On 12 November 2010 07:56, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We should offer to host citizendium on our servers at no cost for a period of 1 (one) year offering a level of support equivalent to our smaller projects. After one year the citizendium community/Editorial Council is expected to have sorted themselves out to the point where they can arrange their own hosting. At which point we lock the database and provide them with the dumps
I strongly support this.
The discussion on the RationalWiki talk page continues, with active participation from many Citizens:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#WIGOCZ
Their current problem is that they have never had to think about this stuff, ever, and suddenly find themselves with no support and desperately gathering cash to pay their ridiculously overpriced hosting ($700/mo).
Despite past personal conflicts, CZ is the sort of project we should encourage, i.e. free educational content. It is in fact having other people support our mission. Which is an even bigger win than supporting it ourselves.
Thankfully, CZ's techies are quite competent (and Dan Nessett is active in MediaWiki itself, as he tries to bring the CZ software back to mainline), so can presumably sling dumps around with facility.
Important points:
* Having CZ maintain independence would be essential. CZ would not become a WMF project ... as such. They're just someone who needs help and is in line with our mission. So a 6-month or 12-month time would be quite reasonable to both us and them. * It's unclear as yet who owns the name, who "owns" the private databases (the password table, private data and so on). This would need to be established.
But we should make the offer.
- d.