[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Anthere wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>   
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Hello
>>>
>>> How having servers in Africa would help the goal ?
>>>
>>> Ant
>>>  
>>>       
>> Hoi,
>> African ISP's pay for traffic coming from America or Europe. 
>> Consequently the speed of American and European websites is really poor. 
>> Within Africa, African websites perform as we would expect them to. By 
>> having servers in Africa the speed in which we serve our pages would be 
>> dramatically better. I would argue that we should have our projects in 
>> African languages completely in Africa and do caching for English and 
>> French as well.
>>     
>
> By dramatically, what do you mean ? Do you have statistics to show the 
> speed of delivery for a same page, in USA, in the Netherlands and in 
> South Africa ?
>   
I base this information on what I learned from the many people I spoke 
about this issue. Many of these people are expert in this field and deal 
with this on a daily basis.
>> Hosting in Africa is not as cheap as in either America or Europe. 
>> Bandwidth is much more expensive. It would be good to find a partner who 
>> would pay the hosting of our content. There are plenty of universities 
>> and NGO's who could provide part of such a service. Universities can 
>> provide expertise and NGO's the funding.
>>     
>
> But would the drawbacks of finding and coping with a partner be 
> significant with regards to the current percentage of readers for which 
> there would be an improvment and for the level of improvement ?
>   
When we want to improve our presence in Africa, the first thing to do is 
making it a priority. It is like starting a new business, when you have 
good indicators that the opportunity is there you invest in the 
expectation that the market will develop as a consequence. Given that we 
intent to provide information to everyone on this earth in their own 
language, I would say that it is very much a core deliverable of our 
Wikimedia Foundation consequently the drawbacks are to be considered but 
they are secondary.
>> The signal value of us having servers in Africa is very important. It 
>> would help us not only in getting more readers,
>>     
>
> Frankly... I do not follow you here. Whether the site is hosted in 
> Africa or hosted somewhere else is likely to be invisible to the great 
> majority of reader. I gather most will not care... nor even ask 
> themselves who host the site. Actually most readers have no idea what 
> hosting means...
>   
Our readers may not care where their servers are. They care about the 
increased service provided by better performance. With our hosting in 
Africa, we will have an marketing opportunity for our projects. This is 
really relevant. Remember, the Seigenthaler affair increased our traffic 
no end it was one /great /side effect. When we actively promote our 
projects it will lead to more eye balls, more content, better localisation.
>   
>> it would help our localisation effort.
>>     
>
> I do not see how hosting the site on the African continent (say South 
> Africa) will increase the percentage of translation of the software...
>   
I have contacts with organisations that are interested in using the 
MediaWiki software for languages like Farsi and Lao. I have contacts 
with organisations interested in localising MediaWiki for African 
languages. With a better infra-structure for the Wikimedia projects and 
more people making use of MediaWiki projects, this investment would be 
more beneficial as more people will know how to participate.
>   
>> It would help the adoption of MediaWiki as a platform to provide information.
>>     
>
> Which might be nice, but is not the goal of the Foundation.
>   
Call it a fringe benefit then.. It is a welcome fringe benefit right ?
>   
>> The marketing value for our projects is
>> really big.
>>     
>
> I am not convinced. We also have hosting provided in Korea. Do you think 
> it improved marketing value of our projects in Asia ? Do you have figures ?
>   
I would not know. You are in a much better position to tell us if we 
used the Korean hosting as an opportunity to market our projects. I 
would also say that Asia cannot be compared with Africa; there are many 
BIG projects in Asia. There are none in Africa. The reason for hosting 
in Africa are distinctly different; Asia does have the traffic Africa 
does have poor response times. The reason for hosting in Africa is 
therefore not comparable either.
>> It would also help make the use of African languages acceptable by providing content.
>>     
>
> I certainly see the benefit of having mediawiki interface translated, I 
> just fail to see how hosting Wikipedia and other sites in Africa will 
> help use of African languages more acceptable :-(
>   
By providing a quality localised user interface, it shows that there are 
people who care for THEIR language. By providing a quality responsive 
service we show that we care for THEIR custom. There is also a limit to 
what we can do from America or Europe. We can make our African service 
better than it currently is by orders of magnitude. I may remind you 
that Google invests heavily to remove fractions of their response time 
to build their market share, for us it is much easier. :)

One of the things I have observed in several small projects is that 
people are hesitant to contribute, they are often literate in a language 
other than there mother tongue. It is hard to convince people that an 
occasional spelling or grammatical "error" can be due to no fixed 
orthography. To overcome this shyness is not easy. This is often 
accomplished by peer pressure.. This is one reason why we have to work 
together with people in Africa, people in universities, NGO's etc..

Thanks,
   GerardM