[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is ... free web hosting?

[Rory Stolzenberg]

On Jan 28, 2008 9:10 PM, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 29/01/2008, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 28, 2008 6:03 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Jan 28, 2008 5:41 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Except that this one is a small group of admins (mostly) in
> userspace
> > > > and there hasn't been any enraged reports of hacking. Are there
> > > > policies related to linking *into* Wikipedia? I'd be surprised. I
> > > > think (but I'm not 100% sure) that this has already survived an MfD.
> > >
> > > I missed that fact, but that just makes it all the more baffling.
> > >
> > > Using CSS hacks to hide the site and make it claim to be some other
> > > domain is pretty darn outrageous... at least the airline didn't use
> > > clever kludges to rewrite the page.
> >
> >
> > I wouldn't really call that a CSS hack, considering they could have also
> > done it using a magic word ({{DISPLAYTITLE}}). It doesn't seem to be
> using
> > Wikipedia as a web host, more like using the domain to make a parody
> page in
> > userspace more amusing/realistic.
>
> Gotta say its pretty close to free web host. Anyone that buys a domain
> and redirects it to wikipedia is using wikipedia non-profit foundation
> funds for something that is completely unrelated to the encyclopedia.
> The userpage guidelines and the what wikipedia is not policy have been
> designed specifically to restrict this frivolous use of bandwidth and
> server resources, although the community may have enough powerful
> supporters to make it an exception, it would break the rule and not be
> consistent IMO. Recent happenings with spoofing the wikipedia UI may
> also come into play.
>
> Its always hard to say anything bad about humour pages that
> established wikipedians create, but buying a domain and making a
> straight redirect without prior authorisation from the non-profit
> foundation is pretty clear.
>
> On a side note, I am completely anti putting underage childrens photos
> on personal user pages. It is utterly irresponsible for a parent to do
> that. But that isn't really the issue here.
>
> Peter Ansell


The only thing they're using WMF funds for would be the hosting, and it's a
userspace page like several others, and it's been kept in MfD. It's not like
this is using the foundation as a host for something completely irrelevant-
this is a parody Wikipedia cabal, for which the creators decided to buy a
domain to redirect to it. I don't see what the problem is.