Delirium wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
"Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki. Could I please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this project? My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
Where did the $500 come from? By that standard, we shouldn't have the vast majority of the current languages. AFAIK, only the US, UK, France, and Germany have donated a total of over $500. Perhaps we oughtn't to have Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, etc. Wikipedias because obviously they're not serious enough to donate $500?
I didn't say that languages or groups with less money should be refused. All I said was that groups that can collect $500 (as I am sure that the Gothic language supporters can) are sure to get their wiki off the ground, with or without the Wikimedia Foundation.
In a western country, an experienced IT contractor would charge something like $80 per hour for this kind of job and the estimate we were given was that six hours of work might be required. Thus, $500 is sure to cover the cost of paying someone to do the job. Alternatively, this amount is also enough to pay for hosting a website outside of Wikimedia for a year or two, depending on traffic volume. If you can collect $500 from your community, you are sure you can start a wiki of your own. You might be able to get away with less. But the amount $500 is sure to remove the counter-argument that time or money is insufficient. It boils down to: Do you want to argue for ever, or do you want your new wiki off the ground?
I'm sure that Klingon, Latin and Gothic can collect $500, since they have many supporters in wealthy western economies.
The community that started to build the Polish Wikipedia did start their own server (Rosetta, remember). That proved they were able to do it. With their smartness, I'm sure they managed with less than $500. When they decided to un-fork and rejoin Wikipedia, it wasn't because they had to, but because they wanted to. If there was any disagreement, they were negotiating from a position of strength.
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se