3 ms·

I am disappointed by the degree to which people are piling on here. When you run a user generated content site, it's common to seed it any legal way you can at

• mvandemar 17y ago
  He's not kickstarting it with Wikipedia. Mahalo is not new. The two main issues with all of these scraped pages is that a) Jason recently boasted how Wikipedia was, in his words, simply a "free for all" (thus leaving the impression that he feels that his site was therefore better, being moderated), and b) that his pages were all UGC built by "his" users, not bots.
  • _pius 17y ago
    You've made some valid criticisms of Mahalo in the past, but the content and tenor of this article makes it look like this has gotten personal for you and now you're reaching. He's not kickstarting it with Wikipedia. Mahalo is not new. This isn't about age, this is about size and activity of user base. Again, I can empathize with anyone trying to bootstrap a UGC business. You practically have to seed it with content. The two main issues with all of these scraped pages is that a) Jason recently boasted how Wikipedia was, in his words, simply a "free for all" (thus leaving the impression that he feels that his site was therefore better, being moderated), and b) that his pages were all UGC built by "his" users, not bots. While both of these are certainly reasons why you may personally find his use of Wikipedia's content distasteful, neither of them rise to the level of being "stealing," ban-worthy, or even particularly unethical assuming that he's in compliance with the appropriate license.