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Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

wikimediafoundation.org

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

#31

Post by 20after4 »

Nebasuke wrote: post #8
endisneigh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

What I'd like to see happen (though it's extremely unlikely) would be to rely less on emotionally charged banners thanks to the new revenue provided by the enterprise product.

But the current fundraising strategy works extremely well so I really can't see it changing it at all.

Full disclosure: Until very recently I was employed by Wikimedia as a Release Engineer. I was there for 7 years, however, I left for a new opportunity in February of this year.

I am not a fan of the direction the organization seems to be headed. During the past few years there has been rapid growth and increased corporate culture. Seems to be kind of similar to what happened with the Mozilla foundation and that really hasn't worked out well for them so I am not entirely optimistic about the future of Wikipedia and the free knowledge movement in general.

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

#32

Post by 20after4 »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #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…

This is accurate. It isn't a big money grab for wikimedia nor does it really substantially change things for anyone. There is a constant drive for growth at Wikimedia and many of the concerns expressed in this thread are valid but Wikipedia Enterprise doesn't represent a threat to the freedom of Wikipedia.

It really just represents a formalized way for commercial entities to donate to the foundation while accounting for it in their budget as a service rather than a charitable donation. It makes total sense if your business depends on Wikipedia in some way then you should contribute to it's continued existence. This is a totally sensible way to do that.

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

#33

Post by robonerd »

exolymph wrote: post #30

At this point, Wikimedia the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia the open-source information project. The latter generates all the goodwill and the former fucks around doing vanity projects with the ensuing resources. What's that pithy "law" about eventually any organization existing simply to perpetuate itself and serve the insiders who work there, rather than further its mission? Ironically what came to mind is…

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

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

#34

Post by andrepd »

echelon wrote: post #29
dmarchand90 wrote: post #2

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.

Time to fork it. It's a wiki with open licensed content and a bloated stack that could easily be hosted on pared down infra and staffing. Fork it and remove the largesse.

Mate, if there's one thing Wikipedia isn't is bloated. It serves one of the biggest websites on the internet with a fraction of the infrastructure of similar sites.

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

#36

Post by onphonenow »

exolymph wrote: post #30

At this point, Wikimedia the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia the open-source information project. The latter generates all the goodwill and the former fucks around doing vanity projects with the ensuing resources. What's that pithy "law" about eventually any organization existing simply to perpetuate itself and serve the insiders who work there, rather than further its mission? Ironically what came to mind is…

I think they are doing 100M+ per year to run the servers, manage PR / legal / HR issues.

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

#37

Post by jerry1979 »

flipbrad wrote: post #24
dmarchand90 wrote: post #2

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.

Have a read of this: https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay... ?

So summarize, are they more-or-less capping their APIs and charging for content they serve beyond that cap?

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

#38

Post by nickvincent »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #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…

Yeah, I think this is spot on. The version of WMF Enterprise being described here is formalizing / codifying an informal relationship that already existed (Google using Wikipedia content all over the place, and making various one-off donations to WMF), and as you say, formalizing has benefits for both parties! Certainly ways this could have some long-term negative impacts, but WMF is obviously thinking pretty hard about mitigations, it seems.

The discussion linked in a comment above (https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay...) also provides a pretty nice FAQ to the negative responses.

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

#39

Post by david_allison »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #35

OK, can anyone explain succinctly what "Wikimedia Enteprise" actually is, as a product? It is described as a product. What does it do? The press release isn't helping me much.

https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/ - an API to access Wikimedia content:

* Snapshots of a Wikimedia project - updated daily

* On-demand access to articles

* Hook into a stream of changes to articles

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

#40

Post by exolymph »

onphonenow wrote: post #36
exolymph wrote: post #30

At this point, Wikimedia the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia the open-source information project. The latter generates all the goodwill and the former fucks around doing vanity projects with the ensuing resources. What's that pithy "law" about eventually any organization existing simply to perpetuate itself and serve the insiders who work there, rather than further its mission? Ironically what came to mind is…

I think they are doing 100M+ per year to run the servers, manage PR / legal / HR issues.

Sure. I was def exaggerating for effect — there does need to be an org running this project and as that org Wikimedia also does good things. But as with Mozilla, the decision-makers are too distracted by flavor-of-the-week bullshit.
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