On 12/28/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
This list isn't really the place to discuss the details, especially as the management of the foundation isn't interested.
There was a brief P2P media and business hype in 2000-2001. In August 2000 I started infoAnarchy.org, which was one of the leading weblogs on the phenomenon, and reviewed in detail applications such as MNet, Freenet, The Circle, Gnutella(2), giFT, BitTorrent etc. I also co-authored a 90 page business plan on such a P2P venture, which we sadly started pitching shortly after the bubble burst.
I continue to be interested in P2P solutions, but I have seen too many companies in this sector fail, in spite of millions of dollars of VC investment, to believe that money is the solution to decentralizing Wikipedia. These companies were pursuing much more humble ambitions than something as fantastic as a truly P2P WIkipedia.
That said, we need to distinguish different approaches. Decentralizing WP to the extent of using the highly asymmetrical and unpredictable connectivity of everyday users is hopeless. Decentralizing it to make intelligent use of a global network of servers with reasonably high bandwidth and storage and good connectivity is perhaps less so. But the issues of latency and distribution would necessitate quite a lot of rethinking on all levels.
It's a goal worth pursuing, among a hundred others I could list. If someone approaches us with a truly convincing model of how it could work, then I'll be the first person to listen and consider to make it part of our planning. But vague claims about what can be done with money are completely unhelpful. Ideas are worthless without implementation, but the power to implement is worthless without ideas. Presently we have neither.
When it comes to decentralization, the greatest potential for immediate cost savings seems to be in an area which we are currently not even pursuing significantly, i.e. very large files (primarily videos, but also speeches or really high resolution pictures). Here we've got tried and tested technology like BitTorrent that would only need to be integrated better. But if we want to go into large file hosting, we must coordinate this with the Internet Archive, which is leading the global efforts in this area.
I don't see how any talk about P2P has relevance to our fundraising needs for the near future.