[Toolserver-l] Some comments

Thu Mar 30 13:59:00 UTC 2006

Hello,

I'm both user of the toolserver and member of the board of Wikimedia 
Germany e.V. Wikimedia Germany is the provider of the server but we have 
no knowledge nor time to maintain it. So first of all a big thanks to 
all of you who keep the toolserver and the database running for various 
tools that support the Wikimedia projects - Gregory summarized very well 
the profit of it. I'm afraid Wikimedia Germany cannot easily bring 
replication, OAI-access and other stuff, I also doubt that communication 
via Toolserver users -> Wikimedia Germany -> Wikimedia Foundation -> 
Wikimedia technical admins is easier than endurance at wikitech-l and 
IRC. But the e.V. may declare "official partnerships" (this can make 
differences in the real world where people try to get funding) and we 
can buy hardware. I hope that self-organization still works although 
it's often frustrating. Maybe we can also manage the account policy in a 
self-organized way: it was planned to revise all accounts in April. I'd 
like to switch off inactive accounts to limit the users to people who 
are really working with the toolserver - what do you think about it?

Greetings,
Jakob