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The trick is that Wikimedia provides little valuable content, beyond the web hosting and software updates they do on Mediawiki. I'm not sure how much of the mo

The trick is that Wikimedia provides little valuable content, beyond the web hosting and software updates they do on Mediawiki. I'm not sure how much of the money will go towards full time "wikipedia editors", for example. So, if we believe the wikipedia marketing that most of the editors are "largely anonymous internet users who write without pay", what exactly are they spending the money on ? If it's hosting and such, I'd rather see them not manage their own infrastructure and try to move towards the cloud (no matter how corny it sounds). Putting Wikipedia on EC2 or AppEngine should be transparent for users and might allow them to focus on their core competency (which would be what, btw -- crowd sourcing management ?) Not trying to be snarky but I fail to see how this money is helping that much.

ErrantX 17y ago
I wonder how much it would cost to move to the cloud and provide the same sort of availability. I suspect a pretty hefty sum; I've no idea what they spend on hosting right now but I bet it wouldn't be a drastic cost cut.
Skriticos 17y ago
Are you friggin' kidding me. Wikipedia hosts so many sites and serves so many requests that they are their partially their own cloud. They would not gain much from switching to some other cloud, not to mention the probability that there is no other 'cloud' that could handle them ad hock. I'm sure Amazon would swallow big if Wikimedia came to them with such a request, then probably laugh out loud. Get real..
- fierarul 17y ago
  Yes, my reply wasn't as smart in retrospect. They seem to have about 350 machines [1] so maybe moving to the cloud isn't as easy as it seems. My remark was mostly triggered by the fact that here you had Google with a big cluster, a cloud offering and tons of bandwidth paying money to Wikimedia so they could buy their own hardware and bandwidth at a worse price probably. A direct deal would have looked better. 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
bretthoerner 17y ago
You grossly underestimate how much money goes into hosting Wikipedia. They're most certainly at the scale where physical boxes are cheaper than EC2 and others. http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Server_roles http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Server_roles

ErrantX 17y ago

I wonder how much it would cost to move to the cloud and provide the same sort of availability. I suspect a pretty hefty sum; I've no idea what they spend on hosting right now but I bet it wouldn't be a drastic cost cut.

Skriticos 17y ago

Are you friggin' kidding me. Wikipedia hosts so many sites and serves so many requests that they are their partially their own cloud. They would not gain much from switching to some other cloud, not to mention the probability that there is no other 'cloud' that could handle them ad hock. I'm sure Amazon would swallow big if Wikimedia came to them with such a request, then probably laugh out loud. Get real..

fierarul 17y ago
Yes, my reply wasn't as smart in retrospect. They seem to have about 350 machines [1] so maybe moving to the cloud isn't as easy as it seems. My remark was mostly triggered by the fact that here you had Google with a big cluster, a cloud offering and tons of bandwidth paying money to Wikimedia so they could buy their own hardware and bandwidth at a worse price probably. A direct deal would have looked better. 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers

bretthoerner 17y ago

You grossly underestimate how much money goes into hosting Wikipedia. They're most certainly at the scale where physical boxes are cheaper than EC2 and others. http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Server_roles http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Server_roles