[Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)

[SlimVirgin]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 15:13, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
=> Credo has generously offered a large number of additional accounts (up
> to 400 additional ones). The process that I used for the first batch
> was pretty clunky and time-consuming, so I've been using this as an
> opportunity to look into better strategies for Wikimedia to interface
> with external databases like Credo. As part of his contract work for
> the Wikimedia Foundation, User:^demon is currently evaluating what it
> would take to build a standard technical interface between Wikimedia
> and information providers (starting with an evaluation of EZproxy, a
> commonly used but unfortunately proprietary proxy for external
> databases). This is a slow-burn project, so I don't expect that we'll
> be able to find a solution quickly, but I hope we can keep moving this
> along steadily, as I think it could enable many more partnerships with
> information providers.
>
> In the short term, if someone wants to volunteer running a process to
> get an additional batch of user accounts (I need a spreadsheet of home
> wikis, e-mail addresses and user names, and enforcement of some
> reasonable minimum requirements like edit counts), I'd be more than
> happy to relay the final list to Credo and get those accounts created.
> That'd be easier than trying to identify and re-allocate unused
> accounts (which we can always do later if we run out of free ones).
> Anyone up for volunteering to run a process for an additional, say,
> 200 accounts?
>
> - - -
>
> Is anyone volunteering to organize the process for giving away these
> accounts? The September discussion stalled in lack of consensus about
> the parameters, but nobody actually stepped up to take this forward.
> Again, I can't spend a huge amount of time on this, but if someone
> volunteers to generate a list of usernames using whichever process is
> deemed acceptable, I'm happy to move it forward.
>
I'd be willing to help organize the names. It's just a question of
coming up with some sensible criteria, so I'll restart the discussion
about that on the previous talk page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credo_accounts

Sarah