Hi Sylvain!
(Let me add the disclaimer that opinions are mine and don't represent the
views of the Foundation.)
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 4:33 PM Sylvain Boissel <
sylvain.boissel(a)wikimedia.fr> wrote:
Hello,
It may have changed since I last checked (a bit more than a year ago), but
while it is easy to create an instance, migrating an account to another
instance, or moving an entire instance to a new domain is not (I couldn't
even find documentation on how to accomplish this. So if we start an
instance that is supposed to become an official one, we need at the very
least have the final domain name from the start. Depending on the one we
want, we still might need official support (e.g., anyone can register
wikimedians.social, but wikimedia.social is restricted to the WMF by a DPML
Block.)
This is a good point. Renaming Mastodon instances continues to be a pain --
see
https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/domain-changes-and-aliases/671
This is a good reason to bet on a domain for the long run. However, let's
not mix two different concepts: use of Wikimedia trademarks and official
technical support (servers, maintenance). If the promoters of this
initiative decide to propose a domain that use a Wikimedia trademark, they
can request an authorization via
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy.
* Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has
implications of
trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While
there is no need to
start
with an official instance, it is useful to
consider the scenario early
on.
Do you know what these requirements are?
Are some issues unsolvable (for
example, if an official Wikimedia instance implies that no movie-based gifs
can be posted (for copyright reasons), then this instance has basically no
chance to gain a large user base. While this may not be a problem (a small
instance with a small number of accounts posting things like
#pictureOfTheDay to the whole Fediverse would still be valuable), this
would change the scope of what we try to accomplish.
Honestly, no idea. I am just applying the basic reasoning that the
requirements and potential risks for content and user data will be more
complex for the Wikimedia Foundation maintaining a service officially than
for a group of individual volunteers doing the same independently as a
hobby.
If you have a clear idea about what you want to accomplish, I'd recommend
you to take the lightest steps that will lead you there. Iterations,
experiments and changes are expected anyway, being this idea so new and
different in the context of our movement. It is also an idea easy to
implement and maintain (through a service like e.g.
https://masto.host or
self-hosted). And economically affordable.
--
Quim Gil
Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF