LPedia.org is a wiki collaborative history of the Libertarian Party started in February 2005 by Shane Cory as an replacement for the older archive.lp.org. The site had gotten into maintenance trouble in June 2013 when new account creation was disabled and fallen into technical disrepair as the MediaWiki engine went through version upgrades without being installed on LPedia primarily due to the fact that there simply was not enough staff time to keep the site updated and the account creation was leading to potential security risks while it was installed on the same server as the main LP.org website. For that same reasons volunteers were not given access to update.
A Brief Recap
In July 2016, LNC Region 1 Representative (and LP history enthusiast) Caryn Ann Harlos took interest in saving LPedia from disappearing when a software update would inevitably break it for good and urged the LNC to either take active interest or transfer the asset to the LSLA. This motion was referred to the IT Committee and was put on hold while the transition to the new LP.org site was a priority. During this transition it was determined that the main LP site would be hosted on a different server which made a decision on the fate of LPedia imminent as its host server would soon be deactivated. In December 2016, Representative Harlos visited the Libertarian Party Headquarters and toured the basement and offsite storage and discovered a wealth of unseen historical records at the same time there was an objection to the loss of website information during the main website transition. Thus Representative Harlos and Alternate Ken Moellman worked together to bring a motion to the LNC to establish a permanent historical committee to curate and digitize these records as well as take over administration of LPedia at a new host. The LNC was not disposed to create a permanent committee at this time, but Representative Goldstein, at the encouragement of information supplied by Executive Director Wes Benedict, proposed this Motion:
The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia. This committee is granted a budget of $5,000. Caryn Ann Harlos is appointed chair with authority to appoint up to 4 others. This committee will expire at the end of the LNC meeting preceding the 2018 LP National Convention.
After the passage of this Motion, Vermont LP activist Bonnie Scot spend prodigious quantities of time cleaning up the bloated database to transfer a slim working wiki to the new host server secured by Alternate Moellman, and the Historical Committee was subsequently appointed to include Joe Buchman, Joe Dehn, Ed Fochler, and James Gholston.
Finally, LPedia has now officially re-opened for new account creation and invitations are extended to one and all to make good use of this resource and to create an account to help maintain and document the shared history.
To keep track of the work of the Historical Preservation Committee by subscribing to their read-only committee discussion, send a message to: [email protected] with “subscribe” in the subject line. Donations are sought to assist in funding the scanning and digitization work and can be made here: https://secure.piryx.com/donate/uO2ehmy0/libertarian/historicalpreservation
Committee Chair Caryn Ann Harlos can be reached at [email protected]
LOL you mean that I should have posted in the Augustus thread? 🙂
Account approved.
Caution the special pages (last edits etc – have a maintenance script being ran so those may not load properly but the wiki proper is fine – I have a bunch of volunteers though uploading stuff in batches)
We are trying to recreate now the old archive.lp.org bylaws and policy manual stuff.
Soon a few decades of Liberty Pledge and LP News will be up. The old LP News are being shipped to me – included the 1970s ones (swoon) for digitizing.
Caryn Ann, in wrong thread:
Thanks…appears to work fine now. I submitted a registration request.
Site speed seemed to be very slow when I just tried it. Hopefully that will be improved soon.
They absolutely do, but I don’t think it would have come together without Caryn Ann.
Thanks Paulie. I often get a lot of thanks because I am so public but the credit rightly belongs to a group of us of which I am a small part. I serve a key role as the LNC connection but it is the other persons who truly made it happen like the rest of the committee (Joe Dehn, James Gholston, Ed Trochler, and Joe Buchman) and Bonnie Scott – Bonnie did the foundational work that nothing else would have happened without her.
Also Wes Benedict was a key player as he believed in me and in this project and Ken Moellman for the same reasons. Other members of the LNC including Sarwark. The pink hair and loud mouth shouldn’t grab all the attention.
Those other people deserve the accolades.
Cool, Caryn. Again great work.
Very glad to hear it’s revived. Thanks to Caryn Ann and everyone else who made it happen!
Shane- we pay for it. It is totally in LNC control.
Great work but if it’s hosted outside of a contract managed and owned by the LNC, that’s a mistake and is why I chose to create it in the first place and give it to the LNC.
The subdomain “archive.lp.org” was hosted by a former LNC board member and we had no ability to change or modify the site.
LPedia was to be run by the community with the server hosted and paid for by the LNC (so we never lose it again).
Hoepefuly that’s the case but it doesn’t sound like it. Even if the current host is great/nice guy/etc, keep in mind that so was the host of archive.lp.org.
Finally, an admission that the Libertarian Party is history!
It’s exciting to have it back online. This has great historical documentation. As a party and as a movement, it’s important to remember where we came from.
Commenting to subscribe