Evan Prodromou wrote:
There are a _lot_ of free or low-cost PHP hosting
services that can host
a wiki. Mediawiki can be hard to set up on these services, since MySQL
usually costs significantly more, but there are a number of other wiki
engines* that work with flat files and don't require a database.
Yes, but MediaWiki is the best :) Besides, the annual fees that go into
paying "low-cost" hosting services could well go to our developers.
It's only a few hundred US dollars but not too stingy for an hour of
setting-up.
Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people
who want to have a
Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere else. If they
can show that they have a robust community that can support a Wikipedia,
then they should get an
xx.wikipedia.org domain (as well as other
xx.wikisomething.org stuff).
So they go find an ad-supported PHP hosting service, run a non-MediaWiki
installation, build up a small but active community, finally have a
Wikipedia subdomain approved. And then have to start all over again?
Won't migrating the database consume even more developer time? Or do
the speakers of this language have to hire a developer to do that? Or
just copy-and-paste and lose the history?
The Walon Wikipedia was fortunate to have received assistance in
migrating its data into Wikipedia. The Minnan Wikipedia still has
articles sitting out there. But knowing the developers' time is highly
constrained, we have not complained nor do we see it as a "right" to
receive such help. But I do want to point out some possible consequences.
~ESP
* I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other
wikis? I can set up my own? Huh?"
That's an awful impression.