docWikis

[Marielle Lange]

> In our little corner of the programming universe, I think that most  
> anyone
> only has time to skim, collect some valuable tidbits, contribute  
> answers as
> time and mood permit, then go on with our lives.
> If I decided to follow this path and contribute, my wife would kill  
> me.

That's a very important point.  I tried with similar projects in  
education. Everybody is interested in having things made available  
for free. Nobody is much interested (1) in taking  
*responsibilities*... that is you are the one eventually working all  
night to put everything back together in case a hacker decided to put  
your site to the test and  (2) in helping to fund the development of  
"open" content or "open" source that would *immensely* benefit the  
community in the longer term. So at the end, if you have been crazy  
enough to start doing it, you end up being the one doing 90% of the  
job that needs to be done, and on your hobby time.

Materials is easy to contribute. A clever and reliable  
infrastructure, responsibly managed and maintainted, to host that  
material often comes with a price tag (at least  months full time).

For instance, I can afford to have my websites because maintenance is  
made easy... thanks to the web hosting service I *pay* for (http:// 
www.ukhost4u.com/). Not much, I pay less than £5 a month, the price  
of a computer magazine and I have a lot more fun playing with my  
websites, I learn a lot more by getting in contact with interesting  
persons via my websites. But what I pay for the web hosting gives an  
idea of what would be required for a good infrastructure and a  
quality service. Given the actual size of the revolution market,  
assuming that a maximum of 200 persons are ready to pay for the  
service (and this is overoptimistic, closer to reality would be 50),  
about $5 a month per user should be collected for it to be viable  
(worth the amount of time spent on this).

Who on this list would be ready to pay $5 a month... for an  
infrastructure that largely exploits the material that comes out on  
the mailing list anyway? Would you prefer to pay less but have the  
website filled with ads?

Marielle
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Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
Homepage:  http://homepages.lexicall.org/mlange/
Lexicall: http://lexicall.org
Revolution-education: http://revolution.lexicall.org