Hi Daniel et al.!
First, let me thank you for your detailed reply.
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.dewrote:
To clarify my position in this: I'm Wikimedia germany's tech guy [and Pavel is ED]
Understood.
Gerald A wrote:
DE/EU, does it have to be managed, does it have to be a single server?)
I'm
just looking at what might be possible.
It doesn't matter where the server is located. WMDE offers to reimburse the person paying for the server. We will not assume any responsibility for its operation, or the projects running on it, or the content on the machine.
Ok, fair enough. I did go through the page on Meta, and there was a reference to "don't commit beyond 3 months". Is this an experiment for 3 months, or is it to be bit off in quarterly chunks? I just don't want to spend a lot of effort on something that will only have a 3 month lifespan.
a) Wiki Campus Radio, and experiments with Voice and Voice Products. I
was
involved in a number of Wiki Campus Radio experiments, and facilitated the
sessions and the raw capture of the voice. Other participants edited
them,
and they were available in various formats to listen to. As the hardware/software we were using was on loan, some possibilities for
on-demand
capture/listening weren't there.
The money question is, as always: how does wikiversity (or any wikimedia project) benefit from this project? And how does the project benefit from the sandbox server?
Ok, we're moving the ball forward now. :) The "WCR Sessions" had (and will have) a twofold benefit. First, it was a learning project in itself, finding out what needed to be done from a technical perspective, and then putting it together; and the sessions were information sessions, meant to bring together various parts of the learning community. We had participants "call in" worldwide, so from that perspective, I think it was successful.
As for b), would a "formal report" be required, or would a summary (maybe with more details) suffice? How often would be considered "regular"?
Monthly would be good. No big deal if you miss a month every now and then. Doesn't need to be formal, just an informative sentence or two. We just want to know what's happening.
Ok. I think we're coming up with guidelines, which I'm happy to enforce. In my mind, there will be a monthly report on all projects. Individual projects MUST report in at least every other month, and MAY report every month. If a project doesn't hit it's MUST report, it is temporarily suspended until it is brought up to date. If we have this as part of the signup for a project, we can make it clear that the reporting is part of the project deal and hopefully won't have to run after the contribs too much.
No, please add all projects you are willing to take care of. It doesn't make sense to rent a server for a single project anyway.
Agreed. Is there a minimum # you guys are looking to start with? I'm willing to help out, to the limits of my time availability, with a number of projects, but I'd like to see a few others step up and champion projects too. Project "leads" don't have to be technical to start a project and write the "progress" reports -- but they'll need to get someone to commit to helping out on that side.
I would like to have a dedicated contact person for the sandbox server. This person should take care that WMDE gets a monthly report about which projects are active on the server, which are idle or have died, etc. A sentence or two per project is sufficient. Who writes the report, how it is compiled, I don't care, I just don#t want to have to deal with 6 people every month about reporting.
Understood. I think it's best if we have a "primary" contact person (and perhaps an alternate, just so people can go to the bathroom/do a vacation/take a wikibreak). 6 people are too much, and if I were in your shoes it would hurt my head.
I still have a few questions that I'd like clarified, but I think I could be the person that moves this forward. Now, we need more projects and project leaders to make this practical.
Thanks, Gerald.