I think that this would be fine. We have used the free xwiki to support a charitable research and information organisation in the coordination of comments, discussions and formal responses to a number of government and health-service proposals, and it has been very successfully used by a collection of largely non-technical users with comparatively few problems. That in itself says a lot about xwiki's usability. In fact, now the senior members (mostly women aged 50-70+, who a few years ago were having problems understanding how to use email) are now quite happy to use xwiki once we set it up for them, and several of them would really miss it as it has made a very obvious difference to how people can interact and cooperate online.
As a charitable organisation, we have very little available infrastructure, no office space, and our active members are spread over the whole of the UK - this makes it very difficult for us to provide our own hosted services such as a wiki. The free farm proposed should allow us to continue to use this invaluable technology. I'd love to be able to help support the farm, but at present we have far too much to do running our own small company and putting several extra hours effort every day into the charitable work. Maybe next year... Tim Vincent Massol wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Some time back XWiki SAS, the company who started XWiki had a free > online farm on xwiki.com. This farm was closed for new projects a few > months ago after XWiki SAS realized it didn't have the manpower (or > finance) to support it in a professional way. XWiki SAS still has a > professional farm offering but it's not a free farm (see > http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Services/#HHosting) > . > > I'd like to discuss with you the idea of offering a free farm managed > by the xwiki community and under the xwiki.org umbrella. In essence it > means there would be 2 farms available: > * a paying one which is on xwiki.com, for professional needs > * a free one on xwiki.org for universities, individuals or anyone not > requiring guaranteed support/availability at all times > > Here's how it would work: > > * No support guarantee. All support done on the xwiki.org user mailing > list. > * No stability guarantee. We would always install the latest Platform/ > XE/XEM version on it and it would serve as a stability test for the > xwiki development team. Obviously the community will always try to > make it as stable as possible but that's not guaranteed. > * There will be several members of the community who'll have admin > access on the farm. > * We will reduce admin tasks by offering a simple UI on the farm > itself (restart, see memory stats, see blocking requests, ban a wiki, > etc) > * It will be open to anyone. However the target users will be > technical people who can support themselves to some extent. We won't > control that but it'll be mentioned on the registration page. > > XWiki SAS would pay for the machine, hosting and the initial > installation. > > I have 2 questions for you: > > 1) As a user of it, would you be interested by such a farm? Do you > think it's interesting for the xwiki project to have such a free farm? > > 2) As a community member, would you be willing to help administer it/ > support it? For this farm to work we need to find several members of > the xwiki community willing to help administer it. Here are the tasks > I can think of: > - work on the welcome page content for the farm > - work on the FAQ for the farm (like "what do I do if I've lost my > password", etc) > - help answer user questions on the list (this can and should be be > done by everyone) > > Thanks > -Vincent, with 2 hats: community developer and CTO of XWiki SAS > > _______________________________________________ > users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users > > -- Tim Chippington Derrick Chippington Derrick Consultants Ltd Tel: 01276 508949 Mob: 07971 997948 http://www.chippingtonderrick.co.uk _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
