3 ms·

I occasionally check in on and modify the WikiTravel page for Singapore (e.g. to warn about scammy shops here), and when I heard about the impending launch of W

I occasionally check in on and modify the WikiTravel page for Singapore (e.g. to warn about scammy shops here), and when I heard about the impending launch of WikiVoyage, I switched over right away. It seemed odd to me that an open, collaborative resource like WikiTravel should be owned by a profit-driven entity that had acquired it and was trying to monetise it. The lawsuit from that entity was the rotten cherry on the top. Congratulations to Wikimedia, the WikiVoyage team, and jpatokal (and thanks for making the Singapore article so comprehensive and accurate). I hope the migration is smooth and the SEO quickly works itself out in WV's favour. I for one will be linking to it whenever I have the opportunity.

mmahemoff 14y ago
"open, collaborative resource like WikiTravel should be owned by a profit-driven entity that had acquired it and was trying to monetise it" Same could be said of StackOverflow and Github (Stack and Git weren't acquired, but are both VC-funded). Many wikis are profit-driven too. Open collaboration takes time and resources. Wikipedia shows it can be achieved as a non-profit, but I don't think it's surprising that it can be achieved by a commercial organisation too, as long as its open about it and respectful of contributions.
jpatokal 14y ago
Open, collaborative resources and being commercial aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Fundamentally, open content isn't that different from open source, and while it's not easy to monetize free things without being evil, it's certainly possible: see eg. Red Hat. And WikiHow (http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page) is a great example of how you can run a for-profit wiki without selling out to the dark side, see eg. their About page: http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow But you do need a long-term perspective and a genuine rapport with the community, which is why 'traditional' companies taking over open source projects and adopting corporate command-and-conquer strategies to run them tend to crash and burn. Oracle and the trail of devastation they've wreaked with OpenOffice and MySQL is probably the canonical example, and Internet Brands is their open content equivalent. And oh, thanks for the thanks ;)
- creamyhorror 14y ago
  It's certainly possible, as you said, but it takes a philosophically aligned company to do it, and those are a rare breed indeed - very much the exception to the norm. By default I'd assume any traditional profit-oriented company that acquires an open resource to be likely to mess things up as it tries to extract revenue. (This is directed at @mmahemoff too - StackOverflow is a good counterexample, but again an exception.) I look forward to location-enabled WV guides/maps on mobile, if that ever becomes available - that would be amazingly useful. I'm often tempted to look towards tourist-oriented functionality in my own web/app project, but would like it if the market winner turned out to be an open resource rather than a crowdsourced-yet-profit-driven one. 'welcome :)

mmahemoff 14y ago

"open, collaborative resource like WikiTravel should be owned by a profit-driven entity that had acquired it and was trying to monetise it" Same could be said of StackOverflow and Github (Stack and Git weren't acquired, but are both VC-funded). Many wikis are profit-driven too. Open collaboration takes time and resources. Wikipedia shows it can be achieved as a non-profit, but I don't think it's surprising that it can be achieved by a commercial organisation too, as long as its open about it and respectful of contributions.

jpatokal 14y ago

Open, collaborative resources and being commercial aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Fundamentally, open content isn't that different from open source, and while it's not easy to monetize free things without being evil, it's certainly possible: see eg. Red Hat. And WikiHow (http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page) is a great example of how you can run a for-profit wiki without selling out to the dark side, see eg. their About page: http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow But you do need a long-term perspective and a genuine rapport with the community, which is why 'traditional' companies taking over open source projects and adopting corporate command-and-conquer strategies to run them tend to crash and burn. Oracle and the trail of devastation they've wreaked with OpenOffice and MySQL is probably the canonical example, and Internet Brands is their open content equivalent. And oh, thanks for the thanks ;)

creamyhorror 14y ago
It's certainly possible, as you said, but it takes a philosophically aligned company to do it, and those are a rare breed indeed - very much the exception to the norm. By default I'd assume any traditional profit-oriented company that acquires an open resource to be likely to mess things up as it tries to extract revenue. (This is directed at @mmahemoff too - StackOverflow is a good counterexample, but again an exception.) I look forward to location-enabled WV guides/maps on mobile, if that ever becomes available - that would be amazingly useful. I'm often tempted to look towards tourist-oriented functionality in my own web/app project, but would like it if the market winner turned out to be an open resource rather than a crowdsourced-yet-profit-driven one. 'welcome :)