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Wikipedia Needs $20K
TaranRampersad writes "Wikipedia's server is crashing off and on, and Jimmy Wales has posted a letter requesting some assistance from anyone out there with a dollar burning a hole in their pocket. Let's face it, you really don't need that candybar anyway ..."
Wikipedia is trying to offer information to help the community. I can't understand why the slashdot community doesn't want to help out a dying webserver, but wants to buy air bazookas over at thinkgeek.
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Oh, please, don't be such an asshole.
This money is going to a FREE project that anyone can contribute to. It's not going to a site with pop-ups and banner ads. It's a non-profit (as far as I know) resource for everyone.
It's only fair to pass the hat around. This isn't some company's or kid's project to fill their own pockets.
This isn't just "someone"'s website, it's "everyone's" resource. That's part of the whole wiki philosophy, isn't it?
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Giving money to wikipedia is, IMHO, more useful and a much better idea than giving 4000$ to the first guy that will port Mozilla on the Amiga platform.
But hey it's my own opinion mod me down if offtopic but no flame please.
Iraq: war to save the U
Wikipedia isn't just some other site begging for money, and they aren't asking for money for their content (though it's worth something, certainly, it's free to all - and Free too, I think) - their load is so huge, they really need thousands of dollars for their servers. I'd rather give them my 10 bucks than deal with the unpleasant alternatives, like ads plastered everywhere, or seeing wikipedia go away.
Why are there so many flames in this thread? Slashdotters are really showing a lot of hypocrisy here: we want everything to be open source and free, but when an open source project asks for a little help, we turn our backs on them. I'm sure we wouldn't see the same kind of comments if Linus Torvalds was asking for help.
Thanks for bringing up the $20k issue. I was wondering about the price as well, but then figured out that it's just a made up number. If he asks for $20k maybe he'll get $1k. But the idea bothers me.
servers are cheap these days. really. I've found p3-666 machines in the trash a few years back, and other people are finding nice rack mount servers with drives,etc. I can't afford much more than my rent, and yet I can come up with more server power when I need it, just by using a bunch of old P300s or whatever.
One word: reliability.
Sure, any geek can make a computer out of toothpicks and bubble gum and run Linux on it and call it a "server", but these guys are trying to _reduce_ the amount of downtime they're seeing on some high-load systems. So it looks to me like they're trying to buy reliable hardware: new systems, lots of redundancy, and none of this "buying off eBay" or "systems assembled from parts pulled from the trask" junk which some people are suggesting. Real server hardware costs real money, presumably at least a few thousand per system.
Given, I'm talking about a _small_ commercial service company, but $20K USD is not a huge amount of money for us to look at for hardware. Running big websites (and especially other app servers aswell) can require very high-quality hardware (read "expensive") and (potentially) licensing to do it reliably.
Seriously, these guys (I've never used the Wikipedia) could easily spend $20K on hardware and not have that great of a system...but they claim that it will fix their problems...if they provide a good FREE service (no-one seems to disagree with that,) then I trust their judgement. I think I'll go donate $10 just cause they're trying to do something good for the "Internet Community".
[BTW - I'm a partner in an Internet based business that actually makes a profit...$20K for hardware doesn't sound like much to ask. We've looked at single units - not complete systems mind you - that cost more than a quarter million USD.]
Kendell
I would like to donate, but I do not donate to causes that try to hide what they will do with the money. And it looks like that is what is being done here.
Yet you pay taxes!
At least with Wikipedia you can have a direct impact. So if you can't contribute money, then contribute some knowledge. Write an article, show the world what you know.
Times are tight, but $1.00 from each Slashdotter would do it.
Why don't you email the marketing and Unix/Linux departments of IBM, Sun, and HP?
.com, Sun Microsystems", etc.
/. effect fine if they have an expensive but solid switch. Maybe they might be nice and throw one in as well.
Tell them about Wikopedia ( which they may already know) and mention how many users and hits you get a month and that you need new hardware.
Its likely they will make a deal with you if you agree to advertise for them or put a "Powered by Power5 AIX" or "Powered by the . in
IBM wants to bring Linux to the power4 and power5 servers and is releasing a new blade powered by them that runs on Linux. X86 stuff is garbage. Things like guinine risc and backplaned motherboards like those in Sun and IBM do wonders where pc's fail. Running your site is what the hardware is tailored to be doing.
Still even if you can get a free 2-4 smp x86 Xeon system, take it! A switch sounds like it may need to be upgraded. They cost big bucks though but many limited servers handle the
Yahoo has the powered by HP logo for Yahoo.com and its quite normal.
IBM would be my first pick and would gladly gloat about how much load their Linux based blades can carry. Your site is a perfect example. Reason being is that many IT managers view Linux on anything non intel as garbage. IBM also has big pockets and your server room is pocket change to them.
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