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Wikipedia Needs $20K
TaranRampersad writes "Wikipedia's server is crashing off and on, and Jimmy Wales has posted a letter requesting some assistance from anyone out there with a dollar burning a hole in their pocket. Let's face it, you really don't need that candybar anyway ..."
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1978... Wiki's a wee bit more current. And since you've got all kinds of people contributing, you can sift through the info provided, and make your own decision.
I recommend talking to CCCP.
I've had a few e-mail exchanges with the guys that run it, they really do answer
all inquiries and are very friendly. It's not $20k but maybe they can help out somehow.
Donations should be sent to
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
3911 Harrisburg St. NE
St. Petersburg, FL 33703
Can't see any way to post the paypal links here.
Its free as in libra. Think, every know and then you get free beer. If there was a beer company that always gave out free beer, it would go out of business. Hopefully, people would realize that it was giving out so much that it needed support and would donate. You can only bring free beer so far without needing some kind of support. Yes, it is free as in libra. And, it pushes the limits of free beer.
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The secondary web server (and backup database server) started kicking out SCSI timeouts about a day after we put the database back on it to pull the primary db server for testing.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
You don't seem to understand how big Wikipedia is. It was about to surpass Slashdot.org in terms of traffic a few months ago, and it probably has by now. Put this in the spectre of being a *wiki* & not simply an http terminal, having multi-gigabyte databases which are being constantly accessed & edited like hail hitting a hot tin roof, backup databases, upload servers, dozens of different language editions, and you may understand why they need big iron. They've got some pretty serious equipment already, but it simply isn't enough. In terms of bandwidth load and hardware load size put together in context, Wikipedia is probably a top 200 server on the internet.
So yes, they really do need that kind of stuff, unless you enjoy Wikipedia averaging being down one day out of 3 (which has been happening each time a ram stick burns out or a hdd fails, which is why it went down this time).
Web server 2 and the database server are presently offline, respectively for disk and RAM problems. A second fast web server is being installed tomorrow, at which point we'll hopefully get the other one back online too.
Networking and bandwidth isn't a problem at all, and we're actually in a reasonable place CPU-wise when everything's up (though more is always better). What we need is more robustness in the case of server failures; we need enough machines available that one machine going down doesn't kill us, and that we can still limp along with two down.
It's not like Wikipedia will vanish tomorrow if we don't have $20k, but failover and growth capacity will be good to have.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Guys, they deserve it.
Wikipedia is one of the best resources out there. I did a school project on Stars and I found that Wikipedia simply blows other resources away. (I've never seen "Oh Boy, an F grade kills me" in any other encyclopedia).
Being a) a minor b) in australia c) without credit card unfortunately makes it hard for me to donate to them at the moment. I'll have to see what I can do (any Australians here willing to forward donations?)
Come on.. even a single buck can help anybody.
Having edited a number of entries on Wikipedia myself, I have to say that this is a project worth saving. The sheer volume of information is remarkable, and often more useful than that in an encyclopedia. Moreover, the open nature of project leads, in my opinion, to more balanced articles. Article have to stand up to the scrutiny of thousands of different people, from many different countries around the world. All things considered, 20K isn't a whole hell of a lot to keep it going. I gave $10 myself, it would take just 2000 people doing so to get things back together. Hardly unreasonable...
No statement is true, not even this one.
Don't complain to me, I paid my US$10.00. Unfortunately, my tax advisor tells me, regardless what I donate, the IRS still wants my soul on toast.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
Try reading the site; it's registered:
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation, is registered as a charitable organization with the State of Florida's Division of Consumer Services, a division of the State of Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and may lawfully solicit donations under Florida law.
Please do not send currency through the mail. Also, sending any foreign drafts, checks or other negotiable instruments may entail significant collection costs, an international postal money order or a check drawn on a US banking institution will make sure your complete donation goes to Wikimedia (otherwise foreign collection costs will be deducted by Wikimedia's bank from your contribution). Sending a foreign check to the United States may involve fees in excess of $50 for the processing of the check (or any other kind of draft) if it is drawn on a foreign bank outside the United States. International postal money orders payable in the United States are acceptable and available in post offices in many countries.
Deductibility of donations
Please note donations may not be tax deductible except for U.S. residents and nationals -- all questions in this regards should be directed to your tax professional. For those outside the United States please contact your local tax authorities to determine if there is any tax treaty or other law that may allow you to deduct your donations to Wikimedia from your income. Wikimedia is in the process of applying for official tax exempt status from the United States Internal Revenue Service as it is a new organization (corporate status granted: June 20, 2003) it may benefit from an automatic exemption from the IRS; if you make a donation you will receive the required paperwork.
everything in moderation
The wiki is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, so the content isn't going to die even if the main servers explode and are washed into the sea and the Wikimedia Foundation disbands.
(Disclaimer: the GFDL is somewhat unpopular these days, but we don't have any invariant sections and Wikipedia predates Creative Commons.)
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
There aren't many sites with the scope, quality and credibility of Wikipedia. I gave CAD $10 and I'd give more if my credit card weren't crumbling under the weight of Christmas.
Wikipedia is, according to alexa, within the top 1000 trafficked domains in the web.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
There's been a few questions in the comments above. Here's a few points worth noting:
* Wikipedia won't be hurt by traffic from Slashdot traffic. It's only the database server that is down, not the web servers. Also, Wikipedia is one of the largest sites on the net today, so they have bandwidth enough.
* Wikipedia is not asking for money for more bandwidth now. They have enough.
* Wikipedia is not a regular web site. The database backend is fairly complicated, since they allow anyone to update any page, and store all revisions (and do various magical stuff with them). A big server is warranted.
* Wikipedia already has servers enough to cope with today's traffic as long as nothing fails. The $20k they're asking for is for hot spares. This means they already have $20k worth of hardware.
* Wikipedia needs money, not hardware. They need to be able to rely on one hardware vendor with service support, etc. Of course, if a company is willing to buy them some new high end stuff with service, it would probably be accepted.
* Wikipedia will not be closing down if they don't get $20k in donations. They will simply not be as reliable in the future as they could be with $20k worth of extra hardware.
The Wiki things are cool in a way, but too filled with unqualified opinion.
You're missing the magic behind Wikis.
Most web pages are static, or if they're dynamic, the reader isn't the one with the power to change things. On a Wiki, anybody can come by and help edit.
That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's amazingly powerful. When I first used the original Wiki, I notice that one sentence in an otherwise good page was confusingly phrased. And so I fixed it. In a few seconds. Wikis allow you to aggregate small amounts of effort from thousands of people.
If the Wikipedia is currently imperfect, that's ok. As experts come by and look at it, they'll fix things that they notice are wrong. It will never be completely perfect, but that's ok; no document ever is: caveat lector was good advice long before the web.
The advantage of the Wiki is that it's a document with an extremely low cost of change, so that it will be able to stay in sync with current knowledge and viewpoints much better than, say, a paper document like Britannica.
That's me.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
I am assuming one of the sites you are referring to would be the one you put at the end of your post? If thats the case you really need a reality check, you don't even come close to wikipedia or slashdot... Not to undermine the size of your site or anything, but you are not the big dog you think you are. You are comparing 2 3 digit ranked sites to 2 of your 6 digit ranked sites.
snowjournal.com vs wikipedia.org
skimaps.com vs wikipedia.org
Maybe this will put it a little more in perspective for you:
sun.com vs wikipedia.org
I certainly encourage folks to donate, and I would myself if I had any cash at all. A small but eye-catching graphic and a properly maintained donation page would make a lot of difference. They'll probably get all the money they need for this crisis just from Slashdotters. (I mean $20K divided by 100K Slashdot readers, even allowing for a 90% apathy factor...) But I hope they'll put a stronger fundraising strategy in place for the long term.
Wikipedia's license means that all versions of all its articles will remain free forever, no matter what happens.
$20,000 is a nice, round number to set for a fundraising target, not an itemized total. We got /.ed a little early and the shopping list isn't complete, I'm afraid, and I can't just make something up for you.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
My apologies... I was trying to help.
Yes, it is possible to go in and mangle pages if that's what turns your crank - but the system maintains a version by version history and the editors can roll back - and disallow you from further changes.
There is an area for each page for discussion of what is on or should be on it - and each contributor can "subscribe" to pages to see when they change or see new comments.
All in all, I'm pleased with the way things are set up. I've used WIKIs in several business settings over the past few years and like how this one is set up. I sincerely hope they can find ongoing sponsorship of some kind. In the mean time I for one will be blowing their horn to get people to recognize them.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Here's the list archive. Signup probably won't work right now since the main mail server is on one of the machines that's down, but you can send mail to the list (wikitech-l at wikipedia.org) and it'll go through the backup MX just fine.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
we'll be running memtest86 (which bypasses the OS) tomorrow
I have to warn you, memtest86 isn't 100% reliable.
A while back, I was having problems with RedHat9 randomly crashing on me (kernel oopses), so I ran memtest86 for 36 straight hours, it found nothing wrong with my RAM. I replaced the RAM anyway and the problems stopped.
So, just beware that memtest86 isn't perfect.