Kolossos wrote:
so many wonderful things were created at Toolserver, so
many nice
cooperation’s with other users happen here and so many things I learn on
Toolserver. I don't want look back in anger.
Yes! :-) I think if someone proposed a Toolserver today, people would
object for legal reasons and technical reasons and whatever else. But much
like Wikipedia, the Toolserver somewhat inexplicably just works. Giving
people a place to collaborate, to share, and to access data insanely fast
is a beautiful thing.
I know that all of these was only possible with your
work Dab. So thank
you very much.
My thanks as well. In my opinion, even being a paid sysadmin is annoying
and awful. I can't imagine being in this kind of volunteer position for
years. Thank you, DaB.!
A modification/restart of Toolserver seems for me after
the years so or
so necessary and perhaps we can find in the next 6 months a concept for
a leaner, powerful Toolserver that gives the WMDE flexibility and
independence back to develop ideas and support free projects. Hardware
support is for me still a very good way of spending money if we want to
support free knowledge, but it makes in my eyes no sense to fight
against the majority of WMDE.
Yes. I think building out infrastructure that would allow individual
Wikimedia chapters (or other organizations) to set up their own
Toolservers would be wonderful. With AWS and other hosting services coming
down in price, it seems like it would be a great investment. The Poles
have their own Toolserver (<http://tools.wikimedia.pl/>). And obviously
the Germans have one. ;-) I've been trying to grow the idea of an
American Toolserver. We'll see what happens.
All that said, Tim L. had some very good points. There are plenty of
lessons to be learned from the Toolserver, I think. The _user to root
ratio_ in particular needs a lot of consideration for any future
iterations. It frustrates me as much as anyone else that we have hundreds
of Toolserver users, of which at least a dozen would be capable and
willing to donate their expertise and time to serve as a root, and yet
there was basically a root lock-out for years.
And as I've previously mentioned on this list, stability is a wonderful
thing. Not unreasonable expectations about uptime or anything like that,
but just making a good effort to avoid breaking changes when possible
(e.g., OS or Web server or job scheduling changes) and avoiding
complications where possible (KISS).
There's lots to learn from German Toolserver I, but I don't regret the
experience. My thanks to River, DaB., and everyone else who's helped over
the years.
MZMcBride