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Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

wikimediafoundation.org

11–20 of 133 posts

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#11
Google is their first customer, and they're giving IA free access. And what they're buying let's them

>detect vandalism or important updates at the article level.

So it gives them a better ability to control a Wikipedia page's content?

Ostensibly both want the unlimited retreivals, but this entire program seems suspicious.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s unnecessary and brings outside influences that could corrupt it’s stated goals

You can be corrupt without having a lot of money. There are countless examples of such. I applaud the their moves. The more money they have, the more likely they are to exist in perpetuity. Needlessly limiting their revenue isn’t going to solve anything.

>Needlessly limiting their revenue isn’t going to solve anything.

But they've done exactly that since day 1 by refusing to show any ads.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#13

I really don't like this. The foundation already has many multiples more money than it needs to cover its core goal: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais... This can, at best, be useless, at worst, corrupt its mission to serve corporations. There used to be an expression "don't fix what ain't broke." I feel like this old maxim is now completely ignored.

Why would an organization limit the amount of money they have?

In this case, it strongly incentivizes them to provide poor service to non-paying, non-enterprise API users. Wikimedia Enterprise apparently generates daily snapshots for paying customers[1]. The general public only gets them twice a month[2]. Wikimedia's goal should be to serve the public.

[1]: https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/docs/snapshot/ [2]: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s unnecessary and brings outside influences that could corrupt it’s stated goals

You can be corrupt without having a lot of money. There are countless examples of such. I applaud the their moves. The more money they have, the more likely they are to exist in perpetuity. Needlessly limiting their revenue isn’t going to solve anything.

It’s good in the way that a gym that sells soda and ice cream is running a good business.

They’ll definitely see short term profit gains. But they’re losing sight of their original goals and risk losing their long term market.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would an organization limit the amount of money they have?

Because it’s unnecessary and brings outside influences that could corrupt it’s stated goals

Some people just don't have enough. For them it is necessary. The only thing that is sad is that is difficult to explain to a child that wiki{m,p}edia is just another "news" outlet and everything there shall be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be corrupt without having a lot of money. There are countless examples of such. I applaud the their moves. The more money they have, the more likely they are to exist in perpetuity. Needlessly limiting their revenue isn’t going to solve anything.

>Needlessly limiting their revenue isn’t going to solve anything. But they've done exactly that since day 1 by refusing to show any ads.

Not exactly, because ads would result in people not donating and go against their mission. Forming into Wikimedia Enterprise allows them to get enterprise revenue without compromising the experience of reading the content

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit worse than that though. Why does an organisation that has more than enough money to achieve its current and long term goals, appeal to their site visitors that they really need more money? The ads are in my opinion dishonest and emotionally manipulative, and have actively put me off supporting Wikimedia as a foundation.

Goals can be expanded to infinity, uncertainty and inflation is always a thing, thus the need to diversify revenue streams to ensure survival and sustainability.

>Goals can be expanded to infinity

And thus diluting and losing sight of their original goals. This isn't a corporation driven inherently by eternal desire for more profit.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goals can be expanded to infinity, uncertainty and inflation is always a thing, thus the need to diversify revenue streams to ensure survival and sustainability.

>Goals can be expanded to infinity And thus diluting and losing sight of their original goals. This isn't a corporation driven inherently by eternal desire for more profit.

Sure, but goals change as the world does.

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#19
Google already scrapes and utilizes all of Wikipedia's contents to use in its "knowledge graph", and donates a substantial amount to the WMF in return. This simply formalizes the financial agreement and moves the data exchange to an api that is presumably more convenient and less resource intensive for both parties, while offering the same access for any other enterprise customer (and the internet archive gets it for free).

This seems like a good idea for both the WMF and the open internet.

(Contrary to what seem to be a lot of early knee-jerk negative responses in this thread - I suspect I'm seeing a bit of "early-thread contrarian dynamic")

Re: Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

#20

Google is their first customer, and they're giving IA free access. And what they're buying let's them >detect vandalism or important updates at the article level. So it gives them a better ability to control a Wikipedia page's content? Ostensibly both want the unlimited retreivals, but this entire program seems suspicious.

Read it again, it gives them quicker notification that an article has been vandalized/changed in an important way by normal editors, it doesn't give them any special control over any page's content.
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