On Wed, 15 Aug 2001 sanger1(a)nupedia.com wrote:
Bryce, no doubt, I would be miffed if I were you. I
share your
confusion, too. I had no idea that it was such a small operation
(remember, I'm not a programmer, so you must explain things simply
and clearly to me, if you want me to understand). I assure you that
there is absolutely no *resistance* to the request--unless inertia
counts as resistance...
Okay, thanks. Good to hear.
Nupedia isn't making any money either. In fact,
Wikipedia is much
closer to the point where it might (somehow) make money for Bomis (and
therefore, potentially, for anyone else who wants to use the content
for profit).
Isn't that ironic? ;-) (And cool too)
Here is my philosophy on this: Wikipedia, when it is far enough along
to actually be used as our community wishes it to be, will require
stable, supported, reliable hardware and a decent bandwidth. These
things are not free. Thus it is in wikipedia's best interest that it at
least make enough $$ to break even, and maybe even a little better to
give a reward to the folks who have to deal with annoying users like
me. ;-)
(The caveat being, as long as the pursuit of money does not impinge on
the freedom of the community, as it has in so many other areas so often
in the past. But you know this.)
Anyway, remember, Wikipedia, like Nupedia, is a
volunteer project--so
it's not surprising (though regrettable) that essential features like
this should be rooted-for and planned by volunteers. Really, we
should have done this long ago.
*Nod* Providing tarballs of the site is a first step towards opening it
to further volunteer participation.
In order for volunteer programmers to do their "thang", they often like
to snag the whole potato and put a copy of it on their computer so they
can poke and prod, test and break, and gnaw and digest. And plus it's
safer for you to have them do this than allow them a logon to your
webserver to muck about on the live site. ;-)
Now, I'm not saying programmers *will* jump in and help by having this
available, but just that they *can't* (practically) without it. (They
could still get usemodwiki and mock up a new site and play, but what fun
is that?)
(FWIW, the step after this would be to set up CVS for the cgi's and
tools people will be writing specifically for wikipedia that wouldn't be
integrated into usemodwiki directly.)
On the other hand, long ago, we didn't really know
that the project
would be so successful so quickly, that this would be so important
and useful so soon!
Yes it's amazed me at its success too!
I had originally been involved with Gnupedia, but recognized that
wikipedia had "something" (or a set of somethings) that would make it
more successful, sooner, and came here. Still, I was blown away to
learn that other sites are now using wikipedia as a legit encyclopdia!
:-)
Bryce
P.S. I misspelled Bomis as Bromis in my previous email... apologies.