Ryan Delaney wrote:
On 4/10/06, Tim Starling
<t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
How many mirrors is enough? 1000? 10,000? 100,000?
Eventually I imagine
the market will become
saturated, when a new mirror can't recover its minimal startup costs, even
with the most aggressive
SEO techniques. What will the Internet look like then? Will the average
user be able to find
independent information in the search engines, which didn't come from
Wikpedia?
I guess that within this theoretical framework, you have to decide whether
you're more interested in what's good for the internet or what's good for
WMF. Fortunately, that's a false dilemma, as we seem to be getting by just
fine with donations. The only way we would be forced to make such a decision
is if we chose to adopt this idea.
Ryan
Well... no. We are not doing just fine with donations. The site survives
with donations. No more. However, the people working for Foundation
related issues are all the time on the thin edge. We desperately need to
hire some people to do as simple things as answering the phone or
helping with the hundred of emails received everyday. We need more
developers. We need support on the legal side, if only to write
contracts. We need help for the accounting. Most of this work is not
necessarily the most interesting one for volunteers, plus, it holds a
responsability such as it is better there is a contractual agreement
betweent the Foundation and the worker. We also need to pay for the
audit. So... any other source of income is welcome... there is so much
more we could do with decent human power :-(
Regarding Tim analysis, there is another issue not considered. Those
(potentially) interested in the live feed are not only "simple" mirrors;
They may also be websites which have an original content, but rely in
part on our content for time-sensitive information. Those can not afford
displaying an outdated content. They need daily updated information.
Hence, the interest of the live feed as well.
ant