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My understanding is that Enterprise is mostly about smoother delivery of content. E.g. Google has those informational summaries in search results, and it's easi

by kemayo 2y ago

My understanding is that Enterprise is mostly about smoother delivery of content. E.g. Google has those informational summaries in search results, and it's easier for it to keep those current if there's a stream of updates it can subscribe to, rather than having to constantly download the full Wikipedia database dumps and parse them out. It also puts it all into conveniently formatted responses, and tries to do some signaling of content reliability. The API responses do include information about the content license, which differs a bit between different wikimedia properties: https://helpcenter.enterprise.wikimedia.com/hc/en-us/articles/6175800381851-Does-Wikimedia-Enterprise-include-the-license-of-the-pages https://helpcenter.enterprise.wikimedia.com/hc/en-us/article... (I work for the WMF. I don't work on the Enterprise stuff, or have any insider knowledge of it. E.g. I used Google as an illustrative example, but I have no idea whether they're actually using this service. :D)

bawolff 2y ago
> to keep those current if there's a stream of updates it can subscribe to, rather than having to constantly download the full Wikipedia database dumps and parse them out. I mean presumably prior to this they were using the [free] parsoid rest api along with the [free] event stream api. I highly doubt they were parsing the dumps. Its not even clear to me what the core value proposition of the new api is over the old api from the perspective of google. Maybe SLAs? A way to justify donating money without it looking like a donation?
- flipbrad 2y ago
  There's also r&d going into additional, inferred data layers, e.g.: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Breaking_news https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Breaking_n...
- kemayo 2y ago
  No idea whether it's any quicker than the event stream APIs, but it sounds like the machine-readable aspect does a lot of processing that just using parsoid wouldn't get you. Parsoid is only a wikitext-to-HTML service, so you'd still need to do significant work on it to get meaning out of that HTML. The data dictionary page[1] suggests that it's exposing things like "how many citation-needed templates are in this?" (presumably localized, since those template names change across wikis), which I could see being handy for services like that. That said, I suspect that the real value is just the "reliable" bit on that summary page. > Written agreements, no additional content restrictions, SLAs, 24/7 support, and contractual guarantees against surprise breaking changes make working with Wikimedia Enterprise safe and reliable at scale. i.e. If I was building a big enterprise thing using wikipedia data, getting a SLA and a promise that us rando open source devs won't completely change the APIs on a whim would be nice. [1]: https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/docs/data-dictionary/ https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/docs/data-dictionary/

by kemayo 2y ago

bawolff 2y ago

> to keep those current if there's a stream of updates it can subscribe to, rather than having to constantly download the full Wikipedia database dumps and parse them out. I mean presumably prior to this they were using the [free] parsoid rest api along with the [free] event stream api. I highly doubt they were parsing the dumps. Its not even clear to me what the core value proposition of the new api is over the old api from the perspective of google. Maybe SLAs? A way to justify donating money without it looking like a donation?

flipbrad 2y ago
There's also r&d going into additional, inferred data layers, e.g.: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Breaking_news https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Breaking_n...
kemayo 2y ago
No idea whether it's any quicker than the event stream APIs, but it sounds like the machine-readable aspect does a lot of processing that just using parsoid wouldn't get you. Parsoid is only a wikitext-to-HTML service, so you'd still need to do significant work on it to get meaning out of that HTML. The data dictionary page[1] suggests that it's exposing things like "how many citation-needed templates are in this?" (presumably localized, since those template names change across wikis), which I could see being handy for services like that. That said, I suspect that the real value is just the "reliable" bit on that summary page. > Written agreements, no additional content restrictions, SLAs, 24/7 support, and contractual guarantees against surprise breaking changes make working with Wikimedia Enterprise safe and reliable at scale. i.e. If I was building a big enterprise thing using wikipedia data, getting a SLA and a promise that us rando open source devs won't completely change the APIs on a whim would be nice. [1]: https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/docs/data-dictionary/ https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/docs/data-dictionary/