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Hardware donation program/Fæ

< Hardware donation program


Your contact information

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your username
Fæ
your contact e-mail (optional)
faewik at gmail

Explain your plan

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Tell us about how you contribute currently, and how you would contribute if WMF were to gift a used laptop to you.

My main project content contribution is very large upload projects on Wikimedia Commons, as blogged about a couple of years ago at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/08/10/sharing-a-million-photographs/. More recently as part of our behind the scenes discussions for WM-LGBT+, especially the proposed conference in 2020, it became apparent that simple video conferencing on Zoom was beyond my very old kit, with it becoming impossible for even audio to be shared in real time.

I have a ThinkPad X220 laptop (2011) which I have been using both to travel with and as a main desktop in the last year thanks to a second hand docking station. I love the design of the old ThinkPad, but this model cannot be processor upgraded and has overheated several times this year when using it to run background routines, so it's only really useful for word processing and even when all other tasks are halted cannot cope with videoconferencing. In addition I have a 2012 Macmini which has effectively "retired" for the past 2 years as I cannot, or at least it would not be worth it, to upgrade to a recent version of the Mac OS, and this gives security conflicts which cannot be resolved as stuff like browser upgrades are not compatible with the old hardware, though I still sometimes use it as a headless server and have run background long term upload projects such as refreshing the Library of Congress maps uploads, and have used it for several months to contribute as an ArchiveTeam Warrior but do not like to leave it unattended when I'm travelling.

My lifestyle has changed due to having to regularly travel between two cities, making me more reliant on mobile technology rather than a fixed desktop. This has limited my access time to follow through on programming projects because I lack a "non-chunky" laptop that can also become my main development machine. As a result a number of bot jobs like various database reports that need some bug fixing, have been floating for the past year, as can be seen in my Commons user talk page discussions.

If I can upgrade to a newer laptop, I would focus on getting a handful of new upload projects completed, and hit the 5 million images uploaded mark. Were this achieved in 2020, it would be a good reason to write a follow-up blog post about my experience as a long term content creator volunteer.

Update: Since raising this request 9 months ago, the pandemic happened. As someone at higher risk, I am not travelling and living in isolation. Tasks like videoconferencing have become essential to basic living. The old laptop is too slow for Zoom, and is still tripping out during upload projects (like this latest 100,000 books mass upload). A bump in kit quality would really help me out this year.

Affected projects

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Add the existing Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Commons, etc.) and language versions that you seek to impact with this equipment.

  • Wikimedia Commons
  • WM-LGBT+ user group activities and likely future conference coordination
  • A slightly technical example is the project to upload CDC videos, something that was a request from Wikimedia Medicine. The reprocessing of videos can be done, but even with the lowest processor priority, my old laptop hits a steady state temperature of 93°C with the fan running at max, which is not recommended due to likely shortening of hardware life. Though this may be moved to Labs, it's not an ideal solution for manually processing small batches
  • A current less technical example is books from the Internet Archive, where there are delays/restarts due to overheating problems despite this being a relatively low-processing requirement

Work you're proud of

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Show us (through links) some of your best Wikimedia work, on or off wiki, to help us get a sense for the kind of work you do. (no more than 3 or 4 links at most, please.)

Endorsements

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  1. Fæ does a lot of the heavy lifting over at Commons, especially for GLAM imports. He needs a machine that's going to be up to the job. Kaldari (talk) 14:48, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I agree that donating such hardware to Fæ would greatly benefit their ability to contribute to Commons, and thereby to the greater WMF community.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:12, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Fæ is clearly one of the most valuable users on Commons, and I'm strongly inclined to trust what he says he needs to keep contributing at the level he has maintained for years. - Jmabel (talk) 15:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. some resource love would be appreciated. Slowking4 (talk) 17:27, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5. The return-on-investment here would be extremely high. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:49, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. It would be beneficial to Commons. 4nn1l2 (talk) 04:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. Rudolphous (talk) 06:55, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support! --Magnus Manske (talk) 11:49, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support. Hanooz (talk) 12:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support. --Ambrosia10 (talk) 02:22, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support --- Darwin Ahoy! 02:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support! So many uploads makes such a difference to users around the world --AdventurerForHire (talk)
  13. Support. Fæ's GLAM uploads were critical to the success of recent Wikipedian work in New Zealand, and hardware support would be a great investment. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 05:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support. - They should get this support, they are doing great work QueerEcofeminist "cite! even if you fight"!!! [they/them/their] 18:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support, as Andy said, ridiculously high return on investment. Alexis Jazz (ping me) 14:27, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  16.   Support per Jeff G. Masum Reza📞 08:52, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  17.   Support GMGtalk 18:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  18. The request makes sense. I know from my work on WikiTeam processes that sometimes you just need to run your bots and scripts on local hardware, even if in an ideal world it would not be necessary. Nemo 19:25, 16 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Remembering so many useful images relating to the military history uploaded by Fæ, I can't but   Support Ain92 (talk) 22:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  20.   Support , Would it also be possible for WMF (or projects) to consider if donations of low cost computers like Pi-Zeros to back specific (other) projects would be feasible? (Me ponders if it's also possible to ask people that develop for Pi if very specfic distros supporting specific tasks are feasible.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:01, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  21.   Support For a remarkable wiki-treasure that must be supported. --Tibet Nation (talk) 05:29, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  22.   Support fully. Gikü (talk) 07:44, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  23.   Support -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:56, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  24.   Support commons wouldn't be the same without Fæ, the revenue they generate far outweighs the price of the hardware. Please support our most dedicated members carlinmack (talk) 22:34, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  25.   Support Ixocactus (talk) 19:12, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  26.   Support --維基小霸王 (talk) 01:41, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  27.   Support --Zache (talk) 09:08, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  28.   Strong support Kizule (talk) 23:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Filled

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Fæ request for hardware has been supported by Wiki Project Med Foundation.

Impact

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You are encouraged to track the impact this equipment has helped you make. This encourages WMF to donate more hardware.

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