James Hare wrote: Where in the GFDL is this stated? You do not need to keep a running history of every edit and every possible version that was added. All you need to do is list all of the contributors to the article, which isn't the same thing as keeping the full edit history. I guess an edit count would be nice as well, but it is not strictly necessary, nor is preserving in the edit history anything that was completely reverted due to being a troll. This simply isn't factual based on any legal requirement of the GFDL. This is simply old-time Wiki practices that have been assumed over the years. Think about this. When Wikipedia is over 100 years old, is it really going to be necessary to preserve each and every edit to every article? If the hard drive space is available, I guess it wouldn't hurt, but this does approach the level of absurdity when there are decades of edit history to revert to. While I find it very interesting to read some very early versions of some articles, it is not written in stone that these early versions must always be available. I'm just suggesting that for some articles that this massive back history isn't necessary and if hard drive is really an issue, that culling all of the early edits from en.wikipedia alone would be more than enough to perhaps give room for almost all of the rest of the Wikimedia projects combined. Or at least it would be an interesting question to research and certainly would do far more to save hard drive space than shutting down one very, very obscure Wikimedia project that really doesn't take up that much hard drive space anyway. I'm also suggesting that the advocates of shutting down sep11.wikipedia completely are doing so based on irrational fears or emotional justifications, not based on any technical need or hardship to the Wikimedia Foundation. -- Robert Scott Horning

Luiz Augusto wrote: I'm not trying to suggest that new projects of similar scope be created here. Far from it, and I would be against any similar project from being created. But the point here is that the project has been created and does have a community of participants that have been working on it for some time. I'm also not advocating that this project be left on as a fully editable public wiki, but I am saying that it appears from the responses and comments that have been offered on this mailing list that it is a foregone conclusion that this project is not only to be put into inactive read-only mode but that it is to be completely removed from the Wikimedia Foundation servers. I am merely trying to raise an objection and try to find out exactly why this is being done and instead I'm getting emotional responses rather than objective quantifiable justifications. As for objective quantifiable justifications for shutting down completely and removing this project from the servers, I mentioned network bandwidth and hard drive space. Since neither of these are being used as justification for culling this from Wikimedia servers, I leave the rest to other neutral observers to come to their own conclusion as to why this is being removed, such as anti-American attitudes. A project that is in a read-only has no need for admins to revert vandalism nor is there need to even put the project into the cron cycle for the database dumps. Those are also objective quantifiable justifications for culling that also don't seem to be a problem at the moment. That developers would have to perhaps explicitly add some small amount of code to the project database processes to make sure it doesn't go through the dump process that the rest of Wikimedia project go through would be an annoyance, but dealing with broken links going into the sep11.wikipedia would also be as much of an issue if it were removed completely. Another very reasonable objection would be to help pay for domain costs, such as wikipedia.org, wikibooks.org, etc. Only there isn't an objective monitary cost involved in keeping sep11.wikipedia.org as a domain beyond the costs of keeping wikipedia.org, which I don't see as being a problem. I guess there isn't any other advocate to see that this information is simply kept and otherwise ignored on Wikimedia servers. The only reason why I'm bringing this up at all is that there is a larger issue involved here about what to do with any Wikimedia project that has been closed down and otherwise deemed to be "unworthy" of continued support, whatever that reason may be. This includes the Klingon Wikipedia, for instance, which is also in read-only mode. Whatever happens to the sep11.wikipedia is going to set a preceedent for all future Wikimedia projects that enjoy a similar fate. -- Robert Scott Horning

On 9/26/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: (...) No, I don't have nothing against americans. If you see this question based in xenophobic and non-xenophobic peoples... I don't have any necessity to try to reply to you in any another point, because this discussion is based in a fallacy. World isn't based in pro-americans and against-americans. Have a nice day.

I recognize that, but I didn't work it properly. In order to comply, AND delete extremely old edits, we have to copy the older edit history over to the talk page. But space is not a pressing issue, so why don't we do what we have been doing, which has not been a problem? Hard disk drives are cheap. And in 100 years, while the amount of edits will add up, better hard drives with more capacity will become cheaper. Much cheaper. Heck, it'll become much better and much cheaper in 10 years. On 9/26/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:

Erik said Jeff Merkey is willing to do the hosting. On 9/26/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:

On 28/09/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: Uh, not really. It was put on a separate wiki to get it the heck out of Wikipedia. No, no. You don't understand. The Foundation is relentlessly Americocentric and dedicated to the pursuit of en:wp running roughshod over all other languages! - d.

--- David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: This is at least the third time you have you replied in this manner to someone's concerns. I can't articulate what is exactly wrong with your reply, but I know that I personally dislike it. Please stop. It does nothing to further disscusion or help find solutions. Birgitte SB __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Hi Wikipedians, Robert Scott Horning schrieb am 28.09.2006 18:26: It seems crystal clear to me, that their is a big difference between sep11 and any other WM project, take the NPOV for an example. It also seems to irritate people from the outside. We had supporters in germany - mainly two big universities - who stated that they are very unhappy in helping us out with projects or mirroring the wikipedia dvd/books/mobile files (yeah, I know, theese are project from third parties) in the future, because they disagree that sep11 suits into the WM project portfolio and the "scope & mission" and that they are unable to support us further. Well, not to be misunderstood: This concrete occurence is more than a year old and I don't argue, that we should do what outsiders demands from us only to get their support. This should only be an example that many people think, that sep11 don't fit to our mission and that they are confused indeed. Bye and sorry for my bad English, Tim. -- http://wikipedistik.de

Hi Wikipedians, Brion Vibber schrieb am 28.09.2006 19:22: But people see it as a Wikimedia project, because it is treated like our (other) projects in many places. Just for example http://download.wikimedia.org/ etc. Perhaps someone can also update [[en:Help:Interwiki linking]] for removing another example. Bye, Tim. -- http://wikipedistik.de

On 9/28/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: Actually I don't think this is a redefinition of the Wikimedia Foundation. By the time the Wikimedia Foundation the September 11th wiki, which predated Wikimedia, had already become a ghost town. There was talk at this time of expanding the scope, into a place for memorials of all sorts, but this never came to happen. I made a half-hearted effort to revive the wiki about this time, along with a few other Wikipedians (many of whom made a better effort than me), and in retrospect these efforts clearly failed. All that said, I *still* don't think it's time to give up. Rather, I think, we should make an effort to fit the September 11th wiki into the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation. However, I don't this is important enough to fight for, *if* there is someone else willing to take over the project (and apparently there is). Pretty much everything on the wiki is GFDL. You don't need permission from Erik or the foundation or anyone else to take everything and host it on your own. That's why I don't really see this as that big of a deal. I don't think the reason for shutting down the wiki is dishonest, though I suppose it is exaggerated. With a little bit of leadership I think the wiki could be made to fit into the scope of Wikimedia. However, over the past few years that leadership has not taken over. But let me ask this. In what way do *you* feel the wiki currently fits into the scope of Wikimedia? And how many others do you think are willing to work with you on the project as you envision it? If you can't get at least 10 or 20 people supporting this vision, I think the project will probably be *better* outside the hands of Wikimedia. In fact, in some ways I think it might be better outside the hands of Wikimedia anyway. Anthony

On 9/25/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: (...) I'm not exactly sure where to go But for at least 104 editors [1], sep11wiki isn't welcome on Wikimedia servers. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Archive#Closu…

On 9/25/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote: I don't think sep11.wikipedia.org falls within the mission of the WMF, or ever did. It has been perceived, and mentioned, as a "sister project," but really is not. Cleaning it up and moving it to a dedicated domain name, then abandoning the relationship with the WMF does not delete the history; to the contrary, it shows our dedication to preserving even off-topic content of historical interset. A volunteer has now been found and a dedicated domain name has been registered for this purpose. This proposed process reflects many many past discussions on the matter and I'd like to close it relatively quickly now. -- Peace & Love, Erik Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

On 9/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: It will actually be an import into a separate MediaWiki install which will again be made read-only, so the history will be preserved. Jeff Merkey has graciously volunteered to do this and registered the domain name sep11memories.org for the purpose. -- Peace & Love, Erik Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.