[HN Gopher] Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet A...
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Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first
customers
Author : abbe98
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-06-21 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wikimediafoundation.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (wikimediafoundation.org)
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why would an organization limit the amount of money they have?
| markvdb wrote:
| Been there, done that. It detracts from the scope.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Because it's unnecessary and brings outside influences that
| could corrupt it's stated goals
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| usrusr wrote:
| The more money Wikimedia has, the less likely it gets
| that they keep recurring expenses in a sustainable range.
|
| And you can be corrupt without money, true. But corrupt
| people tend to avoid organisations that don't have a lot
| of money, they all try to work where the money is. And
| the do-gooders that are the other group of people likely
| to push into an org like Wikimedia tend to be
| particularly defenseless against the first kind.
| wpietri wrote:
| > The more money they have, the more likely they are to
| exist in perpetuity.
|
| I think the opposite is true. Consider examples like
| broke lottery winners, the resource curse [1], and the
| long history of startups getting lots of money and then
| cratering, from Webvan to WeWork.
|
| With Wikipedia in particular, I'm concerned that the more
| money there is, the more attractive it is to people who
| want to be near large streams of money for various
| reasons, including living large and diverting money to
| their own friends, pet projects, and grand visions. I'm
| also concerned that even if they are able to avoid those
| people entirely, large budgets pose other risks,
| including inflexibility in downturns, which I think
| increase the odds of a setback turning into a full
| collapse.
|
| Corruption, like cancer, is statistically inevitable for
| organizations. The only question is whether they have the
| right mechanisms to detect and exercise the tumors when
| they're small. But the scrappier Wikipedia stays, the
| less we have to worry about that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
| marcinzm wrote:
| >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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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
| grapeskin wrote:
| 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.
| hulitu wrote:
| 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.
| Nebasuke wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but goals change as the world does.
| robonerd wrote:
| Wikipedia tells me the last time a new Wikimedia project
| was launched was Wikidata, 10 years ago in 2012.
| 20after4 wrote:
| 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.
| greyface- wrote:
| 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/
| skybrian wrote:
| With alternative sources of revenue, maybe there could be less
| nagging during the yearly donation drive?
| flipbrad wrote:
| Have a read of this: https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedi
| a_Enterprise/Essay...?
| jerry1979 wrote:
| So summarize, are they more-or-less capping their APIs and
| charging for content they serve beyond that cap?
| danuker wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| > access to Wikimedia content by reusers is currently
| achieved through three broad means: Scraping of web pages;
| data dumps; and APIs. These services are provided freely to
| all reusers of Wikimedia content. They are and will remain
| free, libre and gratis, to everyone.
|
| > What many of the largest commercial technology
| organizations require in order to effectively utilize
| Wikimedia content goes beyond what we currently provide.
| echelon wrote:
| 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.
| andrepd wrote:
| 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.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Wikimedia is certainly bloated. They're spending upwards of
| $100 million a year.
| mhh__ wrote:
| How much is the correct amount for a site that serves
| such a huge amount of the internet?
| dougb5 wrote:
| Google spent nearly 2000 times that, and a great deal of
| its own value to the world is from indexing Wikipedia.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| why haven't you done it already?
| echelon wrote:
| You laugh, but I actually did! [1]
|
| Wikimedia was deleting all the video game guide content
| from their wikibooks project for god knows what reason.
|
| I took it over and moved it to my existing wiki,
| https://strategywiki.org
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Copy_to_gam
| ing_w...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| If ISOC had shunted its profits into an endowment like it
| should have, it might not have ended up as a corrupt
| organization. This should be a legal requirement for non-
| profits with positive cash flow.
| actuator wrote:
| This is not good at all. Wikipedia has lot of money from
| donations. Google or its founders already were donors.
|
| Rather than fixing the issue with moderation and editing biases
| creeping into Wikipedia, they seem to be focussing on being more
| profligate with their money.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Now that Wikimedia will start getting serious cash, I hope it
| doesn't lose focus the way Mozilla did.
| jll29 wrote:
| The site mentions "credibility" as available information, but the
| online documentation does not refer to that topic.
|
| Does anyone know more about this?
|
| (I'm doing research in modeling text credibility for fake news
| detection.)
| abbe98 wrote:
| I think the big benefit for Google and Co here is SLA and
| support, Wikimedia gives contributors and partners access for
| free...
|
| A win for Wikimedia beyond diversified funding is also that
| Google and other corporations gets an contractual obligation to
| follow Wikimedia licensing.
| cgb223 wrote:
| So now, if a Google related Wikipedia article has something added
| to it that Google doesn't like, they can suggest to Wikimedia
| they might not renew their contract unless things are "made
| right"
|
| Google is just one example of this. Any company now has a pathway
| to do so.
|
| I think this is terrible incentives, and destroys the goal of
| having an Encyclopedia free from interference where only truth
| can come through
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| Google has been huge contributor to wikipedia for over a decade
| now.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Google could already do this per your hypothetical given that
| Google donates millions.
| danuker wrote:
| That doesn't argue for going further in serving Google.
| not2b wrote:
| Alternatively, Google can modify their copy of whatever they
| take from Wikipedia and display to their users. The license
| permits this. They don't need Wikipedia to change anything.
| exolymph wrote:
| 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 Cunningham's Law which is the wrong one...
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
| robonerd wrote:
| _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._
| themitigating wrote:
| Doesn't this apply to any organization? If you care about the
| goals of an organization you are going to be promoted because
| of your value to that task nor would you seem it. Those that
| don't are going to care more about the organizations
| structure and focus on improving their standing.
| coderintherye wrote:
| Not necessarily no, not all organizations are hierarchal.
| "Reinventing Organizations" has some good examples of such.
| Miraste wrote:
| There are no non-hierarchal organizations, only ones that
| are written down and ones that aren't. Even Reinventing
| Organizations talks about "fluid, natural hierarchies" -
| i.e. cliques.
| icelancer wrote:
| Nice. I hadn't seen this, or his related quotes. Quite usable
| for business.
| wmfanon9973 wrote:
| Two recent threads on wikimedia-l may be useful for those non-
| versed in the WMF's present malignancy:
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
|
| MediaWiki is basically unmaintained at this point.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The latest WMF "vanity project" is Wikidata, started in 2012.
| It is currently getting _more_ edits than the most popular
| version of Wikipedia, and has been playing a pivotal role in
| the "open-source information" ecosystem. If that kind of thing
| is "parasitic" then maybe we should welcome such parasitism.
| wmfanon9973 wrote:
| Wikidata is maintained by Wikimedia Deutschland
| (https://www.wikimedia.de/), not the Wikimedia Foundation.
| skybrian wrote:
| Please don't post content-free reaction posts on on Hacker
| News. If you don't like something, at least make some effort at
| explaining why.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Same with Mozilla/Firefox imo.
| onphonenow wrote:
| I think they are doing 100M+ per year to run the servers,
| manage PR / legal / HR issues.
| wmfanon9973 wrote:
| They have so much more money than they need, they're giving
| away donor funds to other organizations:
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list.
| ..
| exolymph wrote:
| 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.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Actually, they're spending less than 3MM per year for
| hosting. "Other operating expenses" are ~10MM, and everything
| else on the list has essentially nothing to do with
| Wikipedia.
|
| However, at the current rate it won't take long until they
| actually do spend 100MM+ on their own salaries.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim.
| ..
| marcinzm wrote:
| >everything else on the list has essentially nothing to do
| with Wikipedia
|
| I would say that engineer/product/analytics salaries are
| part of the cost of running and updating a webpage. Then
| you have HR which is needed to support those employees and
| Legal which is especially needed given the high risk nature
| of Wikipedia.
|
| Good luck keeping Wikipedia up in a useful manner without
| those people.
|
| edit: Then you need Finance to help handle the costs
| responsibly. Then you need Fundraising to help raise the
| money needed to pay for all that. Then you generally want
| some Marketing/Branding/Communications to help with the
| whole talking to external humans part.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| A friend of mine who worked there claimed the bulk of the
| funding is spent on paying attorneys to defend Wikipedia
| editors against hostile governments and companies that sue
| and imprison them for writing unflattering material.
|
| Take it with a grain of salt, I guess, given the level of
| cynicism Hacker News seems to have about Wikimedia
| Foundation, and you could easily dismiss insiders defending
| their own organization as shills. I don't really see a way
| to tell from those financial statements. I'm guessing that
| would count as program expense and break down between
| salaries and professional services depending on the
| relative proportions to which they keep attorneys on staff
| versus contracting legal defense out to other firms.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| 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.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Quicker notification is somewhat special control, though I
| prefer my term of "better ability." There's a meaningful
| difference between detecting vandalism in a minute vs an
| hour.
| robonerd wrote:
| Quicker notifications means a tighter OODA loop, e.g. more
| control.
| danuker wrote:
| Time for me to look into downloading Wikipedia and using it
| offline.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Here you go:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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.
| david_allison wrote:
| 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
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Huh. Some of that I think some people hoped would be
| available (for free) via things like WikiData. I guess nobody
| should wait for that.
|
| My somewhat concern is that the wikipedia project has kind of
| put a flag in the ground to say that providing _free_ access
| to wikipedia is no longer part of their mission if it 's
| automated/bulk access.
| H8crilA wrote:
| For the critics, this is basically a way for Wikimedia to charge
| for high throughput access from commercial users, as well as
| normalizing the API. These corporations already crawl the
| entirety of this space, both the HTML and the wikitext. Why
| wouldn't they if the license allows it?
|
| As long as dumps remain available for free (which as I understand
| they have to) the community loses nothing, and corporate actors
| get to contribute a bit more. I don't see things like Kiwix going
| away any time soon.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| 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")
| abbe98 wrote:
| It also ensures that Google follows the license requirements of
| Wikimedia data as as it becomes a contractual issue rather than
| a license issue with each contributor.
|
| It seems for example that Google has recently resolved some
| long standing issues with attribution in various
| products(YouTube Music comes to mind).
| nickvincent wrote:
| 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.wikime
| dia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay...) also provides a
| pretty nice FAQ to the negative responses.
| danuker wrote:
| > to an api that is presumably more convenient and less
| resource intensive for both parties
|
| Not quite. It sounds like they will increase bandwidth for the
| API.
|
| > What many of the largest commercial technology organizations
| require in order to effectively utilize Wikimedia content goes
| beyond what we currently provide.
| 20after4 wrote:
| 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.
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