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Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

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Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#51

Post by patmorgan23 »

ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

I haven't loom at the details, but a free usage tier with relatively low limits so hobbiest can use it would be acceptable. If you're pulling a lot of data out of a project like wikipedia you would at least be paying to keep the servers running.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#52

Post by logicchains »

hkai wrote: post #50
ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

The altruistic model seems to be doing not that well. The number of editors peaked in 2007 and has been going down since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...

Going by the complains people on this site have about editing wikipedia, it's not funding that's driving people away, it's the Stack-Overflow-like situation where certain editors are extremely quick to delete content and resist the submission of new content.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#53

Post by esturk »

hkai wrote: post #50
ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

The altruistic model seems to be doing not that well. The number of editors peaked in 2007 and has been going down since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...

Maybe people have moved on to wikia (now called fandom) where you can focus on a specific series or topic. The number of users seem to heavily favor fandom too.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#54

Post by watchdogtimer »

notatoad wrote: post #36
jlawer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one issue I see with this is it is always Opt Out. I feel that google really should be lining up partners to opt-in. While I am sure there is reasons why Google believe they have the right (and a good case can be made), it always feels slightly entitled to just assume that people are OK with this being done to their content. That being said, of all the sources, Wikipedia actively license their content in such a w…

if you post information publicly on the internet, google is entitled to scrape it. you've opted in by publishing it. if you want to specifically exclude one entity from accessing information that you've posted for anybody to see, i'm not sure how there's a way that could be "opt-in"

You could do this using a robots.txt file (assuming the scraper obeys it, of course).

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#55

Post by cush »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #51
ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

I haven't loom at the details, but a free usage tier with relatively low limits so hobbiest can use it would be acceptable. If you're pulling a lot of data out of a project like wikipedia you would at least be paying to keep the servers running.

The point is that's not an option. Everyone should get the public tier. And if you tried to pull a lot of data, you'd get throttled.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#56

Post by willcipriano »

theamk wrote: post #47
willcipriano wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do, don't you remember those FBI notices in the movies? Oh I'm sorry I don't have the ability to look for that, my system is only equipped to look for that specific string. > And when you sign up for netflix or cable tv, there is an agreement you accept that you are not going to pirate. Again my system doesn't read the TOS, does Googles? > Remember, the nosnippet does not have to be on every page -- you can pu…

I think you are trying to claim that Google goes further than DVD or netflix, but this analogy is really not working for you. DVDs have technological protection as well -- the CSS[0] system. So yes, if you don't want your movie to be pirated you need to explicitly enable this. This was probably harder than creating robots.txt too, there were NDAs and stuff involved. The netflix requires logging in to access the conte…

The point is it doesn't matter how hard or how easy it is, Google has no entitlement to anyone else's labor or content and if they post content to their website in violation of copyright I don't think "he didn't say the magic word that stops us from stealing content" is a defence any reasonable judge should entertain.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#57

Post by blt »

hkai wrote: post #50
ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

The altruistic model seems to be doing not that well. The number of editors peaked in 2007 and has been going down since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...

Is it possible that this effect is due to a lot of "low-hanging fruit" articles being essentially complete? Back in '07 there were a lot more empty pages to fill on topics of broad interest.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#58

Post by m463 »

hkai wrote: post #50
ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

The altruistic model seems to be doing not that well. The number of editors peaked in 2007 and has been going down since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...

Maybe I should listen instead of problem solving, but....

Maybe they could alternate their fundraising banners with "contribute to an article" campaigns?

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#59

Post by anaganisk »

ROARosen wrote: post #44

With all due respect to Wikipedia for what it is, I believe their success is partly because of the 'altruistic' nature of their model. Sure, they should seek donations from huge companies like Google - which make tons of money off of their data - for the services they provide, but I feel like locking down the 'better' api to the public is not the way to go about it. It's just too often that a commercial offering just…

> The new API is an opt-in product, meaning that everyone (including those companies) can continue to use the current publicly-available tools at no cost and no restriction. The ability to freely access the knowledge across all Wikimedia projects remains unaffected–it is core to our mission.

Not sure what you have to worry about.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#60

Post by m463 »

mrkramer wrote: post #9

Why would Google pay for this when they already crawled and are crawling whole Wikipedia and have complete index of it? Better way for Wikipedia to earn extra revenue are affiliate links. A lot of people when they read and learn about some topic go to Amazon and buy a book about that topic. Wikipedia could embed book affiliate links and earn commission from book sales.

That will lead to many unexpected, possibly perverse, incentives.
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