Oh, also there is the additional option of setting up shop at a Wikipedia that has had little or no action. This is *not* something I would encourage! Please exhaust all other options first. Depending on which language you choose though, it could take a very short time or a very long time for anybody to realise what you're doing. And if you can round up a good sized group of contributors, and you get up a sizable number of articles, when you *are* eventually found out there is a good chance the content will be kept, but moved to a different subdomain (most likely ang:).
As I said before though, that is the last thing you should try! Unlike the other options there is the inevitability of getting caught, and the fact that it's against the rules. So really I would not recommend this except as a last resort, and if you *do* do it, choose a language with low internet connectivity and a small speaker population overall.
--node
ps Seriously, don't do that.
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:49:51 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Well, you have a number of different options.
The first and probably best would be to go to Wikipedia forks such as Wikinfo and mcfly (ok, maybe not mcfly) and tell them how the folks at the Wikimedia organisation are... well, describe your plight. Some forks really hate the Wikimedia foundation and will feel very sorry for you and assist you with such a project, whereas others seem to be meant more to augment Wikipedia and their users still contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis.
Another option would be to pay for private hosting and set up the MediaWiki software yourself, which I can tell you is not going to be very pleasant if you're not experienced in setting up server-side apps. You could probably also hire somebody to maintain the software for you (often hosting companies will offer such services), but that's just another additional cost.
The only other option I can think of at the moment is to use one of the free wiki hosts available on the internet. Let me tell you in advance, they all suck. Really, really suck. But obviously, they are free so you don't have to pay anybody as you would in the second scenario.
best, node
ps I thought the final decision was to go ahead and create ang:?
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 16:36:25 -0400, James R. Johnson modean52@comcast.net wrote:
So, in the interest of the Anglo-Saxon wikipedia, how do I, personally, set it up outside the wikimedia foundation, so that I can get it started?
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Evan Prodromou Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 2:16 AM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Once again I'd like to point out that having a language-specific Wikipedia is not usually the best way to organize, promote, or develop a language.
It's probably much better for a group of interested people working on a small or endangered language to set up a general-purpose wiki that encompasses the Wikimedia ideas of a Wikipedia, Wiktionary, a language-learning Wikibook, and perhaps a few other community- or discussion-oriented purposes.
There are a _lot_ of free or low-cost PHP hosting services that can host a wiki. Mediawiki can be hard to set up on these services, since MySQL usually costs
significantly more, but there are a number of other wiki engines* that work with flat files and don't require a database.
Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people who want to have a Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere else. If they can show that they have a robust community that can support a Wikipedia, then they should get an xx.wikipedia.org domain (as well as other xx.wikisomething.org stuff).
~ESP
- I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other
wikis? I can set up my own? Huh?"
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