5 ms·

I find this extremely concerning - this could be the beginning of a slide into financial dependence on Big Tech companies, not to mention the many conflict of i

I find this extremely concerning - this could be the beginning of a slide into financial dependence on Big Tech companies, not to mention the many conflict of interest issues.

LatteLazy 6y ago
I hadn't thought of it that way, but you are right.
tchalla 6y ago
In your opinion, how can the Wikipedia goal of separating commercial and other users be managed?
- fny 6y ago
  Relying on its existing cash pile, focus on its core mission instead of growth, and hence not seeking/needing compensatory revenue streams from commercial users. I donated and contribute to wikipedia so it's material would be free to use for /anyone/ even corporates. If it improves other services I use or even others that I need to pay for, I'm glad. That's the point of a free, public resource.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Bear in mind the actual content will still be free, the thing these enterprises will be paying for is a customised feed and support infrastructure servicing their particular requirements. Would you be ok with your donations being used to pay for a feed service and support dedicated to, say, the particular needs of Google search results, or Apple's Siri? It also depends if you consider it's core mission is just English Wikipedia. Expanding into additional languages and keeping the content consistent between languages is a huge undertaking that won't work on a purely volunteer basis. If this dependable revenue stream can help with some of these other very capital intensive but worthy initiatives I'm for it.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Wikipedia is already in 300+ different languages... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix
      - simonh 6y ago
        The quality of most of those is absolutely appalling though, very sparse, inaccurate, out of date, and in some cases not even in the actual language.
      - 2038AD 6y ago
        I'm not concerned but there's at least a handful of those that aren't written by speakers. The Scots one was the notable example as it was almost entirely written by an American teenager who doesn't know the language
        mavhc 6y ago
        If there are no Scots speakers who care enough to write it, should it exist?
        RichEO 6y ago
        Of course. The person who suffers in this scenario is not the Scots speaking subject matter expert who chooses not to contribute their time for free, but the Scots speaking child who doesn’t have the resources to learn.
    - fny 6y ago
      > Would you be ok with your donations being used to pay for a feed service and support dedicated to, say, the particular needs of Google search results, or Apple's Siri? Absolutely not, and this isn't whats happening today. Third parties do not use the existing Wikipedia APIs to begin with, cache page results, and create their own machine readable versions. These "enterprise customers" entirely bear the costs and risk of maintaining a machine readable API. There are also businesses that compete and innovate in this space already. I'm also not okay with my donations financing an upstart like this targeting enterprise. This needs to exist outside of Wikimedia. It's completely out of scope. Profit incentives warp missions. Why can't Apple/Google et al start their own consortium that does this themselves. Why does Wikimedia need to do this? Think of the scale of operations required to support an entity like Google or Apple. This is going to require a /ton/ of investment and talent and it may even fail. Why is Wikimedia incurring start up risks like this to appease the needs of big tech?
ppf 6y ago
We are already dependent on "Big Tech", we just haven't realised it yet.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Mozilla #2

I find this extremely concerning - this could be the beginning of a slide into financial dependence on Big Tech companies, not to mention the many conflict of interest issues.

LatteLazy 6y ago

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you are right.

tchalla 6y ago

In your opinion, how can the Wikipedia goal of separating commercial and other users be managed?

fny 6y ago
Relying on its existing cash pile, focus on its core mission instead of growth, and hence not seeking/needing compensatory revenue streams from commercial users. I donated and contribute to wikipedia so it's material would be free to use for /anyone/ even corporates. If it improves other services I use or even others that I need to pay for, I'm glad. That's the point of a free, public resource.
- simonh 6y ago
  Bear in mind the actual content will still be free, the thing these enterprises will be paying for is a customised feed and support infrastructure servicing their particular requirements. Would you be ok with your donations being used to pay for a feed service and support dedicated to, say, the particular needs of Google search results, or Apple's Siri? It also depends if you consider it's core mission is just English Wikipedia. Expanding into additional languages and keeping the content consistent between languages is a huge undertaking that won't work on a purely volunteer basis. If this dependable revenue stream can help with some of these other very capital intensive but worthy initiatives I'm for it.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Wikipedia is already in 300+ different languages... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix
    - simonh 6y ago
      The quality of most of those is absolutely appalling though, very sparse, inaccurate, out of date, and in some cases not even in the actual language.
    - 2038AD 6y ago
      I'm not concerned but there's at least a handful of those that aren't written by speakers. The Scots one was the notable example as it was almost entirely written by an American teenager who doesn't know the language
      - mavhc 6y ago
        If there are no Scots speakers who care enough to write it, should it exist?
        RichEO 6y ago
        Of course. The person who suffers in this scenario is not the Scots speaking subject matter expert who chooses not to contribute their time for free, but the Scots speaking child who doesn’t have the resources to learn.
  - fny 6y ago
    > Would you be ok with your donations being used to pay for a feed service and support dedicated to, say, the particular needs of Google search results, or Apple's Siri? Absolutely not, and this isn't whats happening today. Third parties do not use the existing Wikipedia APIs to begin with, cache page results, and create their own machine readable versions. These "enterprise customers" entirely bear the costs and risk of maintaining a machine readable API. There are also businesses that compete and innovate in this space already. I'm also not okay with my donations financing an upstart like this targeting enterprise. This needs to exist outside of Wikimedia. It's completely out of scope. Profit incentives warp missions. Why can't Apple/Google et al start their own consortium that does this themselves. Why does Wikimedia need to do this? Think of the scale of operations required to support an entity like Google or Apple. This is going to require a /ton/ of investment and talent and it may even fail. Why is Wikimedia incurring start up risks like this to appease the needs of big tech?

ppf 6y ago

We are already dependent on "Big Tech", we just haven't realised it yet.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Mozilla #2