>On Tue, Sep 25, 2012, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>we can't at this stage enter in expensive improvements, because Labs is,
>in the short to mid-run, destined to replace the "toolserver as you know it"
>>completely. It falls under the attributions of the Foundation, as hosting provider
>of the Wikimedia Projects, to provide authors, developers and contributors with the technical tools they need to make their work easier.
>
>Why is this? The Foundation has always tried to provide some technical tools, but not all; it is not an exclusive job of the Foundation, and the toolserver in particular has often (quite often!) provided support that was not available anywhere else. It's good that more tools are being developed and maintained. But in my opinion we need more entities, not fewer, providing this sort of support.
>
>
>And Ryan has said elsewhere that Wikimedia Labs is not intended to replace the toolserver. So why is WM-DE considering dropping the toolserver? And why is the WMF considering not providing db replication for it? I thought the goal was to make that easier, not harder.

Samuel, you're obviously not on the same page as the executive staff at WMF (see Erik's email).

That's possible, and as Krinkle says it may well be my misunderstanding. That's why I asked. Erik's email was thorough and detailed, I'm just not clear about those few points.

I am not writing as a WMF trustee, but in my personal capacity as a community member interested in the toolserver. This is a fairly operational discussion, and not something discussed by the board; I only know about it because I read this list.

Regards,

Following this thread, it's becoming more and more clear that before any serious discussion of the toolserver's future, the WMF needs to get it's priorities straight. Do you or do you not want to replace the toolserver? If you do, it seems like a sensible thing to do to keep as much of the configuration as possible.

I've been looking at the labs in the last few days and it seems to me that it's architecture is overkill for doing simple things. I think more and more people will choose to go with their own hosting for robots instead of using the labs. This probably means money spent by the WMF in traffic, since those users will be using the api instead of accessing the database directly.