5 ms·

Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel

62 points by uladzislau 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago
I tend to be wary of contributing to crowdsourced projects run by for-profit companies for this reason, because they seem to have a tendency to go rogue once the benevolent management gets changed out, or it's sold to someone else. Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative. Since then, I contribute only to nonprofits that seem to have some long-term credibility with their data licensing and governance, such as Wikipedia, Musicbrainz, and OpenStreetMap. In principle I'd contribute to a for-profit if it were really convincing about its long-term good faith (and provided data export), but the bar is high.
- DrJokepu 14y ago
  How about StackOverflow? Even though it's ran by a for-profit entity, all user-provided content is licensed as Creative Commons and they offer regular database dumps for download.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Actually yes, that's a good example; not sure why I didn't think of it. They run the community well, and the license and data dumps are a sufficient insurance policy against any kind of change in that (which I'd only expect if they were bought out).
- 1veteran 14y ago
  IMDB was originally crowsourced. Started on Usenet. Can anyone assert ownership over and derive commercial benefit from a data source that traces its origins to volunteer contributors? What would be legally required to do that?
- duskwuff 14y ago
  > My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative. What is it with lyric sites and ringtone ads? LyricWiki went the same way.
  - songmeanings 14y ago
    Running a lyrics site is a tricky thing. Yes, there is a ton of traffic because it's essentially built for SEO. But think about the demographics who view lyrics. Typically very young and without a credit card. Translation: advertising == lower CPMs than other demographics. So lyric sites have to supplement traditional banners with, well, those ringtone ads. In the case of SongMeanings, we're doing ringtone ads because our licensing agreements are very expensive. It's not cheap doing what we're doing. We're proud to be licensed, sure, but again, it's very expensive. Heads up -- if you become a member at SongMeanings, you'll actually see fewer advertisements. It's our way of saying thanks to loyal users. I'm certainly open ears to suggestions on how to pay for licensing while not doing ringtone adverts. Or any other suggestions on how to improve SM, too. Mike SongMeanings
- listic 14y ago
  The sad thing is, even non-profits are not guaranteed to stay that way indefinitely. See how CouchSurfing turned into B-Corporation after being denied their 501(c)(3) charity status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation They were a non-profit, for the first 8 years.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Huh, I didn't even realize that was possible. Seems like quite a bait-and-switch to build up a community under the guise of a nonprofit, and then take it for-profit afterwards.
pault 14y ago
Hmm, good to know. I work remotely and travel quite a bit, and wikitravel has always been the first place I check when I land in a new place. Updating bookmarks to http://en.wikivoyage.org http://en.wikivoyage.org
haberman 14y ago
I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if it's on the way to something else. Planning a travel itinerary is all about clustering attractions so that you see lots of cool stuff without wasting too much time in transit. Given this, it amazes me how primitive the location features of travel guides are. When I buy a Lonely Planet guide, even as an eBook, at best I get a small, low-res map with numbers that cross-reference a list of labels that cross-reference the actual blurbs about these places! This is very slow and labor-intensive to scan. What I really want is a way to overlay the travel guide on top of my phone's Google Maps, so I can easily see my current location, any markers I've added like my hotel, and travel guides all in a single map. I want to be able to click a location marker to get the travel guide's blurb. Bonus points if I can easily combine different travel guides onto a single map (Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, etc.) One awesome thing this would allow is for people to create and curate special-interest travel guides. For example, the Puget Sound Business Journal maintains a list of attractions called "The Geek's Guide to Seattle" (http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2009/08/The_Geeks_Guide_to_Seattle_53810857.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2009/08/Th...). I would love to be able to search for these kinds of guides when I visit a new city and combine all of them into a single map. Sort of like Amazon Listmania lists, it would give you an opportunity to find like-minded people and what they think is cool. This is a lot like what KML allows in Google Earth (and maybe Google Maps too?) but very few people use this format and the workflows for using KML in this way don't seem to be very streamlined (for example, it appears you can "import" a KML file into maps, but you can't subscribe to one by URL). Established content providers for travel guides might not like this approach because it commoditizes them, but I think it would help the best content to ultimately win out.
- dikbrouwer 14y ago
  We tried to do something along these lines with journly.com. We've since pivoted away and are working on something else, but I agree it's still a problem that needs to be solved.
zachalexander 14y ago
This is great news. I've always appreciated Wikitravel, and only wished it caught on a bit more. With Wikimedia behind it I'm sure it will. Incidentally, my favorite use of Wikitravel has nothing to do with travel -- using it for a more candid or colorful take on a place than the drier treatment you'll find on its Wikipedia page. A Wikitravel page often leads with facts and images that IMHO are more interesting than stats, rankings, etymology, and history (which is how most Wikipedia place articles start).
tnuc 14y ago
Wikitravel suffered from having ads (commercial) while internet brands did just enough to keep the site running. For some reason applying innovation or new features to wikitravel just didn't happen. Wikipedia suffers from a lot of issues in terms of the constant edit wars, politics and rules. People who once edited on Wikitravel may run away from the politics of wikipedia. Wikipedia articles will no longer link to Wikitravel but to somewhere in wikipedia/media. Wikipedia will have slight edge on wikitravel. Innovation on wikipedia is mainly limited to pictures and text so any change isn't really. If innovation wasn't happening with Wikitravel it certainly isn't going to happen with Wikipedia owning it. The only real change with what has happened is that the content that once existed on wikitravel and couldn't be commercialized, can now be integrated in commercial applications/websites. Very soon the content will be put up on commercial sites whilst they collect further information for themselves. The top contenders at this stage are Google and Tripadvisor. I honestly can't see Lonely Planet getting their shit together, their parent company BBC don't have a clue. I can only hope that new innovation occurs and winner of this are the users.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Your entire post is invalidated by the following facts: 1. Wikipedia doesn't own squat. It is the WikiMedia Foundation that's involved here, not the English Wikipedia. 2. The WMF haven't purchased or taken over WikiTravel. WikiVoyage have voluntarily merged into a new travel project started by the WMF.
Revisor 14y ago
Spot the differences: 2007 - Internet Brands purchases Jelsoft, creator of the succesful vBulletin forum SW 2009 - IB starts selling vB 4.0 despite it being not finished and buggy. Customers are angry 2010 - Internet Brands sues Kier Darby, a lead developer of XenForo, who had previously served as a lead developer for Internet Brands' vBulletin, claiming that Kier had not returned confidential information from Internet Brands regarding the vBulletin software 2012 - After not having fulfilled the promises of vB4, IB introduces vB5. The beta version meets with horror and disgust of the current customers. No serious forum plans to upgrade. 2013 - The once mighty forum's future is as well as dead.
jvdh 14y ago
Wow, that's some bit of linkbaiting in that article, pointing to other techcrunch articles and a lot of pointing towards skift.com, nytimes and some other sites. The entire article talks about three different websites, and it contains 0 links to any of them. http://wikitravel.org http://wikitravel.org is the old one, http://wikivoyage.org http://wikivoyage.org is the newer one, and the last one is not decided upon yet, but the definitive source about that is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide

62 points by uladzislau 14y ago

I tend to be wary of contributing to crowdsourced projects run by for-profit companies for this reason, because they seem to have a tendency to go rogue once the benevolent management gets changed out, or it's sold to someone else. Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative. Since then, I contribute only to nonprofits that seem to have some long-term credibility with their data licensing and governance, such as Wikipedia, Musicbrainz, and OpenStreetMap. In principle I'd contribute to a for-profit if it were really convincing about its long-term good faith (and provided data export), but the bar is high.

DrJokepu 14y ago
How about StackOverflow? Even though it's ran by a for-profit entity, all user-provided content is licensed as Creative Commons and they offer regular database dumps for download.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Actually yes, that's a good example; not sure why I didn't think of it. They run the community well, and the license and data dumps are a sufficient insurance policy against any kind of change in that (which I'd only expect if they were bought out).
1veteran 14y ago
IMDB was originally crowsourced. Started on Usenet. Can anyone assert ownership over and derive commercial benefit from a data source that traces its origins to volunteer contributors? What would be legally required to do that?
duskwuff 14y ago
> My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative. What is it with lyric sites and ringtone ads? LyricWiki went the same way.
- songmeanings 14y ago
  Running a lyrics site is a tricky thing. Yes, there is a ton of traffic because it's essentially built for SEO. But think about the demographics who view lyrics. Typically very young and without a credit card. Translation: advertising == lower CPMs than other demographics. So lyric sites have to supplement traditional banners with, well, those ringtone ads. In the case of SongMeanings, we're doing ringtone ads because our licensing agreements are very expensive. It's not cheap doing what we're doing. We're proud to be licensed, sure, but again, it's very expensive. Heads up -- if you become a member at SongMeanings, you'll actually see fewer advertisements. It's our way of saying thanks to loyal users. I'm certainly open ears to suggestions on how to pay for licensing while not doing ringtone adverts. Or any other suggestions on how to improve SM, too. Mike SongMeanings
listic 14y ago
The sad thing is, even non-profits are not guaranteed to stay that way indefinitely. See how CouchSurfing turned into B-Corporation after being denied their 501(c)(3) charity status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation They were a non-profit, for the first 8 years.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Huh, I didn't even realize that was possible. Seems like quite a bait-and-switch to build up a community under the guise of a nonprofit, and then take it for-profit afterwards.

pault 14y ago

Hmm, good to know. I work remotely and travel quite a bit, and wikitravel has always been the first place I check when I land in a new place. Updating bookmarks to http://en.wikivoyage.org http://en.wikivoyage.org

haberman 14y ago

I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if it's on the way to something else. Planning a travel itinerary is all about clustering attractions so that you see lots of cool stuff without wasting too much time in transit. Given this, it amazes me how primitive the location features of travel guides are. When I buy a Lonely Planet guide, even as an eBook, at best I get a small, low-res map with numbers that cross-reference a list of labels that cross-reference the actual blurbs about these places! This is very slow and labor-intensive to scan. What I really want is a way to overlay the travel guide on top of my phone's Google Maps, so I can easily see my current location, any markers I've added like my hotel, and travel guides all in a single map. I want to be able to click a location marker to get the travel guide's blurb. Bonus points if I can easily combine different travel guides onto a single map (Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, etc.) One awesome thing this would allow is for people to create and curate special-interest travel guides. For example, the Puget Sound Business Journal maintains a list of attractions called "The Geek's Guide to Seattle" (http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2009/08/The_Geeks_Guide_to_Seattle_53810857.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2009/08/Th...). I would love to be able to search for these kinds of guides when I visit a new city and combine all of them into a single map. Sort of like Amazon Listmania lists, it would give you an opportunity to find like-minded people and what they think is cool. This is a lot like what KML allows in Google Earth (and maybe Google Maps too?) but very few people use this format and the workflows for using KML in this way don't seem to be very streamlined (for example, it appears you can "import" a KML file into maps, but you can't subscribe to one by URL). Established content providers for travel guides might not like this approach because it commoditizes them, but I think it would help the best content to ultimately win out.

dikbrouwer 14y ago
We tried to do something along these lines with journly.com. We've since pivoted away and are working on something else, but I agree it's still a problem that needs to be solved.

zachalexander 14y ago

This is great news. I've always appreciated Wikitravel, and only wished it caught on a bit more. With Wikimedia behind it I'm sure it will. Incidentally, my favorite use of Wikitravel has nothing to do with travel -- using it for a more candid or colorful take on a place than the drier treatment you'll find on its Wikipedia page. A Wikitravel page often leads with facts and images that IMHO are more interesting than stats, rankings, etymology, and history (which is how most Wikipedia place articles start).

tnuc 14y ago

Wikitravel suffered from having ads (commercial) while internet brands did just enough to keep the site running. For some reason applying innovation or new features to wikitravel just didn't happen. Wikipedia suffers from a lot of issues in terms of the constant edit wars, politics and rules. People who once edited on Wikitravel may run away from the politics of wikipedia. Wikipedia articles will no longer link to Wikitravel but to somewhere in wikipedia/media. Wikipedia will have slight edge on wikitravel. Innovation on wikipedia is mainly limited to pictures and text so any change isn't really. If innovation wasn't happening with Wikitravel it certainly isn't going to happen with Wikipedia owning it. The only real change with what has happened is that the content that once existed on wikitravel and couldn't be commercialized, can now be integrated in commercial applications/websites. Very soon the content will be put up on commercial sites whilst they collect further information for themselves. The top contenders at this stage are Google and Tripadvisor. I honestly can't see Lonely Planet getting their shit together, their parent company BBC don't have a clue. I can only hope that new innovation occurs and winner of this are the users.

chris_wot 14y ago
Your entire post is invalidated by the following facts: 1. Wikipedia doesn't own squat. It is the WikiMedia Foundation that's involved here, not the English Wikipedia. 2. The WMF haven't purchased or taken over WikiTravel. WikiVoyage have voluntarily merged into a new travel project started by the WMF.

Revisor 14y ago

Spot the differences: 2007 - Internet Brands purchases Jelsoft, creator of the succesful vBulletin forum SW 2009 - IB starts selling vB 4.0 despite it being not finished and buggy. Customers are angry 2010 - Internet Brands sues Kier Darby, a lead developer of XenForo, who had previously served as a lead developer for Internet Brands' vBulletin, claiming that Kier had not returned confidential information from Internet Brands regarding the vBulletin software 2012 - After not having fulfilled the promises of vB4, IB introduces vB5. The beta version meets with horror and disgust of the current customers. No serious forum plans to upgrade. 2013 - The once mighty forum's future is as well as dead.

jvdh 14y ago

Wow, that's some bit of linkbaiting in that article, pointing to other techcrunch articles and a lot of pointing towards skift.com, nytimes and some other sites. The entire article talks about three different websites, and it contains 0 links to any of them. http://wikitravel.org http://wikitravel.org is the old one, http://wikivoyage.org http://wikivoyage.org is the newer one, and the last one is not decided upon yet, but the definitive source about that is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide