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Shuttle technicians quickly called in Tyrone Biggums
to fix the problem.

Take two.

Given Google's proposal to what is now the Wikimaedia Foundation to host some of its content, "Google's Guide to the Galaxy" seems about right.

And someone was futzing with our navigation earlier. But it's better now. For now.

What happened: Photomatt, the guy who pretty much calls the shots when it comes to WordPress, was paid by a company called Hot Nacho to put up 100,000+ "articles" at WordPress.org. The point of these articles is to help Hot Nacho game Google. Furthermore, WordPress.org used a CSS trick putting links to the articles at -9000pixels on the WordPress home page. This is called "cloaking" and is explicitly forbidden by Google.

Why this is bad: WordPress is an open source piece of software. It's okay for the people running it to try to make money off it, either by asking for donations or selling t-shirts or anything else they can think of (www.textdrive.com comes to mind), but to knowingly break Google's rules and to receive money from a company whose practices many would consider shady without any feedback from the WP community is just a damn shame. A lot of people don't care and think everyone is being too critical of WordPress. They think asking for "transparency" in an operation like WP is stupid. Well yes, and no.

A lot of people have given a lot of time to WP. Did they have any say in this? From what I've read, they didn't. So this is one person taking the ball and running with it...he didn't ask if it was a good idea, he didn't ask for alternative ideas, he just decided that he knew what was best for the community and WordPress. Well, he didn't. Take a look at Wikimedia. When they have a donation drive, you know exactly how much money they get and where it's going. You can find out about the drive in advance, and read about it afterwards. What about WordPress? Just 100k+ articles popping up without a word until after they are discovered...

WordPress has made quite a name for itself, and is a great example of open source software in action. But this incident is a blight on the community. People will see this, not know all the facts, and make their own interpretations and ideas. Some will distort this to help their own FUD..."Why contribute to projects who are just going to try and profit off your code in any way they can?" Matt sounds like a great guy, and seems to have the purest of intentions, but not much good can come of a decision like this. Everyone is watching right now, and it's mistakes like this that open source could really do without.

Four things.....

1) Every database has quirks and bugs you run into during development of large systems. Face it, not everyone is dealing with a 500GB dataset.

2) Did you pay for a MySQL.com support contract? If not, you really should have. There's a serious advantage in paid support (probably exists for postgres as well...).

3) You've heard of Wikipedia, correct? Yeah.... That's one big, heavily used, MySQL db. Last I heard, they were planning for the future and testing for multiple terabyte data sets. Seems like they're up around 500GB now. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers for details on their server setup.

4) Your point about problems only showing up on large datasets that would be invisible with smaller datasets is dead on. I recently loaded apache logs into mysql and ran across a bug indexing TEXT columns. I finally had to index on a CRC32 of the data to get acceptable performance. As I understand, the fix should show up in the next release of 4.11, but I never would have cared with less than a a couple hundred thousand rows.

It's a bummer you ran into problems the first time through and it's also a bummer your code wasn't flexible enough to switch engines as necessary. A foray into postgres to validate problems with mysql vs problems with general approach would probably have been helpful. Oracle is free for development so that should have been investigated as well.

On your next attempt, I'd suggest you approach it by prototyping across several likely engines and see which handles your particular problem with the most grace... And try to stay away from engine specific hacks so you can move it easily in the future.

...on TV

I don't suppose there's any chance for an interface with, say, Ourmedia or the Wikimedia Commons as an image provider, is there? There's lots of royalty-free, Creative Commons/GFDL-or-better stuff to be had there, of various grades of quality.

The former, I know, has explicit methods to label content as Creative Commons or other types of license.

If you own content that might be useful to Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia projects, such as holidy photos from a far-away country, please upload it to the Commons. If you don't want to learn the ways of the wiki, you can use the newly created (free) file upload service, where Wikimedia volunteers will tag and upload your files for you. The only condition is that you put them under a free license or in the public domain.

Remember, all the Wikimedia projects are run by a non-profit organization that depends on donations from people like you.

If you own content that might be useful to Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia projects, such as holidy photos from a far-away country, please upload it to the Commons. If you don't want to learn the ways of the wiki, you can use the newly created (free) file upload service, where Wikimedia volunteers will tag and upload your files for you. The only condition is that you put them under a free license or in the public domain.

Remember, all the Wikimedia projects are run by a non-profit organization that depends on donations from people like you.

Indeed there at least 22 non-english language versions of Wikipedia....

Actually, according to this listing, there are versions of Wikipedia in 159 languages. That tally counts all languages with at least one article other than the Main Page. There are 90 that have at least 100 articles.

24? Is that you?

--grendel drago

Many of you were probably already aware Wikipedia had reached 500,000 articles. What may be of even more interest to many Slashdot readers though is that the Wikimedia project that runs Wikipedia and other sites desperately needs more people to help run the site. Both to develop the software and administer the servers. The growth of Wikipedia is phenomenal and traffic is increasing at a rapid pace. However, without proper planning, the system will not be able to keep up with demand. The site gets over 80 million hits a day, so it would certainly be an interesting project to work on from a technical standpoint. Oh, and did I forget to say it runs on Linux?

The other thing Wikipedia needs most is better referencing of facts. The only criticism left of Wikipedia is the percieved lack of reliability. The best (only?) way to combat this is to cite individual facts to the most authoritative source available. With that Wikipedia can be more reliable than any other single source available. Not perfect, because someone can dispute any fact, but Wikipedia might be able to be the best out there at it. There is certainly a lot of work going on in this area, but also many who write on Wikipedia fail to see the writing on the wall and reallize this really is the only valid criticism left. I for one am promoting work on a list of Wikipedia's otherwise best articles that do not cite their sources properly. If you want to contribute to something, researching and citing facts in these articles could be one of the most valuable things you could do.

Wikidata is in the works. It will take some development time, though.

Not as bad as the MS goons. And this was just at a school.

Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. (That link might not work at the moment because Wikipedia is experiencing server problems). You might also want to see Jimbo's comment on the matter.

Perhaps you could clarify something for me, since I've done some research on Wikipedia policies and can't come up with a valid answer.

Are all submissions to Wikipedia required to be licensed under GFDL? (The submission page says so, the download page says not.) If that's the case, why can images be tagged with other licenses? Is that like dual-licensing, and if so, can't Wikipedia mirrors like answers.com follow the GFDL and ignore the other license?

If you think, given the above, you should be able to dictate how your (very beautiful IMHO) image is used, what should the mirrors do to comply with all the different licenses when doing automated imports of dumps?

I noticed the answers.com page of your image doesn't provide the obligatory GFDL credit of Wikipedia. Would that suffice for you?

It seems to me that automated dumps of Wikimedia aren't that easy after all if you have to wade through a dozen different licenses instead of one. What balance do you suggest to make sure everybody's happy?

This isn't hard at all.

one
two
three

Angela: No. 31. in the main namespace; No. 10. in all namespaces.

Morwen: No. 18. in the main namespace; No. 25. in all namespaces.

Jengod: No. 21. in the main namespace; No. 27 in all namespaces

Dysprosia: No. 24 in the main namespace; No. 32. in all namespaces
There are just four of the "top authors" ( 32 in the main namespace, UtherSRG's "ranking").

So, not all of the top authors are male.

Here

Easy way to tell - take a look at the pictures I took at some past Wikipedia meetups (although there's a distinct bias in favor of old people who can find transportation). To get a more accurate breakdown by age, see Wikimedians by age (a page which, for the record, I started).

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

This has the whole database (in bz2 format) at 538MB for current and 27GB for old. You can get the old in 1.9GB p i e c e s if you like, too, but 6 * 1.9 != 27, so something must be missing.

Anyone have a torrent of these?

Now, how many places can honestly say that a Slashdotting is insignificant (ducking from CmdrTaco)?:-)

Now, how many places can honestly say that a Slashdotting is insignificant (ducking from CmdrTaco)?:-)

Bandwidth isn't the problem (or the cost, really), but the servers. We spend $4k-ish a month on bandwidth (off the top of my head; ICBW), but we spent about $65k in just the last 6 months on servers (see the server list).

BTW, we prefer that people just call it "Wikipedia", without a definite article.

... and for Microsoft it went like this ...

IE 1.0: Let's get on this intarweb bandwagon! We'll start by taking code from Spyglass' NCSA Mosaic, since we still haven't figured out how to use the "New Project" feature in Visual Studio.

IE 1.5: Introducing HTML TABLE support! Innovating faster than ever before! What, W3C was before us? Well, fuck that competitor to us!

IE 2.0: Let's all welcome MARQUEEs and BGSOUNDs for an improved user experience on beautiful rich media web pages!

IE 3.0: We now support frames! And we reverse-engineered your JavaScript, Netscape... to innovate JScript! We also innovated the new ActiveX technology for an almost unimaginable number of uses -- good or bad. How about that!? Starting to lay the foundation of a web browser the world will come to love.

IE 4.0: Mass proprietary feature implementation! Also, DHTML and lots of CSS improvements! Ooh, a HTML link... *clicky* !L=#$Xz**A@@#__ LOST CARRIER. Ahh well, stability can come later, it's only a good reason for us to make people switch to IE 5 now that we have a decent marketshare.

IE 5.0: We changed how the proprietary features in IE 4, linked to above, should be used to confuse you a bit. Hah! ANYWAY... More stable than ever before, and now supporting so many features that it's having a shitload of security issues so users will have a reason to download IE 6!

IE 5.5: Introducing a great new... bump in the version number!

IE 6.0: More stability improvements, and better standards compliant! At least we'll tell them so since that's becoming common complaints. Oh and fuck PNG! Heck, it's not even a proprietary format, and we refuse to give top notch support for communist technology. And are those W3C guys still competing with us, with their technologies they call "standards"? Damn, they never give up, do they. Security fixes? Hmm, later.

IE 6.0 Ultra Windows XP SP2 Edition Turbo: OK, we'll add the security fixes then... for one specific service pack for a specific operating system.

IE 7.0: This should crush Firefox by maybe innovating tabs... they're still confusing the hell out of us, but whatever. IE fans have asked for it, and we'll deliver by making this one a new version rich in innovations.

It looks like its going that way, certainly. Actually, I saw an interesting article on Wiki a while back which raises some quite valid points...

There is a Wikipedia article related to Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked

There's really no good way to solve this problem

I really hate this attitude. Wikipedia is only about four years old, and you're ready to throw in the towel? The system is as good as it'll ever be?

The problem of maintaining accuracy without raising the bar to new contributors too high is being attacked from many different angles. Lots of ideas, some rather good, are being discussed. Some features have already crept into the software, and more are on the way.

Don't be like the patent office commissioner who assumed that everything that could be invented had been (well, not really... but you get my point).

Yeah, and if you want to bypass the hype, go to the source and read the mailing list archives at http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/, for some good old-fashion dead horse beating.

Of course, it will be informative in showing the nature of the kind of people that participate heavily in the Wikipedia, yours truly included.

The link in the article is broken, here's the proper one:
http://wikimedia.org/fundraising/

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

Kate most likely uses DVORAK. Her uname is UNIX UNIXPC SYSTEMS 3.0INTL mc68k. The timestamp is at 12:03 am, so she is either a night owl, or had recently reset CMOS.

In this picture, you can see her desk layout. Note that if that is her wrist, she isn't a whale afterall. But we've never seen a fat troll either so we keep looking...

But you wouldn't want to room up with her. Two geeks a god-send? One would think, but then take a moment to consider double the mess. It's better to fit a clean person and messy person together, and then reach for some medium ground. Trust me.

Her clickety-clackety keyboard and cheap mouse, clicky

But we want pictures. We want to fit this busty gal to someone of the likes of Kate Kohl, right? Well comrades, here is our-ahem-mess of a girl. BAM Nice picture eh? A real tease right. You see them nice lips through that soft, flowing ... erhmm ... raggedy, tress?

So give me more I hear you say. Alas I've run clean. No more pictures this wild stead can round in. So is there any other defining factor before I pronounce my wedlock proposal I hear you ask. Indeed, the fact she uses .... drum roll ... KDE!! Yes, yes it is true. How horrible of a woman to do so. Well, it's all part of the show.

Perhaps a "geek" on this website who has been deluded by the inviting K, will wed her on the morrow. How ignorant of the poor chap where her cosmetics are dumped for computer bloat, and will evermore tie us up with the admin task of maintaining a proper show. She's perfectly capable of administering her own programs I hear you say, but I ask you what women really carries around her own baggage when really to have a man toil at her feet? May that ignorant sap take her away from eye and mind so she may never taunt us with her feminine nature again! (well at least until next happy hour)

Once more into the pussy let's dive, but out before the lock lies ringed.

The vast majority of this space is taken up by revision histories (and those are compressed!) Periodic database dumps are available for download. Image and multimedia uploads have been taking up a bigger share lately, but those are on a separate server which recovered just fine.

A German company has published an end-user-friendly CD-ROM of material from the German-language Wikipedia, but afaik no one's published an English-language edition yet.

While I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, I am a regular follower and poster of the events on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list where this proposal has taken on a bit of urgancy.

The main point that needs to be looked at is the fact that Wikipedia has been experiencing some absolutely explosive growth in demand from people both trying to add articles, as well as people simply accessing it, like numerous cross-links to Wikipedia mentioned in various /. articles as well as references in news media. All of this crushing demand to view content (where Wikipedia could produce a slashdot effect on /. itself) is taking up bandwidth that simply requires money just to be able to serve up the content.

The current proposed budget for maintaining the servers is on the order of $130,000 and all of that comes from voluntary donations of the community. (BTW, please give some $$$ if you are a regular user of Wikipedia).

Google has quietly given an offer to not only co-locate some Wikimedia servers at their facilities, but also to pay for the servers themselves as part of the general Google server farm.

From what I've seen, nothing in the proposal is to have Google "take over" the Google content. Just like Google uses data in the Open Directory Project for their google website directory, they are free to use the content of Wikipedia as long as they comply with the terms of the Gnu Free Documentation License.

This is not a way to "lock up" the content, but rather a way to browse Wikipedia in a way where you can be assured that the bandwidth is available to view the content. Basically, a mirror of the Wikipedia project. This is not even a new idea.

I would imagine that the fine points of negotiation right now are that links to add content would be folded back into the main-line Wikipedia database. This is just like the Open Directory Project has been doing for a number of years, so the preceedence is definitely there, even for Google. I don't deny that there is a valid business rationale for Google to host Wikipedia, but don't read more into it than is there: Google offering to host Wikipedia content.

John Dvorak absolutely does not speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, or even as a member of the community in general, and his comments are just to inflame issues from an otherwise uninterested technology journalist just trying to improve the sales of the publications he works for. Having been through similar publicity flare-ups in the past with other "open source" groups, Mr. Dvorak is not showing behavior consistant with even mediocre journalists that would at least contact members of the community he is reporting about. He is just doing raw speculation and that is it.

This article is disingenuous and I hope that Dvorak gets taken to task for the comments that he has made. I also hope that people like him don't kill the good-faith proposal that frankly the Wikipedia could really use, nor "poison" the water of other potential offers to help out in relieving the crushing bandwidth needs of the Wikipedia and other related projects. It is articles like this that give journalists an awful name and destroy what is left of credibility to their profession.

Its not too difficult to download their database.
goto http://download.wikimedia.org/ and you can download a very recent ver of the database.

I wouldnt be too worried about this though, since we are talking about Google here (though it doesnt harm to be safe ... I am downloading my copy of wikipedia now :) )