User talk:Martinjs

labour.miraheze.org
Hi, I have noticed that my request for labour.miraheze.org has not been expedited as quickly as other recent requests - which I must admit I don't find enormously surprising. As I can't add comments to the request, I thought I would add some comments here which might clarify the context of my request and help the admins here make a decision.

First, why do we want this wiki? Well, my idea was to quickly prototype the idea of having a members' wiki, giving us an idea of the level of demand for the wiki, and how it would be used. If successful, it would probably be a good idea to migrate it at some point to an in-house server.

I have had broad support for the idea from other party members (along with a number of other technologies being considered at the moment), with the proviso that it should not give members a false sense of privacy (as in the past, such privacy has turned out to be illusory).

I have chosen Miraheze because:


 * 1) It uses MediaWiki, which is far superior to some of the other software out there (e.g. Wikidot).
 * 2) You seem to be fairly flexible with configuration/bots, which may be important when trialling different ways of signing up members.
 * 3) It is based in the UK - which obviously looks good for a political party.

Factors which may affect your decision:


 * 1) At the moment, the Labour party has about 350,000 members and rising. I realise if they all started using your server at once, it might be a bit of a strain! We would be willing to limit the trial initially to a small number of branches (perhaps only one), with additionally a hard cap on the total number of members. When the time comes to expand the membership, we may then be ready to migrate to something in-house (and the Miraheze site will provide a strong case for it).
 * 2) If at any point there turns out to be a lot of spam and uncontrollable users, I would understand if you decide to terminate the wiki immediately - as that's the last thing I would want to happen.
 * 3) I am not an official representative of the Labour Party, but I am a Labour Party member. I am doing this as part of a current grass-roots initiative (actually just a bunch of us who meet occasionally in a pub) by Walthamstow CLP (Constituency Labour Party). If you need a statement from someone more official, I may be able to arrange that - but for reasons of publicity it would probably be better at this stage if it remains a grass-roots effort so that it doesn't seem too officially endorsed (which it isn't).
 * 4) If the naming is an issue, I would be open to something less official-looking - e.g. lp.miraheze.org - although it would be best if "Labour Party" is still in the title so that people know they have come to the right place.

In addition, we would have the following broad requirements:


 * 1) I know that I have signed up for a private wiki, but ideally I would want all pages to be (automatically) publicly viewable, but only editable to members.
 * 2) It would be best if there were a statement visible to editors on the edit page, to the effect that "All edits are (or may be made) visible to the general public, don't say anything you wouldn't like to see on the front page of the Daily Mail, etc."
 * 3) It would be good if there were a way to set up a bot (externally, with access to your server) that could automatically approve requests for membership (based on our internal database) - obviously within the hard limit discussed before, if necessary.
 * 4) Facebook sign-up may be desirable (but not essential).

I realise that personal political feeling, a desire to avoid associating yourselves with a political party, or to avoid any possible unwanted publicity that we may bring, may still influence your decision. In which case, I understand and we will look elsewhere.

-Martinjs (talk) 12:55, 25 October 2015 (UTC)