Slashdot Mirror
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 ..."
... because posting a hyperlink to it on slashdot's front page will do wonders for that server.
... um, no.
The attention for the money here is surely good but well, a slashdoting to a server having issues
I'm too cheap to donate, and I'm only 16 anyway...
But Wikipedia is a really good resource-- I've contributed to it myself.
SomethingAwful recently raised a lot of money in a short amount of time for some army people going to Iraq. Even Sharereactor.com, a great, um, edonkey search engine thingamjig, was able to raise more than $5,000 for a faster connection.
It's really interesting how much people donate online. If I had the money and the means, I'd donate to Wikipedia myself.
I think Wikipedia may be able to reach their goal. It appears to be popular enough to be able to raise the money....
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
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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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This isn't a business site. It's an open source encyclopedia. Check what it is before assuming they're in it just for the money.
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.
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.
Wikipidia is a great website, though! If I had $20,000 (or any money, for that matter) I would definitely donate to this organization.
Wikipedia contains a wealth of information on a myriad of subjects, nearly anything you can think of, and all the documents are covered under a GPL-like license. The information found there is very useful and in-depth. I can't count the times I've been aimlessly browsing the web for a certain piece of information, only to find it right away on Wikipedia (that is, assuming the site wasn't down, which seems to be quite frequent of late).
C'mon guys, let's help support this site, and the spirit of open source documents.
Let's face it, you really don't need that candybar anyway ...
Speak for yourself, asshole!
Mbabadu from Ethiopia
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Wikipedia isn't some slacker blog or camwhore site looking for a handout. They're a not for profit, charitable organization that provides a valuable resource to the internet community and they need funds to keep this resource available.
My server is crashing too, and I only want $10,000. Doesnt this sound like a better deal?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Giving money to wikipedia is, IMHO, more useful and a much better idea than giving 4000$ 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
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.
Then you can edit out that "unqualified opionion" and make it more professional.
Oh, and with wikipedia, a wide array of subjects can be covered, more so (and more up to date!) than your normal encyclopedia. It all depends on the users using it.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
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.
qntm.org
OK, the servers are crashing because they can't distribute the load properly. Story asking for donations gets posted on Slashdot. Servers suffer a coronary.
I can't help but wonder if that 20k figure goes up after slashizens romp on Wiki.
The problem with something like this becomes an issues of whether or not one believes the guy for one, secondly many will think "Oh well such and such amount of people use it, and I know they'll send something so I won't" which translates to little money being sent. (that's for starters)
Now 20,000.00 is a lot of money for a 'server'.
e4500 w/8 400mhz cpu's 1gb ram under $1500.00 (15 hundred)
e3500 w/8 336mhz 4 gigs ram 72gb space... $2200.00
IBM AS/400 9406 820 with 2395 Processor, 1521 Interactive Card isn't even $20k
Sun CobaltRAQ 4i (10 UNITS) RAQ 4i 256MB 40GB NEW HD 7200ROM total? $5,500.00
What is it this guy is supposedly running for $20k certainly piques my curiousity, and I'm not trolling. Hell I'll send him $5.00 and I don't even use his product
MoFscker
Maybe instead of giving cash, donate some of your old SUNs, SGIs etc, and help building it on a distributed architecture with really deep redundancy, where each component by itself isn't very reliable, but all together form a really strong cluster?
Asking for money is always the easiest way, and because of the number of people asking (Just look at all those PayPal Donate banners!) the chance of success is nearly null. What about taking a different path?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It's always hard to just request donations for a dollar sum as an open source project. I think they'd have much better luck requesting hosting/hardware donations. It's much easier for a corporation to donate hardware (they get to write off their cost retail even though the actual cost to them is far below that) than money.
When its just hosting needs, being able to massively farm out helps to. A lot of university groups look to help host a few different things. One group may not be able to satisfy all the needs but ten groups might.
Just my two cents...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Donations should be sent to
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
3911 Harrisburg St. NE
St. Petersburg, FL 33703
Can't see any way to post the paypal links here.
Heck, wikipedia helped me pass my CSET exam for English. That certification entitled me to a US40K$ job which I'm enjoying today. It's free and it's a decent resource for the cash strapped info hungry. The best part is that if you see an error in your domain of knowledge you can fix it. :)
The nature of the site is irrelevant. If you can't support a free Encyclopedia, then don't do one. I appreciate the devotion, hard work and all, but we are in a country that requires money to survive. Crying for help is maybe going to give them enough money for the next server but what about the following one?
If you don't make money with what you are doing, either:
1. Be poor.
2. Give it up and find a job.
If you don't want option 1, then give it up. It might be nice and beautiful, but it is unsustainable.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Well said! Besides, who the hell wants a website that tells you how to make those turntable scratchy noises with your mouth anyways?
Hell, we hear enough of that shit from Will Smith and Justin Timberlake anyways...
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Maybe information does not want to be free.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
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.
Help Fight SPAM today!
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.
Wikipedia.org is one of the sites I visit regularly to get info about all sorts of things, it's up there in my personal bar. /. posts a story about something not so familiar, you'll find +5 informative posts linking to Wikipedia.org.
Not only me, most of the time, when
I feel really sad to read the news, and even more, when I read the responses above.
Wikipedia.org has contributed a lot to the community for free, I guess it's not that bad to donate a few bucks, and save the site.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
My problem with "we need $xxx" pleas is that they inevitably lead to "we need $xxx+yyy" pleas after another 6 months when the next thing breaks. Donations are always a stopgap measure and aren't a substitute for a real company model -- be that business or otherwise. If advertising or merchandising is out (for ethical or whatever reasons), then they should be turning to foundations that can help with non-profit fundraising. Wikipedia is a real educational site with real user benefits and shouldn't have trouble coming up with sponsors.
That said, I'm an occasional visitor and I'm gonna go throw a few bucks their way... (but just this once)
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
When you look up the Vietnam War in my mom and dad's encyclopedia, it says that is is small conflict in that the US is winning.
Does anyone have the details of what their system is architected like, what thet expected load is, and what hardware they want to buy? We don't even know if their problem is networking equipment, cpu power, disk speed, bandwidth, we have no idea about anything! This information is available nowhere and the link to get more information - the mailing list - tells you it's down.
Anyway, at the end of the day, if a community of people needs a service, and they themselves support that service, isn't that, by long-standing definition, a collective? Wouldn't it be more profitable for Wiki to call a spade a spade, call itself a collective, and get on with raising money from its community and providing them with the service?
Nobody is asking you to donate an entire $20k. Don't be ridiculous.
"If not enough people care"? Let's see if wikipedia meets its $20k goal, then we'll see how many care.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
/me donates remaining few dollars in his PayPal account....I'm 17. Even I know how useful wikipedia is.
I don't care if this is modded redundant. Hopefully it'll encourage people.
--<Mike>--
This mightn't just apply to donations--it might mean that a web-hosting company gets a tax-break by donating otherwise unused bandwidth/server space to Wiki.
-- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." -- HL Mencken
Wikipedia is in constant peer review, if someone spots a mistake, they can fix it. If an edition of an encyclopedia has a mistake or something that turns out not to be true, the best YOU can do it white it out and fix the mistake yourself.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
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).
The Wiki things are cool in a way, but too filled with unqualified opinion.
And Britannica isn't? Yes, everyone says "You can't trust the Web because everyone has an agenda to push", but that's true for *all media*. In fact, the more a source claims to be "balanced" the more likely it is biased. Rather than trying to find an unbiased source, learn to read between the lines and figure out what the biases are.
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.
Where on earth did you get this troll? I see someone saying: "hey, we've had some problems because we're so big. I'm throwing a new machine in there and if you like it donate so we can add some more." If there are no donations than the site just goes on as it has, IE being down every once in a while.
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!
I for one think donating to a church so they can build another wing to the church is a complete waste of money. Makes the Mozilla => Amiga look like an inspired deal in comparison, but you do not find me bringing that up. ;-)
Help fight continental drift.
I can't agree enough with the poster above.
There is an enormous amount of negativity that I have seen thrtown around in this thread.
But to my mind, Wikipedia is one of the gemlike projects out there that has an enormous amount of unadulterated MERIT.
Many of the posts decrying the cry for funds fall into two camps:
1) What the hell, $20k for your website infrastructure? Plan better, you assholes!
or
2) Wikipedia is useless/not worth it.
Many of the posts SOUND like 1), but are driven by a strong desire to demonstrate 2) -- for instance, the large number of posts that are claiming that "Wikipedia has become too political".
I don't think that people realize what the real issue here is. The issue is nothing less than total freedom of information.
Articles on wiki are moderated by public opinion -- and while this has a moderate negative influence in HIGHLY CHARGED, HIGHLY CURRENT topics -- political ones, particularly -- the bottom line is that wikipedia provides an incredible way for the truth to be heard and recorded. Everyone can contribute to this record of defined "truth", and if a revelation is made, it can be judged on its merits by millions of people.
Essentially, in this age of enormous uncertainty, slanted polls, (corrupt?) (liberal? conservative?) "corporate media", in this age where the visible "barometers" of world opinion (polls/interviews/random tests/scientific research) -- the informational underpinnings of representative democracy! -- may be subject to large-scale manipulation, and freedom of information is being decided for years to come, Wikipedia provides, if not "absolute truth", a body of information that has been thoroughly bathed in the democratic process. It may not be as white and pure as if it were written by the existing information aristocracy/meritocracy, but it is most assuredly free to all, and as unbiased as that process can make it.
Support of Wikipedia is, in a sense, support of the principles of democracy/communism itself -- support of the idea that fairness is most reliably and safely accomplished by even "unqualified" consensus. It's everyone's information. This just makes the process transparent, and rips the lid off of "true" and "false", right and wrong, belief and disbelief, and transfers the power to the people.
Go Wikipedia! If there ever was a project with real, LONG-TERM value . . .
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.
Why don't the Wikipedia people allow their site to be mirrored? A lot of people have some extra bandwidth and disk space to share. It could be hosted in multiple places similar to the way the Jargon File is distributed?
This would be a great problem for a wiki grid or something.
How is voluntarily donating to a nonprofit project in any way similar to communism? It's not like they are GNU/Microsoft trying to take over the world. If people find the site useful, they will donate. If they don't care about it, they won't. Simple choice. No one is trying to deceive anyone into giving away money or power. Sounds a lot less like capitalism than revenue by advertisement.
Also, Ads are an inefficient way to pay for something...unless you think your time is worth less than $0.10(US)/hour. Mine isn't. Many ad based sites will use any form of deceptive practice to force users to look at as many ads as possible. Forcing people to read propagands... Sounds like communism to me.
Yes, we're about even in traffic with slashdot these days.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
The problem is that the peers reviewing it are often not experts in the field either.
And worse yet, because the articles are written by individuals in accordance with their preferences, some subjects are short of some basic information that a more well rounded article would include.
Note that the same rough edges often exist in free software projects.
... did /. become a forum for moral debates about charity vs. capitalism?
Whether you want to donate or not is your choice. Maybe you want to support open-source. Maybe you prefer that businesses sink or swim on their own. That's your deal. I just don't see why people feel the need to berate one another for their choices. If I want to donate, don't tell me I'm an idiot for throwing away money on a failed business model. If I don't, then don't tell me I'm betraying the ideals of open-source.
Either donate, or don't -- it's not your business what anyone else does.
"When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can't read." -- Hannibal Lecter
You might consider Wikipedia's (meta) page titled Making fun of Britannica before holding it up too much as an absolutely authoritative reference.
Wikipedia is, according to alexa, within the top 1000 trafficked domains in the web.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Note that the same rough edges often exist in free software projects.
. . . and in commerical software projects, newsmedia reports, magazine articles, encyclopedias, books, and even peer-reviewed trade journals.
What was your point again?
everything in moderation
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.
Right. That's because experts are neither arrogant nor self-important, and they're always fully-educated and correct. Just like you.
There is a flaw in your reasoning in that due to the GPL and its 'wiki' nature, the website is just as much yours as anyone else's. I'm not saying you must donate or that you should choose to make it your website. Just that you have the opportunity to make it 'your' website, so 'it's not mine' is a weak reason to not donate.
Personally, I think asking for money is the wrong way to address the problem. The real problem isn't lack of money, it's lack or reliability. Instead of a temporary monetary bandaid, exploit the strength of the Internet and 'open source' to solve the problem. Migrate the wiki databases to a truly distributed system in which it is mirrored and updated around the world in real time. I'm not saying it will be easy. Just that it is a better long term solution than buying another server.
As much as I admire Wikipedia, I must say that on the whole I prefer Everything2. It allows for a personal edge that Wikipedia just doesn't have.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Now you may say what would this have to do with your post, much. For the typical user who's using DSL it may not be a problem, but on information based material, I would be skeptical to have a slew of file sharing going on due to authenticity issues. What if some retard decides to redo documents? What would be viable would be again, to check with some educational institute to see about using their resources, or starting writing to some of these foundations, e.g. Gates Foundation, to see if one of these ultra rich businessmen/women would be willing to donate to an extremely good cause.
MoFscker
a bunch of arrogant, half-educated, self-important g**ks blowing off on topics they hardly know.
So you have explained Slashdot, but what about Wikipedia?
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
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
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 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.
Ok, I've never used wikipedia myself, it's a shame it's down right now because I wanted to give it a try.
I have seen other wiki sites and noticed that ANYONE could come in and make changes to existing articles.
How does wikipedia protect the integrity of GOOD articles? What's to stop some bozo from going in and wrecking a 10 page biography of an important historical figure with goatse links or other nonsense?
$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?
and Wikipedia for the most part has the most updated info available. Lots of places are outdated, dead, et cetera.
Have you considered the possibility that, if you're still in secondary school, you might not exactly be qualified to write encyclopedia articles? And as I understand your previous comments on the matter, you believe the answer to that question is "no." Which is perfectly fine, of course, but based on that, Wikipedia is probably not a resource you would consider to include "qualified encyclopedia articles."
..which is a statement, and an opinion about LordK3nn3th (that may or may not be justified). And I don't think you can get any more personal than that. I disagree, find Wikipedia a good resource and don't mind (actually I endorse) contributions by 16-year old folk.
Wikipedia is not a genuine encyclopedia, and that it's dishonest to claim otherwise.
I disagree, and make the bold claim not to be dishonest. Though I might be wrong. Anyway, many consider Britannica Encyclopaedia to be a relevant, updated and informative resource, and it has got long traditions. From the free section of britannica.com on the word "encyclopaedia":
also spelled encyclopedia (from Greek enkyklios paideia, general education) reference work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or that treats a particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner.
Dictionary.com has the following definition:
A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically.
And just to make sure, I looked it up in a printed edition of the American Heritage College Dictionary:
A reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a field, usu. arranged alpabetically.
I think most people would agree that Wikipedia is a reference work and that it contains information information on all (or at least many) branches of knowledge, thus making covering a wide range of subjects. In a comprehensive manner, I might add. The way I see it, Wikipedia fits nicely into these definitions. Hence, Wikipedia is to me a "genuine encyclopedia." Enough nit-picking (-: Sorry about that.
The way I see it, the parent didn't attack anyone, but he might have stepped on some toes. Obviously LordK3nn3th took it personally when Estanislao Martinez implied, and in this posts' parent confirmes, that a high school boy isn't qualified to write an encyclopedia article.
You're not qualified to write an encyclopedia article-- and neither am I.
"...I'm not an encyclopedia editor. I don't have to answer that question..."
;-)
You could be. Just contribute something on which you are knowledgeable to Wikipedia.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Always, always, always run some kind of burn-in suite on new hardware before putting it into production. Even if your manufacturer does stress testing, your server was likely handed over to a shipping company that mistreated it (guaranteed). (VA-)CTCS is a good burn-in suite. If a machine survives one week of CTCS, in our environment it means that it will be worry free for at least 18 months (so far)--not counting inevitabilities like a hard disk mechanical failures (sigh).
We installed seven new servers at a colo in order to migrate a growing web site off of a shared server. CTCS discovered bad RAM in what was to be our database server, a faulty storage controller(!) in our file server, and a bad disk in one of the web servers.
None of these issues were apparant from the get-go. Most of the servers revealed problems within the first 36 hours of CTCS burn-in, with one holding out for 47 hours. If we hadn't run CTCS these issues would no doubt be hounding us for months.
So, two rules of thumb:
If possible, have your server built by a local vendor. The ability to walk into an office and scream at someone is a powerful resource, and you can completely bypass abrasive shipping companies by delivering the server to a colo yourself.
In any event, get your vendor to run CTCS before shipping and run CTCS again once it's on the rack. 72 hours minimum on both ends.
Don't learn these lessons the hard way. The extra time you spend up front can literally save you months of headaches in late night colo phone calls and other consequences of unplanned downtime.
My apologies... I was trying to help.
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.
Agreed. Though now I see that there's a complication sneaking in: we're in risk of mixing up peer review of journal and encyclopedia articles. But let's go on.
With Wikipedia, the number of peer reviewers is unlimited.
In principle, yes. In practice? And how exactly does it follow that a large number of reviewers makes for better articles?
In specialist or highly technical fields, the number of participants is still limited, so peer review cannot compete with specialist journals in the academic world. On the other hand, most encyclopedias don't really contain such specialist information in the first place.
Yes. Journals aren't really all that good a comparison. I propose we consider the peer review process that would apply to encyclopedia articles: the editor sends off articles for comments to experts in the topics in question, making it clear that this article is intended for a general audience, and they should judge it accordingly.
The efforts individual contributors make to Wikipedia is, of course, also highly variable as in the case of peer-reviewed journal papers.
Yes. But you leave out the facts that (a) pretty much everybody in the process is anonymous (yes, journals use anonymous reviewers, but there's an editor who isn't anonymous), (b) a contributor could be anybody. I.e. you have no information on the reviewers/contributors. To put it in terms of security, there's a trust issue. Also, there are issues having to do with the fact that the persons who contribute to Wikipedia articles are a very self-selected group.
Unlike peer-reviewed journals, however, there is no deadline for the final manuscript after which no error can corrected.
This is not strictly true. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't have such deadlines. You're confusing review by competent experts with electronic publishing.
Hell, I remember when I was a child, we had the World Book encyclopedia, which was edited on a yearly basis. They also put out Yearbooks where they included the updated articles from that year's edition-- they came with stickers for you to put on the start of the old article, saying that you had a newer version. Even in the world of paper, your argument doesn't follow.
Finally, whereas many journals will have a two-stage review process (a preliminary review, notice of acceptance/rejection, subsequent requests for elaboration/changes) over a matter of a few months -- limiting the interaction between the peers to a few discrete instances -- peer review on Wikipedia allows constant revision of the article and, using the talk pages, unlimited discussion as well.
I don't see how this improves the quality of the content, and I certainly don't think it addresses the trust issue.
Sure, there also are trust issues involved with journals and traditional encyclopedias. And abuses, even. But they're not as extensive as with Wikipedia.
To be honest, I have no fondness for a lot of Wikipedia articles. I think anime is ridiculously overweighted in the 'Japanese culture' articlese and it depresses me to think of the amount of time spent on articles such as the homestar runner article...
A function of self-selection in the editorial process.
Are you adequate?
It's not a lot of money, about what you'll pay walking in to Starbucks for a coffee and an overpriced pastry.
The idea of putting high quality detailed information about everything up for free and open to contributions is a wonderful gift to humanity.
My opinion of Slashdot's user community, on the other hand, has gone down considerably after reading the sour bitch-fest that some people have been posting.
The world moves forward when bold and inspired and tenacious people sit down and create something new. We should be applauding and supporting them. If you have nothing useful to contribute to your fellow human beings, you can at least shut up while other people get on with it.
So let me get this straight...of all the people who read /., and of all the people who *commented* on the article...
Goal: $20,000.00
Money raised: $4,212.96
Remaining: $15,787.04
So out of all the people bitching about it...we've raised 12.96?!...
What do you mean by "they"? I've edited and contributed dozens of articles to Wikipedia, corrected countless typos, and introduced new information. "I", by virtue of donating my time and energy, am part of Wikipedia, but I won't see a dime of that $20,000, and I've never gotten so much as a "thank you" for my efforts. There are a lot of us in this position.
"They" most likely refers to the Wikimedia Foundation, the official organization that pays the bills to keep the lights on so that you can volunteer your time and effort to contribute to the project. That's right, you are (or were from the sounds of it) a VOLUNTEER, and except as used in the context of the military, that usually means you don't get paid. It works the same in the online world as it does IRL. When I volunteer to pick up litter or plant trees or whatever, I don't do it expecting money. I'm sure that if they were going to pay everybody who contributed to the Wikipedia, they would have to ask for a hell of a lot more than $20,000.
As far as not getting a "thank you", on the one hand that's not a totally unreasonable gripe. Having spent a lot of time organizing work projects of various sorts for non-profits, I know that failure to praise and when possible recognize and reward those who contribute is a good way to squander morale and lose your volunteers. However, the fact that you expect it as if you have some sort of inalienable right to it is pretty fucking petty. I suggest you reassess why you would contribute time/money to a project in the first place, stop acting like a spoiled brat, and grow up.
You know what: If they are asking for that kind of money (which I don't believe they are going to spend only for the purposes they claim), I am not going to contribute money, and I am no longer going to spend contributing to Wikipedia.
I can't speak for everybody, but I wouldn't have an issue if they spent some of the money on other purposes, so long as they account for it and it is related to the project. I'm sure equipment isn't the only expense they have. In fact, I would suggest they set aside some money to work with a grant writer so that they can apply for foundation money that could better support the ongoing needs of the project.
fuck you.
In principle, yes. In practice? And how exactly does it follow that a large number of reviewers makes for better articles? Fair enough. How doesn't it? If an encyclopaedia is supposed to represent knowledge of mankind, shouldn't as much of mankind contribute and peer review as possible? In turn you may argue that such democratic attributes can work against the Wikipedia, but I'll toss back at you that people who don't like bubblegum don't chew bubblegum - people who aren't interested in a topic won't contribute or even peer review it. But people who are will. And people who are *interested* are usually better than 9-5 folks who got their diplomas so that they would never be at a loss for toilet paper. Not all credentialed people are like this, but guess what? The ones interested would... contribute. :o
Yes. Journals aren't really all that good a comparison. I propose we consider the peer review process that would apply to encyclopedia articles: the editor sends off articles for comments to experts in the topics in question, making it clear that this article is intended for a general audience, and they should judge it accordingly.
Actually, journals are a good comparison. Traditional print media has *less time* to peer review because of the physical process.
Yes. But you leave out the facts that (a) pretty much everybody in the process is anonymous (yes, journals use anonymous reviewers, but there's an editor who isn't anonymous), (b) a contributor could be anybody. I.e. you have no information on the reviewers/contributors. To put it in terms of security, there's a trust issue. Also, there are issues having to do with the fact that the persons who contribute to Wikipedia articles are a very self-selected group
Anonymity scares some - perhaps yourself - but if the information is subject to the people interested, the content is more important than who said what, who wrote what, and who did what. By your same logic, you shouldn't use a computer unless you know the credentials of everyone who designed and built it - from the microprocessor to the keyboard. If that is what you wish, then so be it. That's why DoD contractors cost the government so much, and still turn out products that fail because they give the government EXACTLY what they asked for instead of what they needed.
This is not strictly true. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't have such deadlines. You're confusing review by competent experts with electronic publishing.
Hell, I remember when I was a child, we had the World Book encyclopedia, which was edited on a yearly basis. They also put out Yearbooks where they included the updated articles from that year's edition-- they came with stickers for you to put on the start of the old article, saying that you had a newer version. Even in the world of paper, your argument doesn't follow.
Well... Philosophy certainly doesn't change very fast.
And as far as the stickers - you fail to realize that the process itself of preparing the new stickers - from writing to editing, from editing to print, from print to getting it to your doorstep - took about... oh... a year. Really. But back then, things happened slower because computers were less used. Times have changed, the world has changed... everything is happening faster... and so the representation of the data must be faster. Enter Wikipedia.
I don't see how this improves the quality of the content, and I certainly don't think it addresses the trust issue. Sure, there also are trust issues involved with journals and traditional encyclopedias. And abuses, even. But they're not as extensive as with Wikipedia.
I think we've established that your opinion on this is conjecture, and perhaps dated. You don't have to like it, you don't have to contribute, and you don't have to use it...
But your kids might.
We finally ended up with a medium priced Britannica set - including the index on CD and the Britannica Junior. Note that at the time I was working in the budding Internet at the time - gopher and WAIS being just getting going and the Web only just starting to find its way out of Cern.
The books ended up in a separate room in our new house that we lovingly called the Library - and I actually got our two boys to use them once in a while for the first couple of years.
Of course we had full time connection to the budding 'Net during this time and I also helped them learn about it too.
We ended up donating the books to the High School - no tax write-off or anything - and giving the Juniors to my brother/sister-in-law for their younger kids to try. Our boys have found anything they've needed in the intervening years on the 'Net - but have had to have help to colate and interpret it. Nothing like what is in this project.
I wish I had the money now to give to Wikipedia. I've given some, and will try to give more in the not too distant future - and will continue to add articles as I see a need (and can fulfill it).
Even now that the major encylopedias are available via subscription on the 'Net, they lack the depth and immediacy that I've seen in WikiPedia. In some areas they are still ahead - but I expect that to change in day or weeks, certainly within months.
In the mean time - this is one of the best projects I've seen in my 15+ years connected with the 'Net - give if you can, please!
Keep up the great work - all of us/you :)
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Or perhaps Wikipedia is a bunch of people contributing information about topics that they're experts in, rather than a bunch of general researchers who simply compile information without the critical eye of expertise. I contributed to a few sections on aerodynamics, which I guarantee I can tell you more about than any lay researcher.
irb(main):001:0>
I've received great enjoyment from just browsing the Wikipedia articles. I've never just "donated" to a website before (though I've bought paid services at a couple, for example LiveJournal), but Wikipedia is an excellent project, and I felt it deserved a couple bucks. I'm poor as shit at the moment, so I couldn't spare much, but, as the submission says, I don't really need that candy bar. :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
and raise you one... I donated too.
C'mon ya geeks... everyone knows and has probably read Wikipedia; stick a crowbar in your wallet and cough up a few bucks. Yes, I know it's the holidays and everyone's tapped out, but really... who doesn't have a paypal account with a couple of extra bucks sitting in it? (if you're genuinely broke, relax... I'm not talking to you)
I see people in my medical practice all the time who tell me how they can't afford their antibiotics (even the cheap generic) or other medicine, yet they smoke two packs a day, have a cell phone AND pager, and manage to find beer-drinking money every week. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it often comes down to priorities.
If you've got the cash, why not part with a few bones? I'm sure Wiki would appreciate it if the community would ante up.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I gave $20. Go there and give them some money. Wikipedia is by far the interesting site on the web for me. When I get in it's hard to get out. No nonsense, no political agenda (except perhaps in articles on Microsoft and Bill Gates), thoroughly crosslinked. I spend hours reading it, very educational. For example, look at their article on F-word. Where else can you find something this comprehensive?
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?
If you don't want to donate, please don't feel any pressure to do so.
If you would like to help, please feel free to roll up your sleeves and get involved like any other volunteer and make some solid, experience-based recommendations.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Wikipedia.org is the foremost FREE encyclopedia on the web. You haven't heard of it (probably) but it is a very valuable resource. If you don't want to support it, that's ok. But don't go around bashing it without understanding it.
Most of your "solutions" are totally irrelevant here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. So offering pay services isn't going to work (I mean, what will you offer other than knowledge?) Besides, if you privatize it (that's what you are talking about), it likely will lose since it is nowhere near as good as MS Encarta. They are different things.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
A free institution comes from socialism and religion. Obviously you have no understanding of it. When someone says an institution (like a library, or school) is free, they mean that EVERYONE has access to it. Anyone can walk into a public library and sign out a book (just have to show ID). Strictly speaking, a library isn't free. People's taxes are used to pay for it. But that's not what we mean by free. When someone says free, it means it is subsidized. You don't have to pay anything if you don't want to.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I think its kind of silly to put them on the spot. Do you ask United way how where all the cash goes. No, they give you a list of services they provide and leave it up to them to decide how to provide those service.
If a church takes a collection to build a new roof, do they have to itemize the beams and nails for the congregation.
As a a registered non-profit, I can assure you the IRS will keep better tabs on their donations then you can.
I am in no way affilliated with Wikipedia, but if you don't trust them, don't donate.
The databases altogether come to about 35 gigabytes (including indexes and the complete revision history of several hundred thousand wiki pages), though with some judicious compression of page text that could be brought down.
It's also cool, of course. ;)
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Once bitten.
Compare with Kuro5hin. Last year, the site owner asked for $70K so that he wouldn't have to take a full time job or drown the site in third party adverts (it has always had paid user-adverts). He promised great things for the site and the code that runs it, and shared a grand vision of seeding a Collaborative Media Foundation with the money. He got the money.
What happened was that he then spent a year kayaking, writing diaries about kayaking, breaking features (search has been broken for months now), adding third party adverts, selling premium subscriptions, and some minor fiddling with the ratings system that has basically made it pointless to rate anything (i.e. contribute) any more. The Collaborative Media Foundation turned out to be a tax dodge, and recently he let slip that he's been doing consulting work full time, and actually cranking up his fees to turn away business.
And it turned out that the site costs nothing to run. The bandwidth is donated in return for advertising, the hardware is donated. The only costs are the admin's time, and the user advertising revenues (when he was still publishing them) actually covered the notional (but completely falacious) $30K salary that he was claiming.
The problem with paying someone a lump sum is that you then have no leverage over them. Sure, the Wikipedia guy might not just go kayaking with the money, but the K5 admin seemed like one of the good guys as well.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Jimmy Wales (the founder) donates the bandwidth, the hosting space, and the time of one of his employees for hardware installation, but the new servers are additional cost that's coming from the third-party donations to the foundation.
If he were to just go kayaking with the money and leave us serverless, well you'd hear about it. ;) Wikipedia is under the GNU Free Documentation License, and were there a real reason for it the community could fork the project, taking the content with them and outdoing the original site.
See MeatBall:RightToFork.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
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.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't know why they need anything. They do not have much in their database. I went to their site and this is what I saw:
We started on December 12, 2002 and already have -1 entries in the English version.
I figure that I could maintain this database in my head.
LEPP
If I'm to understand correctly from the pages I'm getting from Wikipedia right now, the two dual-processor 2+ GHz servers are down and I'm seeing cached, static pages being served off a comparatively lowly P3/866 server.
And it's handling the load just fine.
So am I to understand that the two other servers -- which based on the hardware specs sound like they should still be covered by support contracts of *some* kind -- are there for "redundancy" and for a database that should only get hit when an article is published or a generated e-mail is being assembled? How many millions of emails are being generated per day? I remember 6 or 7 years ago building an app that sent 25,000 database-driven multipart mail messages an hour, on four Pentium 133-class machines. One of which was the database server, and the others were running a creaky 1.1 version of Java.
Please don't tell me Wikipedia normally generates every single page dynamically or that wiki code is getting executed with every page view. That would be mighty stupid.
You understood wrong then, and you can't have paid much attention since it's always made clear that open source doesn't have to be free as in beer. The reason that it often is is that one of the consequences of software being open source is that you're allowed to freely distribute it, so it doesn't make sense to charge for it if your clients can then legally give it to all their friends for free.
None of this has any bearing on Wikipedia however, since that's a web site and the concept of "open source" doesn't even apply. A web site isn't a program which has source code and which you can copy or distribute. Even if this "fundamental problem with open source" of yours really existed, it would have nothing to do with Wikipedia.
Wouldn't it be more profitable for Wiki to (...) call itself a collective...
What on earth does it matter what they call themselves? In what way would it solve their problem if they said: "hey guys, we're a collective now, now could you please give us some money?"
They are providing a very valuable service to us all for free and personally I think we (that is to say, we who use it) owe them some help in hard times at the least...
While you have every right to have whatever opinion about me you want, you've made this "tax dodge" accusation numerous times. You do realize that you're accusing me of a crime, don't you? And that you don't have any evidence of your accusation, nor does it even make sense. An organization that has not yet been incorporated can't function as a "tax dodge."
All of your facts are wrong, but that's just stupidity. I think that when you accuse me of criminal activity, though, you cross a line. I'd really like you to stop unless you can demonstrate even a hint of evidence.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.