[Foundation-l] Proposal re: sep11.wikipedia.org

[James Hare]

"I mean, do we really need to read some of
Jimbo's early edits to Wikipedia from over five years ago that are now
completely rewritten?  At least this is something to think about if hard
drive space is becoming a substantial issue, as even the most obscure
and neglected project or even article is likely to get at least some
attention by somebody over the course of two years to revert any major
vandalism requiring edits going back any further."

1) Hard drive space is not an issue. It's the fact that we no longer have a
need to keep the wiki open.
2) According to the GFDL, yes, we are required to keep the entire history of
articles.

On 9/25/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >sep11.wikipedia.org is currently in read-only mode. I suggest the
> >following course of action:
> >
> >1) That the wiki be opened again for a period of 4 weeks.
> >
> >2) That an open message is to be sent out to ask for clean-up of the
> >wiki -- remove irrelevant content, possible lingering spam, etc.
> >
> >3) That, after the cleanup is complete, the wiki is exported as a
> >static HTML dump and hosted by a volunteer external to the Wikimedia
> >Foundation under its own domain name. No reference should be made to
> >it from then on as an official Wikimedia project. It might be possible
> >to arrange advance renumeration for the domain name cost and hosting.
> >
> >Does this sound like a sensible course of action?
> >
> >If you are a volunteer, and willing to host the content, please send
> >me a private e-mail response.
> >
> >
>
> Just out of general interest, why exactly is this course of action being
> followed, particularly for complete dumping of the 9/11 wiki?  Are there
> bandwidth issues that are getting out of hand here?  Is this really
> taking up so much hard drive space that it could be better used for a
> much more worthy Wikimedia project?
>
> Mind you, I'm not suggesting that this wiki be turned back on and left
> alone for vandals to play with as they have done so in the relatively
> recent past, nor am I asking the WMF to deal with all kinds of useless
> garbage that does eventually clog up some Wikimedia projects over time.
>
> From my understanding of the sep11 wikipedia and why it was
> established, that there were many very heartfelt additions to Wikipedia
> in the days, weeks, and months after the 9/11 attacks on the USA.
> Rather than simply culling all of this content from Wikipedia,
> particularly for the "not noteworthy" individuals who had substantial
> information added about them only to be nominated for deletion on
> Wikipedia, this Wiki was set up to deal with that traffic and serve as a
> repository of that information and go into depth about the 9/11 attacks.
>
> At this point  I would agree that this has become an historical archive
> of generally 1st hand reports (again, another reason for culling on
> en.wikipedia) and other information about the events of that attack.
> This also deals with the general issue of how the WMF deals with
> information of historcal nature.
>
> If this is a worry about hard drive space on the computers, I would
> offer another alternative:  How about deleting all archival edits that
> are more than two years old?  I mean, do we really need to read some of
> Jimbo's early edits to Wikipedia from over five years ago that are now
> completely rewritten?  At least this is something to think about if hard
> drive space is becoming a substantial issue, as even the most obscure
> and neglected project or even article is likely to get at least some
> attention by somebody over the course of two years to revert any major
> vandalism requiring edits going back any further.
>
> BTW, offers have been made in the past to privately host this content
> (the sep11.wikipedia) but those offers are all more than a year old and
> circumstances have indeed changed.  I'm not exactly sure where to go
> with it, but closing it down completely just doesn't seem right to me.
> I do support the "freeze" on the database, as I think the effort to add
> substantial quantities of content has essentially run its course.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
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