[Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

[David Gerard]

On 12 November 2010 07:56, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> We should offer to host citizendium on our servers at no cost for a
> period of 1 (one) year offering a level of support equivalent to our
> smaller projects. After one year the citizendium community/Editorial
> Council is expected to have sorted themselves out to the point where
> they can arrange their own hosting. At which point we lock the
> database and provide them with the dumps


I strongly support this.

The discussion on the RationalWiki talk page continues, with active
participation from many Citizens:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#WIGOCZ

Their current problem is that they have never had to think about this
stuff, ever, and suddenly find themselves with no support and
desperately gathering cash to pay their ridiculously overpriced
hosting ($700/mo).

Despite past personal conflicts, CZ is the sort of project we should
encourage, i.e. free educational content. It is in fact having other
people support our mission. Which is an even bigger win than
supporting it ourselves.

Thankfully, CZ's techies are quite competent (and Dan Nessett is
active in MediaWiki itself, as he tries to bring the CZ software back
to mainline), so can presumably sling dumps around with facility.

Important points:

* Having CZ maintain independence would be essential. CZ would not
become a WMF project ... as such. They're just someone who needs help
and is in line with our mission. So a 6-month or 12-month time would
be quite reasonable to both us and them.
* It's unclear as yet who owns the name, who "owns" the private
databases (the password table, private data and so on). This would
need to be established.

But we should make the offer.


- d.