[Foundation-l] mirroring a portion of the wikipedia

Chad innocentkiller at gmail.com
Thu Feb 19 07:51:38 UTC 2009


Was it ever on French servers?
That aside: the two situations are entirely different. This proposal
is effectively outsourcing a section of Wikipedia to some experts
in the field. That's entirely unlike the Foundation deciding to add
an additional language for Wikipedia to appear in.

Playing devil's advocate here...it could honestly be an interesting idea.
Provided the account on their end is attached to an account on
our end (with no IPs, so no worries of using as a proxy), it could
be entirely do-able. Editing can be done remotely via the API and
content can be drawn down to their copies. Other than the live
mirroring issue, it's entirely doable.

-Chad

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 2:37 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hoi,
> The French Wikipedia may pre-date the WMF but the hosting of the French
> Wikipedia has always been done by the WMF. So your argument is a bit flaky.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> 2009/2/19 Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>
> > The French Wikipedia wasn't created by the Foundation.
> >
> > skype: node.ue
> >
> >
> >
> > 2009/2/18 basedrop <basedrop at gmail.com>:
> > > Hello Thomas and thanks for your response.
> > >
> > > I would point out that the foundation created a French version,  hosted
> > it
> > > on French servers, in the French language because they saw the benefit
> of
> > > delivering something to a specific constituency.
> > >
> > > I don't have a particular need to have the art history portion of the
> > wiki
> > > editable for my users at my domain.  I have the specialized users at my
> > > site,  I'd like to take advantage of that aggregation of specialized
> > users
> > > to the benefit of the wiki.    If you guys don't have an API for me,
>  I'm
> > > o.k. with that.
> > >
> > > Web content is becoming more integrated across multiple platforms and
> > > domains.   People can post to Facebook from twitter.  People can check
> > Gmail
> > > from POP3 clients.  People can post to a blog, and the data will
> > instantly
> > > replicate over multiple blogs around the world.  I can pull data from
> > > multiple sources and aggregate it with an rss feed reader.   This is
> the
> > > direction content and the web is heading.
> > >
> > > Bring the users to one domain, and keep the content within that domain
> > can
> > > be called the "walled garden" approach.  It is not a bad one, when you
> > have
> > > a need to control the users (e.g. facebook,) and the content.   In the
> > case
> > > of the wiki,  I'd suggest a more democratic approach of bringing the
> wiki
> > to
> > > the people.   You already do that with a push version of the wiki,  I'm
> > just
> > > suggesting you take it one step further and make it editable.   Imagine
> > > sections of the wiki,  right where the experts are aggregated.
> > Space.com
> > > hosting a concurrent version of the astronomy section.   Technology at
> > > slashdot.org.   Law at nolo.com... you get the drift.
> > >
> > > You guys consider this.  In the mean time I'll build up my site and my
> > user
> > > base.   If there is a way to integrate in the future,  I'll do that.
>  I'm
> > > going to shoot for using openID, so this is just another reason for you
> > guys
> > > to consider the use of openID as well.
> > >
> > > Michael
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas
> > Dalton
> > > Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 3:57 PM
> > > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> > > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] mirroring a portion of the wikipedia
> > >
> > > 2009/2/18 basedrop <basedrop at gmail.com>:
> > >>
> > >> Hello,
> > >> I'm not sure if this is the place to pose this question,  if not could
> > you
> > >> respond with the proper place.
> > >>
> > >>  I'm building out a social networking site centered around an "art"
> and
> > >> "arthistory" theme.  I would like to display a real time dynamic
> version
> > > of
> > >> the arthistory section of the wikipedia at my domain.
> > >
> > > Possible, but unlikely to happen, I'm afraid. There is little to be
> > > gained for us compared to you just sending people to the main site.
> > >
> > >>I would like for my
> > >> users to be able to edit this section at my domain.
> > >
> > > I don't think that's possible - at best all the edits would be from a
> > > single account, and we don't really like group accounts.
> > >
> > >>   My domain is
> > >> arthistory.com.   I am hoping to be able to provide a lot of acedemic
> > and
> > >> specialty users to this section via my site.   I think we could both
> > > benefit
> > >> from this relationship.  My users have direct access to the arthistory
> > >> section of wikipedia,  the wikipedia gets access to my users who are
> > > experts
> > >> in the field.
> > >
> > > We would very much like to encourage your users to edit Wikipedia, but
> > > it really would be much easier for us if they just came to our site.
> > > Is there some reason why they particularly need to be doing it from
> > > your site?
> > >
> > >>    I understand you can get a feed of the wikipedia, and also
> > >> a database dump,  but I'm looking for a more real time and dynamic
> > >> connection  (without just putting the wikipedia in an iframe.)
> > >
> > > I don't know of anything like that being done before. If it's just one
> > > section of the site you could probably mirror it pretty well by
> > > crawling it once a day or so - we don't like people crawling the whole
> > > site, but one section shouldn't be a problem. If you want it
> > > completely up-to-date then you need to access the Wikipedia servers
> > > for each request, so you might as well just be on wikipedia.org
> > >
> > >>   I'd also
> > >> prefer if I could use openID or some way of repurposing my user's
> > >> registration to duel register with my site and with wikipedia, and
> > create
> > > a
> > >> login session for both simultaneously.
> > >
> > > I'm sorry, we don't use openID on Wikipedia. It has been suggested,
> > > and it's possible we will in the future, but we don't right now.
> > >
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