[Foundation-l] UvA what they need in log data from the Wikimedia Foundation

[GerardM]

Hoi,
The university of Amsterdam (UvA)  is getting log information that is
thoroughly anonymised to the point where it becomes not as useful as it
should be. The UvA is working on what they call a "peer to peer Wikipedia".
Their interest in the data is not in the specific IP number of a requester
for information, their interest is in where a request is coming from. The
point is that is best, fastest and cheapest when information is available
from a peer that is close by.

When you consider that there is a wikipedia.ky a project that is outside of
the WMF where the justification is that it is expensive to get information
from outside the country, you will appreciate that a cache in Kirghistan
would make the reason for being for this project disappear. A peer to peer
Wikipedia allows for having peers in all parts of the world and the
information would as a result be potentially locally viable in countries
like Kirghistan but also in Africa and China..

In order to build this system it is necessary to understand how the need for
information develops. To build efficient routines that bring the information
in a sufficient number to the caches that are local to the requesters and in
order to ensure that data will be persistently available, it is necessary
for the UvA to have geographically relevant information on requests to the
WMF servers.

The UvA is one of the top universities in this field. In Andrew Tannenbaum
they have one of the leading thinkers and architects on computer and
Internet architecture as one of their staff. It is for this reason that I
again and this time publicly ask for the UvA to have this information.

With a peer to peer Wikipedia infrastructure the need for funding of the
Wikimedia Foundation will be significantly reduced. Before this project is
finished however, it may be two years down the road.. However

Thanks,
      GerardM