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

[Robert Scott Horning]

James Hare wrote:

>"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.
>  
>
Where in the GFDL is this stated?

You do not need to keep a running history of every edit and every 
possible version that was added.  All you need to do is list all of the 
contributors to the article, which isn't the same thing as keeping the 
full edit history.  I guess an edit count would be nice as well, but it 
is not strictly necessary, nor is preserving in the edit history 
anything that was completely reverted due to being a troll.  This simply 
isn't factual based on any legal requirement of the GFDL.  This is 
simply old-time Wiki practices that have been assumed over the years.

Think about this.  When Wikipedia is over 100 years old, is it really 
going to be necessary to preserve each and every edit to every article? 
 If the hard drive space is available, I guess it wouldn't hurt, but 
this does approach the level of absurdity when there are decades of edit 
history to revert to.  While I find it very interesting to read some 
very early versions of some articles, it is not written in stone that 
these early versions must always be available.  

I'm just suggesting that for some articles that this massive back 
history isn't necessary and if hard drive is really an issue, that 
culling all of the early edits from en.wikipedia alone would be more 
than enough to perhaps give room for almost all of the rest of the 
Wikimedia projects combined.  Or at least it would be an interesting 
question to research and certainly would do far more to save hard drive 
space than shutting down one very, very obscure Wikimedia project that 
really doesn't take up that much hard drive space anyway.

I'm also suggesting that the advocates of shutting down sep11.wikipedia 
completely are doing so based on irrational fears or emotional 
justifications, not based on any technical need or hardship to the 
Wikimedia Foundation.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning