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 ..."

Comments

Letter Content

[filledwithloathing]

Hopefully so that they have less bandwidth bills to pay and therefore need less money.

Letter to our readers and contributors By Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation, Director December 28, 2003

As you have all seen the past few days, we have been having technical difficulties. The essential problem is that we do not currently have enough hardware to cope with routine failures of any kind. When any one of our machines goes down, we experience cascading problems due in part to the excess load on the entire system.

The solution to this problem is to purchase now sufficient hardware to give us enough excess capacity so that we can be reliable. I estimate that $20,000 in hardware would get us to a point where we have reserves to handle the failure of any one machine. Additionally, we would be well-poised to continue our track record of astounding growth.

We currently have total funds of about $4,200. Additionally, I am donating (via Bomis) 1 new webserver. I am putting together, in consultation with our technical team, an order for new hardware totalling $20,000. For details of what we are purchasing, or if you have expertise and would like to help guide us, join the wikitech-l mailing list. [Note that when Wikipedia is down, the mailing list subscription is affected, too.]

I will post daily or twice-daily updates on this web page as well as keeping the mailing lists informed at the same time.

Your help is much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jimbo Wales

CCCP

[t0qer]

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.

As it probably won't survive the slashdotting

[jonbryce]

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.

Re:Umm yeah,

[brion]

The database server is failing memory tests under no load other than the memory tester, which indicates (but does not prove) hardware problems; hypothetically it could be a faulty kernel, we'll be running memtest86 (which bypasses the OS) tomorrow when we can get someone into the colo to work on it.

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.

*you* don't know something...

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:details

[brion]

We've presently got three servers:

• Web server 1: Pentium III 866MHz
• Web server 2/backup DB/mail: dual Athlon MP 2600
• Database server: dual Opteron 2GHz

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.

Worth saving

[chazzf]

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...

Re:Register as a charity?

[randyest]

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.

A few points from Wikipedia's tech mailinglist

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thanks for being so polite.

[brion]

That's me.

Reality Check

[Knightmare]

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

Where does the money go?

[brion]

$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.

Mailing list archive

[brion]

For details of what we are purchasing, or if you have expertise and would like to help guide us, join the wikitech-l mailing list. [Note that when Wikipedia is down, the mailing list subscription is affected, too.]

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.

Re:Umm yeah,

[Feztaa]

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.