Hi all,
Judging by the replies we think we've failed to communicate clearly some of the ideas we wanted to put forward, and we'd like to take the opportunity to try to clear that up.
We did not want to narrow this down to be only about a third party toolserver. Before we initiated contact we noticed the need for adding more resources to the existing cluster. Therefore we also had in mind the idea of augmenting the toolserver, rather than attempt to create a competitor for it. For instance this could help allow the toolserver to also host applications requiring some amounts of text crunching, which is currently not feasible as far as we can tell.
Additionally we think there could perhaps be two paths to account creation, one for Wikipedians and one for researchers, with the research path laid out with clearer documentation on the requirements projects would need to fit the toolserver and what the application should contain, which combined with faster feedback would aid to make the process easier for the researchers.
We hope that this clears up some central points in our ideas surrounding a "research oriented toolserver". Currently we are exploring several ideas and this particular one might not become more than a thought and a thread on a mailing list. Nonetheless perhaps there are thoughts here that can become more solid somewhere down the line.
Morten Warncke-Wang, Research Assistant John Riedl, Professor GroupLens Research www.grouplens.org