In a message dated 5/7/2004 5:55:52 PM Eastern Standard Time, isam@bayazidi.net writes: Hi all.. In the Arabic Wikipedia (as with other Wikipedias) we suffer from poor speed/performance, and a feature-stripped mediawiki (search-disabled and so).. Anyhow, one of the members in the Arabic Wikipedia contacted me, telling me that he can get Server power, and cover yearly costs for Bandwidth/placement in a data-center.. But he said that he wanted to have that server/bandwidth dedicated to the Arabic Wikipedia..

I wanted to know about the possibility of that.. is it "Technically" possible ? of course, everything is under the Mediawiki foundation umbrella, and server full access will be only for the mediawiki developers in charge of such thing..

If that is absolutely not possible.. will it be possible to have a new server added to the existing server farm, having it's cost covered, but enabling all the nice feature for Arabic Wikipedia (after all we are only 650 articles or so), and have a certain priority for Arabic Wikipedia, while having the server doing what other servers do ?

The current performance/speed/status of Arabic Wikipedia (and other wikipedias) is not a very good one.. and sooner or later Language-limited donations will come, and they will be have to be dealt with.. after all, full control is, and will always be, in the hand of the mediawiki developers/admins .. the only difference is that the server layer will be differently organized in a way to allow to dedicate resources to wikipedias..

I dont see why it should be a problem, but I would add a stipulation--that the Arabic server take another small Wiki under its wing (and server), so as to prevent a fork, and help the folks there grow too.

BTW, Arabic is growing remarkably well, and I want to thank Isam for all his efforts there.

Danny.