[Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Kim Bruning]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 11:11:04PM -0400, John wrote:
> I know from experience that a wiki can be re-built from any one of the
> dumps that are provided, (pages-meta-current) for example contains
> everything needed to reboot a site except its user database
> (names/passwords ect). see
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Moving_a_wiki


Sure. Does this include all images, including commons images, eventually
converted to operate locally?

I'm thinking about full snapshot-and-later-restore, say 25 or 50 years
from now, or in an academic setting, (or FSM-forbid in a worst case scenario
<knock on wood>). That's what the AT folks are most interested in.

==Fire Drill== 
Has anyone recently set up a full-external-duplicate of (for instance) en.wp?
This includes all images, all discussions, all page history (excepting the user
accounts and deleted pages)

This would be a useful and important exercise; possibly to be repeated once per year.  

I get a sneaky feeling that the first few iterations won't go so well.

I'm sure AT would be glad to help out with the running of these fire drills, as
it seems to be in line with their mission.

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning