[Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

[FT2]

Would not opposed or see this as a drama issue. After all it doesn't involve
editorial involvement or conflict of interests, it would be clear (and clear
to anyone in public) that no editorial influence would be implicated.

My only concern is on precedent - is this a good one (we help others in the
free knowledge/education world) or a bad one (our bandwidth is open to be
used by any forum or website with a story to tell). Would perception and
reporting in the media that we altruistically can help others (positive
views) or that we take over or dominate others (even if untrue, negative
views)? is there any risk that it would be seen as compromising our stance
and neutrality ("Wikipedia hosts/hosted Citizendium!)

:last, I'd look for specific agreement what happens if they cannot regain
financial stability and independence. Do they linger indefinitely, or
dwindle indefinitely, on WMF servers? Do they start to need other forms of
help? Do we get the bad press if we have to shut them down? What if such a
situation descends into antipathy (there's been antipathy before, we don't
need to invite more in future). Do Citizendium's users get a say or will
this be done without their consensus (and hence possibly get anger from some
directed at WMF)?

For all these reasons I'd want clarity and openness on the various "what
ifs" and how they are agreed to be handled, in a way that all can see that a
prior and mutually endorsed decision process was followed in that
eventuality.

Those would be my questions. They may be fine, but they are the ones I would
focus on as deciders, given that bandwidth and tech support will probably
not be a huge factor (use their own server or make a spare one available?).


FT2

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 7:56 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Should we offer to host citizendium?
>
> Okey get over the instinctive reaction.
>
> ==The background==
> Those who have read this week's signpost will be aware that
> citizendium is in significant financial difficulties. If not see the
> end of the briefly section:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-08/News_and_notes
>
> Now I know we haven't exactly had the best of relationships with
> citizendium but we are if not distant allies at least interested
> observers. Their mission and much of their product at this time
> coincides with ours.
>
> ==The proposal==
>
> We should offer to host citizendium on our servers at no cost for a
> period of 1 (one) year offering a level of support equivalent to our
> smaller projects. After one year the citizendium community/Editorial
> Council is expected to have sorted themselves out to the point where
> they can arrange their own hosting. At which point we lock the
> database and provide them with the dumps
>
>
> ===The pros===
>
> *It is inline with out mission
> *It wouldn't cost very much. Given their traffic levels and database
> size the cost to host would probably be lower than some of our more
> prolific image uploaders.
> *It would be possible to effectively give them instacommons
> *Citizendium is an interesting project and gives us a way to learn
> what the likely outcome of some alternative approaches would be
> *It helps with positioning the WMF as more than just wikipedia
> *It prevents the citizendium project from dying which since they have
> useful content would be unfortunate
>
> ===The cons===
> *They may still be on PostgreSQL rather than mysql which could create
> issues with compatibility
> *Some of their community are people banned from wikipedia
> *risk of looking like triumphalism over Larry (can be addressed by
> making sure jimbo is in no way involved)
> *keeping control of the relationship between the citizendium
> community/Editorial Council and the various WMF communities
> *Handing the password database back at the end of the year would need
> to be done with care.
>
>
> All in all other than the assuming we can deal with the database issue
> I think it is something we should do. The citizendium
> community/Editorial Council may well say no but at least we will have
> tried.
>
> --
> geni
>
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