Hi Gerald, hi Cormac, hi list
To clarify my position in this: I'm Wikimedia germany's tech guy, and your main contact for the sandbox server. Anything involving policy or money will have to be cleared by our ED, Pavel Richter. At the moment I'm just repeating what I had cleared with him before.
Gerald A wrote:
Now, it's been a few months since this last was discussed. Are there any restrictions on where/from who the server is rented? (Does it have to be in 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.
I guess some rather exotic locations would be a bit tricky, slow or expensive for transferring money. Other than that, I see no limits.
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?
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.
Now we have one project listed. I have others in mind, but I'd like to see this one launched before adding to the pile.
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.
Cormac asked:
I would guess that the person renting the server doesn't necessarily need to be involved in the reporting at all - if it is other people who are running the actual projects. Surely, this would be acceptable for WMDE? (I.e. the report to be written by those who run each project.)
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.
For practical reasons, it would probably be handy if my context person was also the person renting the server - but this is not absolutely neccessary.
HTH
daniel