Non-profit Wiki Hosting

From Snowulf

Contents 1 Basic Concept 2 Important Issues 2.1 License 2.2 Technology 2.3 Policy 2.3.1 Founders 2.3.2 Community 2.3.3 Founder / Admins / Community Dispute 2.4 Money 2.5 Content 2.6 Audience 3 Case Study 4 Start Up Costs 4.1 Money 4.2 Other resources 5 Non-profit status 6 Similar

Basic Concept

A non-profit wiki hosting group.

Important Issues

License

• Free Content
  • CC-BY (And derivs)
  • GFDL
  • Public Domain
• Attempt to work with intellectual property holders to set up license regarding content usage of copyright material?
  • Is that worth while?
  • Would we have the contacts to reach out to a company to see if we can't make that work?

Technology

• Mediawiki (Duh)
• Amazon AWS?
  • Auto scaling up/down keeps cost to a minimum
  • S3/CloudFront for images?
    • No MediaWiki support
  • Allows multi-site/global distribution of servers
• No domain ownership of hosted projects
  • Point at our DNS servers
  • Allow X number of aliases
• Google Analytic?
  • Do we run accounts for all?
  • Do we allow local admins/crats to run?
  • Run GA on all domains, add "View Reports Only" users for allowed 'crats
• Include Quantcast
• How much customization?
  • Do we allow local wikis to chose extra extensions?
  • To what extent do we go to support extensions?
  • Can we "allow" a wiki to donate enough to cover development costs for custom extensions?
• IRC RC changes?
• Stewards
  • Do we want anti-vandalism stewards? Volunteers with global rights
  • Staff only stewards?
• Extensions
  • What extensions do we allow?
  • What do we do if they request custom extensions?
  • What about server heavy extensions (IE DPL)
• Upgrades
  • Prepare central testing wiki with _all_ extensions and upgraded software
  • Put out notice to all wiki admins/crats/founders (whom ever) to test
  • If extensions don't work after upgrade, decided on "fix" versus "toss"
• Long term plan of allowing other farmable wiki software installs that founders can chose from.
  • Are TikiWiki and oddmuse farmable and scalable?
  • PMWiki is farmable.

Policy

• No pornographic images.
  • Written adult content allowed where wiki header warnings must be in place.
• No illegal content.
  • No promotion of illegal activity.
    • Discussion and reporting of it is allowed. Fine line. How do we tell?
• No links to illegal content.
  • This sort of thing can be addressed mostly with a boilerplate Terms of Service.
• Any wiki's covering adult topics or linking to adult content must have proper warnings.
• Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
• Allow right-to-fork
• Allow sites to leave w/o issue
  • Provide them the DB Backup, a pat on the back, and shut down the site
    • How will the database be handled? Common login or wiki specific? How does that effect ease of letting people go?
• What content to allow? Disallow?
• No "free sign up", Apply for hosting only
  • What sort of questions would we ask?
    • What is the wiki's "scope"?
    • Is there competition?
    • What License?
    • Why host with us?
    • How will it serve a greater good?
• Morality issues.
  • Do we allow morally problematic topics for new wikis or on existing wikis?
    • Pro neo-nazis?
    • Pro anorexia?
  • How would issues like people claiming they were going to self harm be handled?

Founders

• Founders and Administrators have an investment in their wikis.
  • Founders and Administrators have a right to fork with our support.
  • Founders and Administrators have the right to leave and we will delete if they want.
  • Founders and Administrators control their own domains. We don't control that beyond aliasing.
• Founders and Administrators can and should represent user issues to admin staff.
  • Assumption can be made Founders and Administrators represent consensus/best interest of the community when approaching staff to deal with community issues.
• Founders and Administrators will be part of any process discussing the future of their wikis.
  • If some one approaches the wiki with offers regarding the community (buy out offers, desire for a corporation to become involved with the wiki), this will be taken to the founder and administrators.
  • No backroom deals regarding individual wikis.

Community

• Community has the right to fork outside the system admins.
  • This may have license implications.
• Community can chose representatives to replace absent founders and admins.

Founder / Admins / Community Dispute

• Any side can be in dispute with the others: Founder, Admins, Community
• Founders tend to have a vested interest in their wiki, in terms of the amount of work they've put in
• At some point the Community work is greater than the founders.
• Offer to act as the mediator between sites (Founders, Admins, Community)
• Do not ever play judge
• Don't run in to change the community/policies/procedures.

Money

• Out of the way advertising
• Donations
  • Incentives to donate?
    • Remove advertising?
    • Bonus features?
    • Donations directed toward areas they want for development?
• Big wiki's with larger donations will help keep the smaller ones on the air.
• Corporations wanting to setup "fan wikis" can do so, and "Donate" to our cause

Content

• What sort of seed wikis should early focus be on creating and acquiring?
  • Can we try to acquire YourWiki or smaller wiki hosts like YourWiki?
    • If we tried to acquire a site like YourWiki to help give us additional wikis at launch, what would those founders and sites get in exchange?
    • What are other wiki projects out there like YourWiki that we might approach?
• Should we try to cater to a multi-lingual audience?
  • How would we reach non-English speakers?
  • How would non-English speakers effect funding issues?

Audience

• Being a Wikia competitor for community projects looking for a wider audience as the target market?
• Focus on that group of wiki's that is what the WMF is not?
• Should we focus on offering other non-profits adfree hosting?
  • Is that market too saturated? PBWiki and SocialText?

Case Study

FanHistory.com wants to keep running, but they want to stay "free". Wikia wants to "own" them. Wikimedia Foundation doesn't "do" that sort of stuff. What is the site to do?

Start Up Costs

Money

• Employees: $0 (All volunteer to start with)
• Amazon Technology: $1,605.60 first year
  • EC2: $61.2/mo
  • ELB: Min $18/mo
  • S3/CloudFront: Guess $10/mo
  • Total: $89.20 + 50% = $133.80/mo
• Domain names: $100 for the first year
  • 3 to 6 domains registered for two to three years
• Trademark: ???
• Form Non-profit organization: ???
• Apply for 501(c): ???
• File for tax exemption: ???
• Publicity: ???
  • Would we even pay?
  • All word of mouth?

Other resources

• Do we have contacts to help us get free legal and accounting work done?
• Do people have contacts to see about trying to get us initial seed donations?
  • Status.Net? AboutUs? wikiHow? WMF? ED? Worth asking for monetary help and other assistance?

Non-profit status

• How soon to set up non-profit status?
• Where would the initial funds come to register as a non-profit?
• Who would/should be on the board?
• Where should the non-profit be registered?
• How to Become a Tax-Exempt 501(c)(3)
• How to Start a Nonprofit in California

Similar

• http://wikispot.org/ |Matrix| - Community seems dead? twitter not updated much
• http://www.socialtext.com/ |Matrix|
• http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia |Matrix| - Alive, Commercial. Wants to "own" the projects.