On the same day taxpayers gave millions to Google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autonomous-waymo/waymo-sa...
Google gives Wikimedia millions
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#12I used to contribute heavily to Wikipedia in 2007-08 and intermittently since, however recently it has become an absolute nightmare to contribute. Creating a missing article almost immediately is met with an admin nominating it for deletion for something like “notability”, the catch-all term for “I personally don’t care about this topic, and if it was important someone would have made it already.” If you survive dele…
As Wikipedia became more popular, it also started attracting people and companies who try to use it for writing promotional articles on themselves with little to no basis in reality.
The notability requirement helps ensure that articles are accurate and can be verified with trustworthy sources. A topic only needs 2 trustworthy sources for an article, and if it doesn't meet that bar, then the topic is probably better suited for a personal blog than a Wikipedia article.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#13Don't forget that Google once tried to kill Wikipedia with their own proprietary project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ). Really happy that was a failure.
That shareholders don't really own Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it's entirely 'better' than it would be otherwise.
As the top commenter noted, there are problems.
Though it would be sad if a commercial entity put Wikipedia 'out of business' per say, I think 'more variety' in this space would be welcome.
I'd have no problem looking to different sources for a more authoritative source of information.
For example, maybe Unis get together to publish their own wikis on more academic subjects. Maybe companies can have a Wiki to make their own articles about their own articles (I understand they have web sites for that, but the Wiki format is different).
More variety would generally be better not worse.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#14I hope this reduces the "we need donations" banner to an extent. I contribute changes whenever I can, so seeing that banner each and every time is a bit frustrating.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#15Don't forget that Google once tried to kill Wikipedia with their own proprietary project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ). Really happy that was a failure.
That shareholders don't really own Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it's entirely 'better' than it would be otherwise. As the top commenter noted, there are problems. Though it would be sad if a commercial entity put Wikipedia 'out of business' per say, I think 'more variety' in this space would be welcome. I'd have no problem looking to different sources for a more authoritative source of information. For example,…
> ...For example, maybe Unis get together to publish their own wikis on more academic subjects. ...
There's nothing stopping them from doing this. Wikis are actually a nice example of a federated standard, with good support for "InterWiki" cross-linking, well-understood naming conventions (thanks to Wikipedia) for encyclopedia-like articles, and open licensing via CC-BY-SA.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#16Don't forget that Google once tried to kill Wikipedia with their own proprietary project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ). Really happy that was a failure.
Is it impossible to attempt to innovate in a space without being accused of trying to kill the space's current leader?
(googler, but had never even heard of knol until now)
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#17Please change the source to this: https://blog.google/products/search/expanding-knowledge-acce...
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#18I used to contribute heavily to Wikipedia in 2007-08 and intermittently since, however recently it has become an absolute nightmare to contribute. Creating a missing article almost immediately is met with an admin nominating it for deletion for something like “notability”, the catch-all term for “I personally don’t care about this topic, and if it was important someone would have made it already.” If you survive dele…
Wikipedia has finite resources that cost money. So they have to restrict it to hosting articles that will have some level of audience.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#19Don't forget that Google once tried to kill Wikipedia with their own proprietary project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ). Really happy that was a failure.
And shuttered Freebase. Similarly, Apple used Openstreetmap to get their mapping effort off the ground and then didn't contribute back. I understand the profit motive for both of them, but it still rubs me the wrong way.
AIUI, Freebase was not "shuttered" - it was used to seed Wikidata, a Wikipedia sister project which makes its data available under permissive CC0 licensing.
Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions
#20On the same day taxpayers gave millions to Google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autonomous-waymo/waymo-sa...
8 million is peanuts compared to the cost that self-driving has had for google and that cost will only increase until successful, and if that happens it will save thousands of lives (mostly because it can't get drunk, it's mood-less and respects speed limits)