haven't clearly explained > why it's a bad idea. > > See, eg, > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070583.html > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-April/070937.html > > Almost every issue on that political survey is irrelevant to most of > our work - I suppose you could make a case for "metropolitan > broadband", which might be relevant - and irrelevant to the specific > question of volunteer participation. > > To take a straw poll on whether a few people in the community prefer > "steeply progressive taxation" to "school class size reduction", and > then use that as justification to divert resources into one or the > other those topics, is frankly insulting to our donors and volunteers, > who have signed up to support something entirely different and nothing > to do with either of them. It also arrogantly presumes a lot about > other people's political and economic beliefs which I find somewhat > disquieting - why are you so confident that Wikipedians are *for* all > of these things? > > Wikimedia has a goal we have chosen to adopt and a general method we > have developed to try and achieve it. That method does not involve > engineering massive external changes in order to produce long-term > second or third-order effects that *might*, in some undefined fashion, > lead to incidental benefits towards the goal in a decade or three. > > Those changes may be *good* in and of themselves - in most cases, I'd > agree they would be, and I think our community would broadly tend to > agree as well - but bringing them about is simply not what Wikimedia > was set up to do and it's not what people have given money and time to > support. Why not throw WMF's efforts at cancer treatment or clean-air > programs? Or climate-change campaigns? All great things and need all > the support they can get, and they'd probably have as much effect on > user activity as data-centre energy efficiency... which is to say, > very little direct impact. > > Put it from the other perspective: we should try and work on (or at > least identify!) things which might directly affect the problem of > participation, rather than trying to solve all the world's political > and economic issues and hoping our original problem will be a bit > easier afterwards. > > And, finally - the more you argue for this tangential idea, the more > people are going to ignore any other (reasonable) suggestion you make. > > I hope this (sadly lengthy) email constitutes bringing some minor > objections to your attention. > > Andrew. > > -- > - Andrew Gray > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
