Wikipedia Beefs Up Multimedia Backend
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: wikipedia, upgrades, back, end, multimedia | Themes: The Internet, Business
According to Jon Brodkin of PCWorld, Wikipedia has recently invested in significant backend upgrades in order to accommodate upcoming increases in multimedia size restrictions.
Up to present, users have been relatively limited in the size of any images, audio files, or video files hosted amongst Wikipedia pages. With an upgraded backend comes more freedom for users to take Wikipedia to the next level in the world of reference superiority.
Wikimedia Foundation CTO Brion Vibber stated "For a long time, we just did not have the capacity [to handle very large media files]," in regards to the upgrade. The truth is, the "Wikimedia" servers which host all Wikipedia based multimedia content initially had just 2 TB of storage available across all articles. In early 2008, an upgrade to 24 TB was made, of which just 5TB has actually been used to date. The new upgrade increases the available storage to a whopping 48 TB, leaving a lot of headroom for users in the coming months, and even years.
The new servers and storage solutions have been supplied by Sun, which offered Wikimedia Sun Fire x4500 and x4150 servers with StorageTek arrays at special prices, and through donations. Through the new servers and arrays, Vibber comments, "The limits will get bigger and bigger to where it will be relatively easy for someone who has a legitimate need to upload a two-hour video of good quality."
According to Vibber, other goals for the new year and those ahead include improving usability, ease of use in relation to editing articles and uploading multimedia content, and integration with media sites such as Flicker.
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This can only lead to more awesome.
this is good. technical knowledge or query on how things work usually needs a video.
I think it's rather unwise of Wikipedia.
They've been putting up banners to get 6m$ to get these servers updated, right in a time where globally it was getting worse with the economy.
I heard they didn't even reach there.
Now they're upgrading their stuff, which costs money, probably have higher internet traffic,which costs more; service will cost more too; I mean, I can imagine 2TB fitting in 4 drives raid; but 48TB?
More electric bills, more data also means more checking out needs to be done, so more personnel to be payed...
I think it's a rather bad move, especially since Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a video archive.
Besides, with ISP's capping monthly data transfer, people are probably opting for less,rather than more.
Imean,I was pretty happy with Wikipedia like it was. It loaded fast. I hope they will limit pages on video's and flash files.
I somewhat agree that this is a bit over the top.
I think the additional video capability is good but I would really like to hear the definition of 'a legitimate need'. The vast majority of two hour videos have no business on wikipedia IMO.
We don't need 43 different two hour videos on how TCP works and 39 on how to convert between the graphical representation of a chemical compound and its name.
After asking for all that cash they had sure better be sure it is only the highest production quality and most informative.
I guess my bottom line is that if they keep redundant video to a minimum, that I consider this to be just shy of extravagant, but still acceptable and possibly very useful.
I believe wikipedia has a need to extend it's multimedia capabilities, and let's not forget that the wikimedia servers host many other Wiki sites that also require capacity. I too though, hope that this investment will be put to good use, and will not lead the development of wikipedia to the wrong direction. Videos are ok on youtube, I'd like to see embedded videos related to the subjects, hosted by OTHER sites.