On Wed, 15 Aug 2001 sanger1@nupedia.com wrote:
Bryce, no doubt, I would be miffed if I were you. I share your confusion, too. I had no idea that it was such a small operation (remember, I'm not a programmer, so you must explain things simply and clearly to me, if you want me to understand). I assure you that there is absolutely no *resistance* to the request--unless inertia counts as resistance...
Okay, thanks. Good to hear.
Nupedia isn't making any money either. In fact, Wikipedia is much closer to the point where it might (somehow) make money for Bomis (and therefore, potentially, for anyone else who wants to use the content for profit).
Isn't that ironic? ;-) (And cool too)
Here is my philosophy on this: Wikipedia, when it is far enough along to actually be used as our community wishes it to be, will require stable, supported, reliable hardware and a decent bandwidth. These things are not free. Thus it is in wikipedia's best interest that it at least make enough $$ to break even, and maybe even a little better to give a reward to the folks who have to deal with annoying users like me. ;-)
(The caveat being, as long as the pursuit of money does not impinge on the freedom of the community, as it has in so many other areas so often in the past. But you know this.)
Anyway, remember, Wikipedia, like Nupedia, is a volunteer project--so it's not surprising (though regrettable) that essential features like this should be rooted-for and planned by volunteers. Really, we should have done this long ago.
*Nod* Providing tarballs of the site is a first step towards opening it to further volunteer participation.
In order for volunteer programmers to do their "thang", they often like to snag the whole potato and put a copy of it on their computer so they can poke and prod, test and break, and gnaw and digest. And plus it's safer for you to have them do this than allow them a logon to your webserver to muck about on the live site. ;-)
Now, I'm not saying programmers *will* jump in and help by having this available, but just that they *can't* (practically) without it. (They could still get usemodwiki and mock up a new site and play, but what fun is that?)
(FWIW, the step after this would be to set up CVS for the cgi's and tools people will be writing specifically for wikipedia that wouldn't be integrated into usemodwiki directly.)
On the other hand, long ago, we didn't really know that the project would be so successful so quickly, that this would be so important and useful so soon!
Yes it's amazed me at its success too!
I had originally been involved with Gnupedia, but recognized that wikipedia had "something" (or a set of somethings) that would make it more successful, sooner, and came here. Still, I was blown away to learn that other sites are now using wikipedia as a legit encyclopdia! :-)
Bryce
P.S. I misspelled Bomis as Bromis in my previous email... apologies.