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Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

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Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#31

Post by kenrick95 »

OJFord wrote: post #10

Great, just a shame it isn't more 'tradititionally' transparent & democratised IMO. Claims no custom contracts, but is enterprise sales team contact us anyway, for example. .proto on GitHub is nice, but no pricing, no public docs? This is probably great for Wikimedia coffers, but at the headline I hoped for new/improved Wikidata; instead it's.. different bordering on 'don't care'.

I guess the article are targeted towards general public, not technical people

I found this page which has more technical details on what it actually is: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise

Also found out that it is open source: https://github.com/wikimedia/OKAPI

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#32

Post by brokensegue »

bigtones wrote: post #6
riku_iki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this project was pushed by Google, to make importing wiki data to their knowledge graph more convenient for them.

Google already have their own knowledge graph that is much bigger than the Wikipedia graph, and they already scrape every Wikipedia page daily so they don't need a Wikipedia API.

wikipedia is a large input into their knowledge graph

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#33

Post by markdown »

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.

Google has already set a precedent by agreeing to pay massive corporations for news. If they're willing to do that, why shouldn't they pay WikiMedia for all the content they use?

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#34

Post by 29athrowaway »

shinkim0914 wrote: post #30

If this sets them on a self-sustaining path without having to rely on running highly conspicuous donation campaigns on Wikipedia, I think that's a wonderful thing.

Not so fast.

Imagine Wikimedia Enterprise becomes the #1 source of revenue for Wikimedia. Shortly after, people will see that Wikimedia is doing OK and become reluctant to open their wallets and donate.

Then, the top Wikimedia Enterprise customers will acquire leverage over Wikimedia and try to get Wikipedia curated to their convenience. Wikipedia articles will start being indistinguishable from advertisement.

Governments will intervene and want their share of influence too.

Top volunteers will start asking to be paid, many others will leave, some others will become critics of the project.

People will start being skeptical of Wikipedia because of their biased editorial line and then the project will be declared a failure, once everyone is angry and a beautiful project is torn apart by greed.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#35

Post by mrkramer »

robjan wrote: post #28
mrkramer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Wikipedia offers basic information about some topic it's not like you are about to get deep insight unless you buy a book. And I bet Wikipedia generated millions of book sales like I said people who read an article from Wikipedia and went to Amazon or Google to search for a book.

If Wikipedia starts to receive commission for selling books the incentive changes from recommending the best book to the one who pays then the most

It's not about "who pays the most" it's about the best book. Book authors compete against each other to write the best book and therefore generate more sales.

Imagine reading an article from Wikipedia and at the end of the article it says "If you want to learn more about this topic take a look at our recommended books" and link leads you to dedicated page which lists let's say top 20 most popular books about that topic.

It can even replace Goodreads in a sense that Wikipedia community can rate, review and recommend books to each other.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#36

Post by notatoad »

jlawer wrote: post #11
theamk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google scraping your sites is a bad thing, you want to set "nosnippet" tags on your page [0]. If Google scraping your sites is a good thing, then why are you complaining? I hope Google never starts paying for the links. Once there is a precedent, this becomes an effective blocker for the new search engines, visualizers, and other exciting web search startups. A new search engine startup is not going to be able to…

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"

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#37

Post by Clewza313 »

judge2020 wrote: post #14
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.

Well, they are already a big donor: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2019-annu... > Google Matching Gifts Program

If you work at Google, they will 1:1 match donations to virtually any non-profit, plus there's various charity drives where employees get to donate company money. So the match program can become a huge donor just off random Googlers donating.

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#38

Post by ckoerner »

29athrowaway wrote: post #34
shinkim0914 wrote: post #30

If this sets them on a self-sustaining path without having to rely on running highly conspicuous donation campaigns on Wikipedia, I think that's a wonderful thing.

Not so fast. Imagine Wikimedia Enterprise becomes the #1 source of revenue for Wikimedia. Shortly after, people will see that Wikimedia is doing OK and become reluctant to open their wallets and donate. Then, the top Wikimedia Enterprise customers will acquire leverage over Wikimedia and try to get Wikipedia curated to their convenience. Wikipedia articles will start being indistinguishable from advertisement. Govern…

The Foundation has already considered this. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ#How...

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#39

Post by ckoerner »

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.

There’s an SLA involved in this service. Business people like SLAs. :)

Re: Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API

#40

Post by karmasimida »

hienyimba wrote: post #3

Over time, I believe more public non-profit sites will introduce this. Then for-profit sites. Until Google eventually pays for most of the valuable content it gets today for free. I own multiple sites where I and my users work to produce valuable data (e.g “so so company reviews”, “Is tenet on Disney” and other data of that kind). And what does Google do? Scrap it all and display it on their page. As a result, the pa…

You can actually download the whole wikipedia if you like.
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