"Daniel Mayer" wrote
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need
to keep our
financial house in order. Numbers
are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
Actually we need to do cost-benefit analysis before making _any_ major
change. Not just count the money.
It's the road-building argument all over again (familiar in the UK,
doubtless less so in the USA). Traffic congestion: if you automatically
fight it by building roads, you just get more cars. Since all the
server bandwith gets used up over a timescale of a few months, there is
no 'solution'. Until, as I say, some indication of saturation is
there. Then one could indeed speak of a 'house in order'. The site is
not mature, as of 2006 Jan 1.
I would argue that editors are _less_ deterred by the slowness than
casual users. Don't get me wrong: when it's fast I can do large numbers
of quick minor edits, when it's slow 'just' research stuff and get it
posted somehow. So, slowness (I say) differentially discourages people
who are coming to WP via a search engine, and who have no patience with
a wait. They go and look at a mirror, maybe. Not such a bad solution.
History shows they aren't lost forever.
Therefore ... be very careful about offending the editing community (a
few thousand, Jimbo says). Geese and golden eggs.
Charles
Might another solution in the future be to really have two websites. One
"stable", for readers only (a mirror we would run ourselves) with light
advertisement. And the editable one with no ads (and much less traffic) ?
Ant