Some brief recap for those not familiar with the project...
On en Wikiversity, and #wikiversity-en (also #sandboxserver), some of the
custodians have been working on the new Sandbox Server. After HistoryBuff's
original proposal, which I somehow managed to miss entirely, I recently
submitted a somewhat cut-back proposal and we managed to setup a basic file
hosting service. The idea was that students of the different schools could
use technical infrastructure on a server managed by the community, this
"sandbox server", as it's called, and file hosting isn't the end of it.
We're running a Jabber server as well, which essentially means we have a
fully functional open chat server; Erkan and JWSchmidt have trialled it and
it seems to be of use -- it may prove a highly useful discussion platform
for students and those unfamiliar with IRC.
Anyway, after much deliberation and procrastination on my part, we now have
a fully functioning file hosting service, and we need people to use it. I'm
looking for input on what could be done with the server and who might want
to use it; as well as helpt posting notices to the various
schools/departments/etc. that might be interested. At the moment, we really
only host files, so web design students are an obvious target, but anyone
else who might find it of use is welcome to, and everyone's encouraged to
apply for account and see if they find it useful.
One possible use could be hosting files useful for lessons as opposed to
piling everything onto MediaWiki, the wonderful one size fits all wiki
turned file host. (Actually, that's another point -- Wikiversity could
probably make use of a custom groupware suite, which we could trial on the
sandbox server)
Also, we've got testing accounts on the Jabber server available. If an
entire school wants to put in a mass account request we can set up everyone
to be able to communicate via the Jabber chat system; with groups and chat
rooms, as well as a simple GUI, it's much easier to use than IRC and a
little more flexible too (especially with the chat room feature). Individual
users are also very much welcome, but there's nobody to really talk to yet.
The official page (w/talk-page) is [[v:Topic:Sandbox_Server_0.5]];
discussion on-list would probably be better, however, as very few people
visit the page regularly. Please read through the material already collected
there and pitch in any thoughts.
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Draicone