On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Something other than Wikia, then?
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Paul Selitskas p.selitskas@gmail.comwrote:
I think Brion should have expressed some distinction between Wiki services (like Wikia), and hosting services that provide everything for MediaWiki to run smoothly, incl. caching software and other fancy stuff.
Ideally, my vision of a general-purpose wiki hosting service would provide options that orgs like Wikia generally don't. Wikia for instance covers "fan encyclopedia" type projects very well -- open access, openish license, free ad-supported hosting, casual user ownership with public backups.
I'm thinking more along the lines of covering some of those folks who right now are setting up quick ad-hoc installs on their own servers or shared hosting, and then possibly not maintaining the software for years because they have better things to do than figure out how to update and tweak the software.
(Right now I have the impression many of those folks have everything work great until it does eventually break or needs an update...)
* ability to disable ads for a reasonable cost (or perhaps waived for certain approved projects) * ability to customize your skin! * ability to control or restrict access (limited access, custom auth integration, etc) * ability to host on your own domain * ability to host on SSL * ability to write, install and run custom extensions * custom writing, testing, and maintenance of custom extensions * service tracking down and fixing bugs * etc
This might mean customers span a range of actual hosting methods, from "generic wiki on a farm-style cluster" (like Wikimedia and Wikia's primary wiki hosting) to "you pay for a dedicated VPS mini-cluster for your custom code" to "we run dedicated servers for your expensive custom site", perhaps all the way to "we provide consulting and support to help with your own server setup".
There are some folks doing contracting/services and hosting on smaller scales, but we don't really have good coordination or a end-user-facing place we can point people for comprehensive support.
Perhaps we just need to coordinate the people doing support and hosting already, or perhaps we should consider organizing something either under, or separately from, WMF... I'm not going to make any specific demands at this point, I've just been itching to see something happen on this front for years. :)
-- brion
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" bvibber@wikimedia.org To: "Wikimedia-tech list" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 2:11:16 PM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Officially supported MediaWiki hosting service? Question for the group:
Would an officially supported general-purpose MediaWiki hosting service be useful to people who would like to run wikis, but don't have the time, expertise, or resources to maintain their own installation?
If so, what can we (as interested parties in MediaWiki development and use) do to make this happen?
[Please do not consider the existence of this email to imply that only regular posters on wikitech-l are allowed to read, comment on, or give opinions in this matter -- on the contrary, wider input is being requested. Please forward this question to anyone to whom it may be of interest. If you would like to get more input from other people, please feel free to contact them on your own, with or without a forward of this mail, and to make follow-up posts or comments as you need or want to. Please feel free to modify the question, the idea, the proposal, or make comments or additions. Be bold and get involved!]
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274
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-- З павагай, Павел Селіцкас/Pavel Selitskas Wizardist @ Wikimedia projects _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi,
We will be extremely interested in Brion's proposition and with his list of features. Concerning our site, the only difficulty that I see concerns the login. It is mandatory for us to have a Username and an E-mail (nothing new) but to be able to log in with one of it. And most people use the email address method. The only simple solution, up to now, consisted in a small patch, easy to maintain and without security issue (see the long discussion at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34590).
I don't see any other reason and would love to have such a service.
Regards,
--Nicolas Le 1 oct. 2013 à 20:53, Brion Vibber a écrit :
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Something other than Wikia, then?
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Paul Selitskas p.selitskas@gmail.comwrote:
I think Brion should have expressed some distinction between Wiki services (like Wikia), and hosting services that provide everything for MediaWiki to run smoothly, incl. caching software and other fancy stuff.
Ideally, my vision of a general-purpose wiki hosting service would provide options that orgs like Wikia generally don't. Wikia for instance covers "fan encyclopedia" type projects very well -- open access, openish license, free ad-supported hosting, casual user ownership with public backups.
I'm thinking more along the lines of covering some of those folks who right now are setting up quick ad-hoc installs on their own servers or shared hosting, and then possibly not maintaining the software for years because they have better things to do than figure out how to update and tweak the software.
(Right now I have the impression many of those folks have everything work great until it does eventually break or needs an update...)
- ability to disable ads for a reasonable cost (or perhaps waived for
certain approved projects)
- ability to customize your skin!
- ability to control or restrict access (limited access, custom auth
integration, etc)
- ability to host on your own domain
- ability to host on SSL
- ability to write, install and run custom extensions
- custom writing, testing, and maintenance of custom extensions
- service tracking down and fixing bugs
- etc
This might mean customers span a range of actual hosting methods, from "generic wiki on a farm-style cluster" (like Wikimedia and Wikia's primary wiki hosting) to "you pay for a dedicated VPS mini-cluster for your custom code" to "we run dedicated servers for your expensive custom site", perhaps all the way to "we provide consulting and support to help with your own server setup".
There are some folks doing contracting/services and hosting on smaller scales, but we don't really have good coordination or a end-user-facing place we can point people for comprehensive support.
Perhaps we just need to coordinate the people doing support and hosting already, or perhaps we should consider organizing something either under, or separately from, WMF... I'm not going to make any specific demands at this point, I've just been itching to see something happen on this front for years. :)
-- brion
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" bvibber@wikimedia.org To: "Wikimedia-tech list" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 2:11:16 PM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Officially supported MediaWiki hosting service? Question for the group:
Would an officially supported general-purpose MediaWiki hosting service be useful to people who would like to run wikis, but don't have the time, expertise, or resources to maintain their own installation?
If so, what can we (as interested parties in MediaWiki development and use) do to make this happen?
[Please do not consider the existence of this email to imply that only regular posters on wikitech-l are allowed to read, comment on, or give opinions in this matter -- on the contrary, wider input is being requested. Please forward this question to anyone to whom it may be of interest. If you would like to get more input from other people, please feel free to contact them on your own, with or without a forward of this mail, and to make follow-up posts or comments as you need or want to. Please feel free to modify the question, the idea, the proposal, or make comments or additions. Be bold and get involved!]
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- З павагай, Павел Селіцкас/Pavel Selitskas Wizardist @ Wikimedia projects _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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