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

[Robert Scott Horning]

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