MeatballSafetyNet

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

Would this - http://www.google.com/search?q=meatballisnotfree - qualify as a SafetyNet for meatball? I've restored several wikis by arduous copy-paste from archived DB files. It would be nifty to have something like mySQL's data-dump script, so the archiving takes the form of a script that only needs to be run to reconstruct the wiki and all its structure. -- JerryMuelver

Well, the InternetArchive? might serve better, as google cache times out after a while. Also, just because you can access the content doesn't mean you necessarilly have permission to host it under the MeatballWikiCopyright.

CategoryMeatball

There are three administrators to the server. Cliff, Scott, and I. I am a co-admin on the usemod.com domain name. I make irregular backups of the site. I really want to remand control to a NonProfit corporation at some point in the near future, but I am still learning about how these things work. The real problem is money. While some might argue that the RightToFork would alleviate monetary problems as the content can keep moving, they would be wrong. The issue is that the community comes here. So, we need to pay for the domain (covered until 2008) and the server (month-to-month). So far, Cliff is paying for the domain/host usemod.com and I am paying for the domain/host for sunir.org (as I should), and I am paying for the domain meatballsociety.org and Cliff is paying to host it. For Meatball to break even, it would have to raise something close to $600 USD/year at the moment based on my paper napkin calculations. If we created a NonProfit corporation, our legal ability to raise capital would improve but our expenditures would also increase. We can also look for reductions in expenditures, but I think we are pretty tight, short of using a WebHost?ing CoOperative?, but that doesn't seem appropriate given our usage requirements. -- SunirShah

Well, you could make it that a MD5 checksum and weekly archive is availible for meatball. That would solve backup problems. [Eggplant Farms] has a pretty good pricing scheme with $2/month for 1GB space, 2GB up and 2GB down bandwidth, perl, python, MySQL?, domains, etc. If you want more bandwith, you pay $1 more per month for each GB. Same with space. Domains are $8 a year. So unless meatball eats bandwidth like a mofo and takes huge amounts of space/CPU, it would cut down costs. So with that $50/month price you put, you would have about 1GB of space, a domain and 42GB of bandwidth (up and down are separate I think). Or you could go with 1T3.com and their 'unmetered bandwidth', but we all know how unlimited that is. I did some off hand calculations: 1GB of bandwidth / 50kb per page average = 21 million pages. Hope it helps --MahyarMcDonald?

: I think to do wiki magic, you need full access to the server. Cheap webspace doesn't offer that, nor the maximum CPU performance that's desirable. It matters whether pages are served <1 or in 5-10 seconds. I know some wikis that are almost unusable because of bad performance or because the server is often down. I think costs can be more easily reduced if you share the server for more wikis.

: Two month ago I founded a NPC here in Austria for a wiki community and I also observed the problems around the same activities in Germany (WikiPedia). The situation (costs, legal implications) seem to differ very much from country to country (for example in Germany you need 7 persons in a place, in Austria only two, questions of foreign members, founding costs, bank account costs, need for a lawyer, ...). I would be interested to understand the legal situation for NPCs in Canada (USA, anywhere) because any growing wiki will reach this point sooner or later. It may make a large difference, where you set up your NPC, maybe even a trustee system could make sense. -- HelmutLeitner

If MeatballWiki died today, we could resurrect it from the Google cache and have it running elsewhere without too much effort. The legal right to resurrect it is hazy, though, unless we could argue we are doing so as "MeatBall" the organization and not as individuals.

Well, the legal right is complicated because I (or my estate) won't likely sue you for doing so, but you would have problems suing people in the future on Meatball's behalf. But to address the technical questions of longevity past my ability or patience to lead, I really want to create Meatball as a NonProfit corporation. That is one of my long-term goals. In the interim, note that usemod.com is paid for until something like 2005. And don't forget Cliff... -- SunirShah

That's an interesting issue, because in solving these issues (for example a right to resurrect) or in building a real NonProfit corporation for MeatBall, we would put MeatBall - from the social scientists point of view - in a totally different league. It would prove that MeatBall contains so much value that the members are willing to build an organization to keep it alife under all circumstances. The social scientists would also predict that such a development is inevitable if the community grows and gains in importance. -- HelmutLeitner

cf. NonProfitWiki

CategoryWikiTechnology

MeatballSafetyNet

Discussion