Hi all, I'm not sure exactly where to raise this, so am asking here.
A researcher I have been in touch with has proposed starting a 2nd, research-oriented Wikimedia toolserver. He thinks his lab can pay for the hardware and would be willing to maintain it, if they could get help setting it up. He got this idea after a member of his research group tried (unsuccessfully so far -- no response) to get an account on the current toolserver; their Wikipedia-related research has been put on hold for a few months because of the delay. (It seems like there is a big backlog of account requests right now and only one person working on them?) This research group has done some interesting Wikipedia research to date and I expect they could do more with access to the right data.
Personally, I think a dedicated toolserver is a great idea for the research community, but I know very little about the technical issues involved and/or whether this has been proposed before. Please comment, and I can pass on replies and put the researcher in touch with the tech team if it seems like a good idea.
-- user: "first post on wikitech" phoebe