61–70 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making money off volunteers tends to make those volunteers disappear. Restricting themselves to charity may help, but it'll be an endless debate that will hurt them a lot.
People still volunteer to help at the Olympics, but I suspect you're right that adding ads would cause people to leave the community
Really!?
Seriously, this level of attention doesn't seem to be rational anymore. The guy is trying to build a business that creates jobs, and hes putting some of his own capital on the line to do it. Thats the most important point here - he's making jobs. The guy isnt selling blood diamonds or anything, at worst he's gaming a search engine. Sure, he's using some wikipedia content to run some tests. But, haven't the same peopl…
Creating jobs by doing a bad thing to a large number of others is not a net social good. There are plenty of other problems that good software engineers should be working on, rather than spamming up the internet for the benefit of a company that will ultimately funnel a decent percentage of its generated wealth to a professional troll. If it ever gets to the point where Calacanis gets a big exit, business magazine/bl…
Currently he has to revise and update the feature set to create boom bust cycles in visitor upswings..and yet long term they only amount to a few percentage points in growth..
I'd be curious to know what the position of Mahalo's investor's are in this debacle? Are they aware of what they're investing in? (for reference, Mahalo's investors include Mark Moritz, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and Ted Leonsis) I'd be willing to setup a scraper site this weekend if they want to give me money too.
He seems to follow the wikipedia licence.
Actually, no he doesn’t. Just linking back to the Wikipedia page is insufficient. To whit: > You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform. [...] You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform. [...] If Y…
I wonder does the DCMA takedown rules apply here?
I am disappointed by the degree to which people are piling on here. When you run a user generated content site, it's common to seed it any legal way you can at first. As long as Jason is following the GFDL, I don't see a problem with using Wikipedia content to kickstart his community and get traction.
The two main issues with all of these scraped pages is that a) Jason recently boasted how Wikipedia was, in his words, simply a "free for all" (thus leaving the impression that he feels that his site was therefore better, being moderated), and b) that his pages were all UGC built by "his" users, not bots.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People still volunteer to help at the Olympics, but I suspect you're right that adding ads would cause people to leave the community
> People still volunteer to help at the Olympics Really!?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wales could put three Google text ads on the front page and finance the entire operation.
Really? My experience with Wikipedia is that topic pages are frequently the first result in Google so I don't think I've seen the homepage in at least a year.
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No, they're so that you can maintain your cool attitude in the face of extreme danger. (Because you can't see it).
Actually at one point they are described as hiding things that might disturb you too (massive massive hitchikers fan :-))
I am disappointed by the degree to which people are piling on here. When you run a user generated content site, it's common to seed it any legal way you can at first. As long as Jason is following the GFDL, I don't see a problem with using Wikipedia content to kickstart his community and get traction.
He's not kickstarting it with Wikipedia. Mahalo is not new. The two main issues with all of these scraped pages is that a) Jason recently boasted how Wikipedia was, in his words, simply a "free for all" (thus leaving the impression that he feels that his site was therefore better, being moderated), and b) that his pages were all UGC built by "his" users, not bots.
He's not kickstarting it with Wikipedia. Mahalo is not new.
This isn't about age, this is about size and activity of user base. Again, I can empathize with anyone trying to bootstrap a UGC business. You practically have to seed it with content.
The two main issues with all of these scraped pages is that a) Jason recently boasted how Wikipedia was, in his words, simply a "free for all" (thus leaving the impression that he feels that his site was therefore better, being moderated), and b) that his pages were all UGC built by "his" users, not bots.
While both of these are certainly reasons why you may personally find his use of Wikipedia's content distasteful, neither of them rise to the level of being "stealing," ban-worthy, or even particularly unethical assuming that he's in compliance with the appropriate license.