[Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Community vs. centralized development

[Noein]

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I couldn't have said it as well. I agree with the concerns of Jamie and
their importance.


On 13/09/2010 22:14, emijrp wrote:
> Hi all;
> 
> I think that Jamie has started an important topic. I don't think that WMF is
> going to usurp Wikipedia and the sister projects now or in the future, but
> it is statistically possible. If we want to protect us, the human knowledge
> and our work of this hypothetical scenario, we need complete full dumps
> frequently. But this scenario is a malicious one, and I think that there are
> many more dangerous posibilities, and unfortunately, they are common.
> 
> For example, small or massive lost of data due to natural disasters,
> crackers attacks, stolen passwords, hardware and software bugs, sudden crazy
> sysops, and _human errors_. Is WMF ready for that?
> 
> Long time ago I searched info about that, but I only found these
> links[1][2]. Recently, I have been concerned about this again. Most of the
> Wiki[mp]edia projects are small, and their full backups are updated every
> week[3] and they can be stored everywhere, but the largest ones like English
> Wikipedia gets outdated soon[4] (now, it is +200 days old).
> 
> I don't know so much about the infrastructure and how WMF servers are
> allocated around the world, so, I want to ask a simple question:
> 
> In the case of a complete disaster in the "main" servers, will WMF be able
> to restore all the Wiki[mp]edia contain using backups?
> 
> We got a terrible fright when 3000 images were deleted accidentally in
> 2008[5] and I think that not all were recovered.
> 
> When people ask about images dump the most common reply is: "Are you going
> to store 7 TB (Commons)?" I can't store that at home of course, but, I'm
> sure that a few universities or entities around the world can, not only for
> backup purposes, for researching too (in full resolution or thumbs).
> 
> Also, I think that we need to start mirroring Wiki[mp]edia dumps to other
> servers around the globe, as the common GNU/Linux ISOs mirrors do. Also,
> Library of Congress said some time ago that they are going to save a copy of
> all the tweets sent to Twitter.[6] When are they going to save a copy of
> Wiki[mp]edia? I hope we have learnt a bit since Library of Alexandria was
> destroyed.
> 
> I don't want that an error moves us back to January 15, 2001.
> 
> Regards,
> emijrp
> 
> [1] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Disaster_Recovery
> [2] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Offsite_Backups
> [3] http://download.wikimedia.org/
> [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emijrp/Wikipedia_Archive
> [5]
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-September/039265.html
> [6] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/loc-google-twitter/
> 
> 2010/9/8 Jamie Morken <jmorken at shaw.ca>
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was involved in an open source project that was usurped by one of the
>> main developers for the sole reason of making money, and that project
>> continues now to take advantage of the community to increase the profit of
>> that developer.  I never would have thought such a thing was possible until
>> I saw that happen.  If that developer wasn't acting greedy, there would now
>> be open source hardware for radio transceivers of all types, but instead
>> there is only open source software for radio of all types.  I find it a
>> shame, and when I was working on that project I could *feel* it being
>> usurped!  I unfortunately may be paranoid as I feel the same thing here with
>> the wikimedia foundation usurping wikipedia.  If you don't believe me, just
>> consider that it is a very gradual process, like getting people used to not
>> being able to download image dumps anymore, and ignoring ALL requests to
>> restore this functionality.  Also failing to provide full history backups of
>> the flagship wiki.  These two facts allow the wikimedia foundation to
>> maintain the control of intellectual property that wasn't created by the
>> people.  If you want the wikimedia foundation to respect you as volunteers,
>> you will have to DEMAND respect by making sure that they never usurp the
>> project.  I think the best way to do this is to make sure we can all
>> download up to date full history with images wikipedia's so a fork at any
>> time is possible.  Sure it may be paranoid, but trust me it is worth it to
>> be paranoid regarding a project as important as wikipedia.  I have been in
>> situations like this before, I wish I had acted before even if I was wrong!
>> I wouldn't even be speaking now except for reading the heart-felt words of
>> volunteers in this thread that are unhappy with how the wikimedia foundation
>> is running.  We need to organize to get wikimedia foundation to release
>> images tarballs, they are only ignoring multiple requests to do so, so far.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Jamie
>>
>>
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>>
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