7 ms·

Nice idea on legiblenews.com, however it looks to me like it's just using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port

Nice idea on legiblenews.com, however it looks to me like it's just using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events and changing the format? All the articles are from there, verbatim, and you are exactly copying the list of articles - even the categorisation of them. I'm not sure that a 10% donation to Wikipedia from subscription revenue is quite enough when you are doing quite a simple reformat of all the volunteer work that goes into the current events section of Wikipedia. You are effectively changing $9.99 for a weekly email digest of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events page and giving them $1. I think if you went 50/50 on it I would probably feel it was more fair, you are adding value but I assume thats all automated. I will give you credit for your 100 score, that page on wikipedia gets an 86 on page speed insights.

bradgessler 4y ago
Yes! The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia, which is why I donate a portion of revenue to them. The value I'm delivering is speed and focus, going further than Wikipedia, hence your observations from the page speed score. The design of their pages is quite busy and some articles actually take a really long time to load when they're re-built from scratch and not served up from a cache. Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today. If Legible News reaches a large enough scale I'll consider switching from the current donation model to a Wikimedia enterprise subscription (https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/ https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/) or hiring my own editorial staff to put together the days headlines. --- Edit: Oops, there's a bug on the news articles that are not displaying the license. If you want to see what this should look like, check out https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle and scroll to the bottom and click on "License". Fixing this now for news articles. --- Update: Licenses are now working for news pages. You can see today's at https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license. This broke navigation at the bottom, which I'm now fixing.
- samwillis 4y ago
  So I actually love the idea, even using Wikipedia! Their news/current affairs section is amazing, but not accessible or readable in a "new site" like way. If I were you I would be championing that aspect, making it a key feature, talk about how it is making this amazing resource accessible. But part of that would be to donate a larger portion to them. Just charge $20/year and give Wikipedia half...
  - em500 4y ago
    The mobile version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is less busy and arguably better readable/accessible than the desktop version.
  - bradgessler 4y ago
    I'm not committing to that specific price change and donation reallocation, but I will raise prices in the future (if you subscribe now you'll be grandfathered in) and changing the donation allocation with Wikipedia. The problem now is that fixed costs are barely covered. Once that hump is achieved I can start playing around with donation allocations more. It will take some time to get there as the cost structures aren't that well established yet.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > I'm currently losing money on Legible News > The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia How are you losing money if all of your content is from Wikipedia, and presumably free?
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Close to zero income plus hosting fees most likely. If I built something like this I’d expect to lose money on it for awhile as well. I’d also expect to have to deliver a bit more “product” but I feel this guy is having a ton of fun with this project. I’d love to see it grow and develop into something amazing. In fairness, it doesn’t seem to be offering much at the moment, but I’m genuinely curious about the directions the owner imagines taking the project.
O__________O 4y ago
If true, and appears it is, if the source for the feed really is Wikipedia, shouldn’t it be credited on the site? Related Wikipedia page on reusing it’s content: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
- bradgessler 4y ago
  It is, see the "License" link at the bottom of pages that display Wikipedia content. Front page currently points at https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license. Note: there was a bug that I fixed at around noon PST that wasn't display this link for daily news articles, but it was for the contextual articles. I intend on fully complying with Wikipedia's copyright notices. If you see otherwise please LMK because its a bug.
  - itake 4y ago
    PST or PDT? I didn't think anyone was using PST anymore :-/.
    - themodelplumber 4y ago
      Um, you mean they're not using it until November? https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/pst https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/pst
      - itake 4y ago
        The US hasn't used PST to describe current time since March 13th.
        themodelplumber 4y ago
        Yeah, and then it will be used again starting this November. It hasn't gone away permanently IOW, unless you know otherwise.
      - 4y ago
101008 4y ago
Thanks for mentioning and noticing it. I like the original idea (one of those that I thought myself doing back during the pandemic), but seeing it is just a wrapper around another source made it lost its magic, at least for me.
- qu4z-2 4y ago
  If it introduces more people to Wikipedia's excellent Current Events portal, then I'm glad it exists.
  - wraptile 4y ago
    TIL - actually I like the wikipedia's tree like formatting much more than the mirror options mentioned in this thread.
zendaven 4y ago
Also it's been done better by https://newsasfacts.com/ https://newsasfacts.com/, which actually does give 50/50 like you suggested.
- O__________O 4y ago
  News as Facts also gets a 95 on page load speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsasfacts.com%2F https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsasfac...
- kiwicopple 4y ago
  See also https://currentevents.email https://currentevents.email
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  That site seems supremely... Not optimized for utility by humans.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
6510 4y ago
Wikipedia needs money?
coffeeblack 4y ago
Please don’t complain on behalf of others. Wikipedia has a licence that explicitly allows (even encourages) what OP is doing.
galfarragem 4y ago
This is completely BS. What is he showing here? That a static copy of wikipedia "news"[0] is faster than a full featured news website. Is this just a contrived ad? My news aggregator also achieves 100% performance[1] but I don't dare to use that info to make such a irresponsible claim. Is also some orders of magnitude easier to be a news curator than a news producer. [0] Is hard to consider local news like "Two policemen and a polio vaccinator are shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles in North Waziristan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan" relevant news. [1] https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.slowernews.com/XOAMfY1i/ https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.slowernews.com/XOAMfY1i/

bradgessler 4y ago

Yes! The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia, which is why I donate a portion of revenue to them. The value I'm delivering is speed and focus, going further than Wikipedia, hence your observations from the page speed score. The design of their pages is quite busy and some articles actually take a really long time to load when they're re-built from scratch and not served up from a cache. Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today. If Legible News reaches a large enough scale I'll consider switching from the current donation model to a Wikimedia enterprise subscription (https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/ https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/pricing/) or hiring my own editorial staff to put together the days headlines. --- Edit: Oops, there's a bug on the news articles that are not displaying the license. If you want to see what this should look like, check out https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle https://legiblenews.com/articles/Mekelle and scroll to the bottom and click on "License". Fixing this now for news articles. --- Update: Licenses are now working for news pages. You can see today's at https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license. This broke navigation at the bottom, which I'm now fixing.

samwillis 4y ago
So I actually love the idea, even using Wikipedia! Their news/current affairs section is amazing, but not accessible or readable in a "new site" like way. If I were you I would be championing that aspect, making it a key feature, talk about how it is making this amazing resource accessible. But part of that would be to donate a larger portion to them. Just charge $20/year and give Wikipedia half...
- em500 4y ago
  The mobile version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is less busy and arguably better readable/accessible than the desktop version.
- bradgessler 4y ago
  I'm not committing to that specific price change and donation reallocation, but I will raise prices in the future (if you subscribe now you'll be grandfathered in) and changing the donation allocation with Wikipedia. The problem now is that fixed costs are barely covered. Once that hump is achieved I can start playing around with donation allocations more. It will take some time to get there as the cost structures aren't that well established yet.
gnicholas 4y ago
> I'm currently losing money on Legible News > The news content and links from them are from Wikipedia How are you losing money if all of your content is from Wikipedia, and presumably free?
- runnerup 4y ago
  Close to zero income plus hosting fees most likely. If I built something like this I’d expect to lose money on it for awhile as well. I’d also expect to have to deliver a bit more “product” but I feel this guy is having a ton of fun with this project. I’d love to see it grow and develop into something amazing. In fairness, it doesn’t seem to be offering much at the moment, but I’m genuinely curious about the directions the owner imagines taking the project.

O__________O 4y ago

If true, and appears it is, if the source for the feed really is Wikipedia, shouldn’t it be credited on the site? Related Wikipedia page on reusing it’s content: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

bradgessler 4y ago
It is, see the "License" link at the bottom of pages that display Wikipedia content. Front page currently points at https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license https://legiblenews.com/june-27-2022/license. Note: there was a bug that I fixed at around noon PST that wasn't display this link for daily news articles, but it was for the contextual articles. I intend on fully complying with Wikipedia's copyright notices. If you see otherwise please LMK because its a bug.
- itake 4y ago
  PST or PDT? I didn't think anyone was using PST anymore :-/.
  - themodelplumber 4y ago
    Um, you mean they're not using it until November? https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/pst https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/pst
    - itake 4y ago
      The US hasn't used PST to describe current time since March 13th.
      - themodelplumber 4y ago
        Yeah, and then it will be used again starting this November. It hasn't gone away permanently IOW, unless you know otherwise.
    - 4y ago

101008 4y ago

Thanks for mentioning and noticing it. I like the original idea (one of those that I thought myself doing back during the pandemic), but seeing it is just a wrapper around another source made it lost its magic, at least for me.

qu4z-2 4y ago
If it introduces more people to Wikipedia's excellent Current Events portal, then I'm glad it exists.
- wraptile 4y ago
  TIL - actually I like the wikipedia's tree like formatting much more than the mirror options mentioned in this thread.

zendaven 4y ago

Also it's been done better by https://newsasfacts.com/ https://newsasfacts.com/, which actually does give 50/50 like you suggested.

O__________O 4y ago
News as Facts also gets a 95 on page load speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsasfacts.com%2F https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsasfac...
kiwicopple 4y ago
See also https://currentevents.email https://currentevents.email
unethical_ban 4y ago
That site seems supremely... Not optimized for utility by humans.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

6510 4y ago

Wikipedia needs money?

coffeeblack 4y ago

Please don’t complain on behalf of others. Wikipedia has a licence that explicitly allows (even encourages) what OP is doing.

galfarragem 4y ago

This is completely BS. What is he showing here? That a static copy of wikipedia "news"[0] is faster than a full featured news website. Is this just a contrived ad? My news aggregator also achieves 100% performance[1] but I don't dare to use that info to make such a irresponsible claim. Is also some orders of magnitude easier to be a news curator than a news producer. [0] Is hard to consider local news like "Two policemen and a polio vaccinator are shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles in North Waziristan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan" relevant news. [1] https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.slowernews.com/XOAMfY1i/ https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.slowernews.com/XOAMfY1i/