I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
"imagine a world where every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" - forget that we can make a quid by charging now as we are the best and only remaining encyclopedia
- suppose its time stop imagining anything beyond a dollar sign, - WMF could start by charging Google for WikiData access - millions of contributors and benefactors over the last 15 years have worked to create and support that idea
those be my perspective, now my thinking is not so great and definitely not repeatable even on this list
Monetizing Wikimedia, premium access mumble mumble mumble, cough....................
On 16 January 2016 at 17:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
Cheers, Craig
Do you think?
I'm genuinely not sure. I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big. I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA: they can keep it hidden.
There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
Aubrey
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
the
services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs. Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Zanni Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
Do you think?
I'm genuinely not sure. I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big. I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA: they can keep it hidden.
There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
Aubrey
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
the
services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no". (My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation, so I'll refrain.)
I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to make that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a multibillion dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a fundamental principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access, reuse, whatever have you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford to pay.
Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia or Mediawiki. And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check, lot of cards. If they want to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their interest to, they certainly make significant use of our content), great! If they want to donate with strings attached, thanks but no thanks. We're certainly not hurting for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation if we do or don't do something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see you go. Thanks for the donations in the past."
I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence Fae keeps putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often agree with Fae, nor am I the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and Wikimedia at every opportunity" type. Rather, it's out of deep concern and care for the project I've spent a lot of time helping to build, and a lot of other people have too. I don't want to take that step, but this has got to stop, here and now.
Todd
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs. Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Zanni Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
Do you think?
I'm genuinely not sure. I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big. I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA: they can keep it hidden.
There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
Aubrey
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
the
services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite
murmuring.
Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I agree with Todd on most, possibly all points, but if Google want to finance faster access for their search engine, in way of hardware, software or development, with no strings attached, as long as it puts no-one at a disadvantage at the time or in future, then why not? Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Todd Allen Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 6:02 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no". (My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation, so I'll refrain.)
I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to make that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a multibillion dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a fundamental principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access, reuse, whatever have you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford to pay.
Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia or Mediawiki. And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check, lot of cards. If they want to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their interest to, they certainly make significant use of our content), great! If they want to donate with strings attached, thanks but no thanks. We're certainly not hurting for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation if we do or don't do something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see you go. Thanks for the donations in the past."
I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence Fae keeps putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often agree with Fae, nor am I the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and Wikimedia at every opportunity" type. Rather, it's out of deep concern and care for the project I've spent a lot of time helping to build, and a lot of other people have too. I don't want to take that step, but this has got to stop, here and now.
Todd
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs. Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Zanni Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
Do you think?
I'm genuinely not sure. I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big. I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA: they can keep it hidden.
There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
Aubrey
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
the
services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite
murmuring.
Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I agree, we shouldn't fee anything but a "reimburse" for the massive usage of our hardware/networking resources would be ok.
Using over the tops' facilities would be great but it would also bring to privacy concerns.
Finally if an over the top wants some further feature it can fund scholarships, easy, transparent and without any side effect.
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 17:22, Peter Southwood ha scritto:
I agree with Todd on most, possibly all points, but if Google want to finance faster access for their search engine, in way of hardware, software or development, with no strings attached, as long as it puts no-one at a disadvantage at the time or in future, then why not? Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Todd Allen Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 6:02 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no". (My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation, so I'll refrain.)
I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to make that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a multibillion dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a fundamental principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access, reuse, whatever have you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford to pay.
Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia or Mediawiki. And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check, lot of cards. If they want to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their interest to, they certainly make significant use of our content), great! If they want to donate with strings attached, thanks but no thanks. We're certainly not hurting for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation if we do or don't do something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see you go. Thanks for the donations in the past."
I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence Fae keeps putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often agree with Fae, nor am I the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and Wikimedia at every opportunity" type. Rather, it's out of deep concern and care for the project I've spent a lot of time helping to build, and a lot of other people have too. I don't want to take that step, but this has got to stop, here and now.
Todd
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs. Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Zanni Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
Do you think?
I'm genuinely not sure. I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big. I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA: they can keep it hidden.
There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
Aubrey
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
the
services and APIs,
Brace yourselves...
expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite
murmuring.
Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
That's definitely a conversation worth having, as it helps us understand what we want to do, and who we want to be.
Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk.
I don't intuitively object to Google paying for some additional features, they ride on the back of our content in many situations, and we don't even know how many people see it (content is cached).
I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as " premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general public).
Best,
Dj
On 16 January 2016 at 22:09, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk
Realistically, the only way that I can see that the community would stand for this is if the tool in question was something that was unquestionably of use to a large segment of the community as a whole, and if the WMF clearly did not have the resources to build it themselves without outside assistance. But perhaps I'm wrong there.
I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as " premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general public).
If we're going to go down this road, I agree with this.
Cheers, Craig
I think if anyone were to pay, they should all pay at the same rate, according to their usage.
Moreover, those whose usage is minimal should not pay at all. You might have a threshold – say, if it's $X or less, no need to pay a dime.
So the Indian or African start-up would have access for free, while the search giants might pay what is, from the WMF perspective, a considerable sum (but peanuts for them).
What is vitally important though is that no one should be able to buy a better service just because they are rich. That would just slant the playing field in favour of the existing giants and suppress competition.
That would be an evil thing to do.
But if the above caveats are observed, it might be a good idea.
Andreas
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:09 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will
make
the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
That's definitely a conversation worth having, as it helps us understand what we want to do, and who we want to be.
Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk.
I don't intuitively object to Google paying for some additional features, they ride on the back of our content in many situations, and we don't even know how many people see it (content is cached).
I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as " premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general public).
Best,
Dj _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation,
...
or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth.
What a good idea.
Richard.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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2016-01-16 19:21 GMT+01:00 Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Isn't that the point of using free licence (not NC, nor ND) ? I guess we do so to allow people/company/the world to reuse our content the way they want.
If we have problem attracting people to our plateform, then the problem is not about our API, it's about attractiveness and maybe we should focus on our products.
I might be wrong, but what I understand when I read this discussion or the board minutes, is that we want to increase traffic because it's our best known way to raise money (correlation with the endowement ?). This looks like a wrong reason to not respect our values.
I do understand that such a discussion can reach the board, it's healthy to list lots of different solutions, that said I don't think it aligns with the core values of our movement.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
Isn't that part of sharing the sum of human knowledge ?
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional
donations
of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth
in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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-- Lila Tretikov Wikimedia Foundation
*“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2016-01-16 20:40 GMT+01:00 Pierre-Selim pierre-selim@huard.info:
Isn't that the point of using free licence (not NC, nor ND) ? I guess we do so to allow people/company/the world to reuse our content the way they want.
If we have problem attracting people to our plateform, then the problem is not about our API, it's about attractiveness and maybe we should focus on our products.
I might be wrong, but what I understand when I read this discussion or the board minutes, is that we want to increase traffic because it's our best known way to raise money (correlation with the endowement ?). This looks like a wrong reason to not respect our values.
One of my main worries is that our content being reused somewhere else means that we're losing our ability to engage new contributors, which in the long runt could threaten the projects, at the same time as no one else is stepping up to do our job because the traffic is still going to our content – just not to us. There's a tradeoff between readability and editability, especially on the small screen. Anyone not concerned with editing will have a head start when it comes to presenting the information in a less cluttered way, which makes it easier to read and the experience more enjoyable.
//Johan Jönsson --
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete one of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase. I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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Folks (WMF board, and those closely related), do we really have to hold a vote of no confidence to get your attention? Do you have any doubt that it'd pass?
Absent that, please start listening to the volunteers. Listening, as in doing what they'd like you to do. Otherwise, I'll be putting forth that no-confidence vote shortly.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete one of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase. I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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I've been thinking about it and this is just bothering me too much.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 5:48 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Folks (WMF board, and those closely related), do we really have to hold a vote of no confidence to get your attention? Do you have any doubt that it'd pass?
The Wikimedia Foundation is a private non-profit corporation registered in Florida. It is not structured as a membership organization (after all, every human being is technically a member), it is but a single part of the Wikimedia movement. You have no standing for such a vote, and neither do I.
Absent that, please start listening to the volunteers. Listening, as in doing what they'd like you to do. Otherwise, I'll be putting forth that no-confidence vote shortly.
You mean to say, "please start listening to the volunteers ***that agree with me*. Listening, as in doing what *the people that I agree with* would like you to do."
Personally, I agree with your position against monetizing any part of our services.
I'm pleasantly surprised that some people that I thought would agree with me are at least open to the theory, it makes for very interesting discussion. I do not think that making threats on behalf of everyone, when it's clear that we are not all in agreement, is useful at all, particularly when they are toothless.
Personal opinion from a personal account as a longtime Wikimedian, as the line three bars down after the signature indicates.
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to catch updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead paragraphs, which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on the costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay API that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link be given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly the point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it gives an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete one of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase. I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc. These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say, to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to catch updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead paragraphs, which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on the costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay API that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link be given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly the point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it gives an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase. I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power, servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use.
An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way around that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly
share
in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth
in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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In cases of excessive resource usage we have several options. Contact the source, throttle them, or flat out disable access depending on what each case calls for.
I have seen the dev team to this liberally in the past when needed. If any one person or group is exploiting us by using unproportionate amounts of resources thats one thing, if we are just trying to make money by selling access to what we already have thats another. Limiting abusive sources shouldnt be an issue, but as soon as we start selling access we loose sight of our mission.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc. These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say, to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link be given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly the point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it
gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
userbase.
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
add
an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
*our
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
core
of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
together.
We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week
will
help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors
or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a
big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit
buttons)
and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over
time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers
that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure,
power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers.
Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to
do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so
more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other
interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have
some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please
join
it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use.
An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we
are
allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way
around
that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing...
at
least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly
share
in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of > thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access
> to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping > free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth
in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for > innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising > strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 > -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
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So how to deal with legitimate uses that require many requests?
Is it better to not serve them at all? On Jan 16, 2016 19:50, "John" phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
In cases of excessive resource usage we have several options. Contact the source, throttle them, or flat out disable access depending on what each case calls for.
I have seen the dev team to this liberally in the past when needed. If any one person or group is exploiting us by using unproportionate amounts of resources thats one thing, if we are just trying to make money by selling access to what we already have thats another. Limiting abusive sources shouldnt be an issue, but as soon as we start selling access we loose sight of our mission.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement
with
most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
etc.
These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
say,
to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
lot
of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
whose
mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such
restrictions
we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often
in
the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling
the
same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites,
to
read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than
one
customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let
THEM
hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately
open-source
way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link
be
given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly
the
point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it
gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they
don't
know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely
deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering
we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but
any
kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
userbase.
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
add
an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
*our
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this
-- I
don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
core
of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
together.
We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week
will
help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique
visitors
or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a
big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free
knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates,
simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our
readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit
buttons)
and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over
time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers
that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure,
power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having
nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers.
Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover
costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way
to
do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so
more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other
interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have
some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this
year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please
join
it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of
Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial
use.
An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we
are
allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way
around
that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are
lacking
money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing...
at
least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org > Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs > > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly
share
> in the sum of all knowledge." XD > > Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto: > >> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of >> > thinking:
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for
the
>> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access
>> > to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation
fundraising,
>> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia >> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of
keeping
>> > free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational
growth
in
>> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for >> > innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising >> > strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these
potential
>> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. >> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 >> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
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Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.
For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to the agencies in question.[1]
We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API endpoints. If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.
Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any "monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in disguise, and not a long-term win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998
Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn: http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415
Adam Wight
mw:user:adamw
On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc. These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say, to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link be given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly the point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it
gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
userbase.
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
add
an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
*our
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
core
of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
together.
We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week
will
help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors
or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a
big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit
buttons)
and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over
time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers
that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure,
power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers.
Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to
do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so
more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other
interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have
some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please
join
it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use.
An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we
are
allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way
around
that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing...
at
least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly
share
in the sum of all knowledge." XD
Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of > thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access
> to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping > free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth
in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for > innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising > strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 > -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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lol, "suggest commercial income" seems to be revolving every 7-8 years in our movement. when wikipedia was founded in 2001 larry sanger tried to sell something (ads), when sue gardner joined she tried to sell something in 2008 (kul was doing business development at the time), and now lila tretikov again tries to sell something. this did not work in the past and will not work now. the reason is simple: providing infrastructure is cheap compared to the rest of what WMF does, and it anyway is the main motivation for people to give money to WMF. if you sell providing infrastructure to businesses you risk a direct and hard effect in donation income. of course you can disguise it through intransparency, various licensing models, etc.
the problem is always the same imo. people who do not edit fail to understand why people edit, and why they stop doing so. they tend to fail to understand what else editing folks would contribute. this leads to mis-representing "growth" in number of employees, or yearly budget, and trials to directly influence income. it leads to trials that consuming contents is only good through a WMF owned domain. thoughts like "what data do we not provide", "what group of persons do we not address well", "how can the data be structured so more can be made out of it", "how many persons do we reach direct or indirect" are not so common. are we a website operator or a free content provider? i always have to cry when i read another version of the strategy missing out there.
at times, the search for strategy and what to measure reminds me on an old east frisian joke: a drunken frisian searches a key looking around a street lamp. a passerby helps him. after an hour the passerby asks: are you sure you lost the key here? the frisian says: no, i lost it back there. but here is the only place where is light.
best rupert
On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 4:41 PM, Adam Wight adam.m.wight@gmail.com wrote:
Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.
For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to the agencies in question.[1]
We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API endpoints. If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.
Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any "monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in disguise, and not a long-term win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998
Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn: http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415
Adam Wight
mw:user:adamw
On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement
with
most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
etc.
These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
say,
to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
lot
of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
whose
mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such
restrictions
we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often
in
the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling
the
same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites,
to
read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than
one
customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let
THEM
hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately
open-source
way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link
be
given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly
the
point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it
gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they
don't
know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely
deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering
we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but
any
kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
userbase.
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
add
an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
*our
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this
-- I
don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
core
of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
together.
We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week
will
help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique
visitors
or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a
big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free
knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates,
simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our
readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit
buttons)
and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over
time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers
that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure,
power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having
nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers.
Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover
costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way
to
do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so
more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other
interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have
some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this
year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please
join
it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of
Wikipedia,
one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial
use.
An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we
are
allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way
around
that. What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are
lacking
money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing...
at
least not to the community.
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org > Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs > > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly
share
> in the sum of all knowledge." XD > > Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto: > >> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of >> > thinking:
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for
the
>> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access
>> > to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation
fundraising,
>> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia >> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of
keeping
>> > free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational
growth
in
>> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for >> > innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising >> > strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these
potential
>> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. >> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 >> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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Hoi, Selling infrastructure is not cheap. The organisations that buy this service need a service level agreement. They require this service to be always on. This means that we need at least three times the number of hardware. One for development and at least two for production. This will need some staffing that has this as its priority.
No, this is not cheap
Compare it with Labs. It has several people working for it, its reliability has improved over time but it is nowhere close to what a commercial service would be. Thanks, GerardM
On 18 January 2016 at 06:41, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
lol, "suggest commercial income" seems to be revolving every 7-8 years in our movement. when wikipedia was founded in 2001 larry sanger tried to sell something (ads), when sue gardner joined she tried to sell something in 2008 (kul was doing business development at the time), and now lila tretikov again tries to sell something. this did not work in the past and will not work now. the reason is simple: providing infrastructure is cheap compared to the rest of what WMF does, and it anyway is the main motivation for people to give money to WMF. if you sell providing infrastructure to businesses you risk a direct and hard effect in donation income. of course you can disguise it through intransparency, various licensing models, etc.
the problem is always the same imo. people who do not edit fail to understand why people edit, and why they stop doing so. they tend to fail to understand what else editing folks would contribute. this leads to mis-representing "growth" in number of employees, or yearly budget, and trials to directly influence income. it leads to trials that consuming contents is only good through a WMF owned domain. thoughts like "what data do we not provide", "what group of persons do we not address well", "how can the data be structured so more can be made out of it", "how many persons do we reach direct or indirect" are not so common. are we a website operator or a free content provider? i always have to cry when i read another version of the strategy missing out there.
at times, the search for strategy and what to measure reminds me on an old east frisian joke: a drunken frisian searches a key looking around a street lamp. a passerby helps him. after an hour the passerby asks: are you sure you lost the key here? the frisian says: no, i lost it back there. but here is the only place where is light.
best rupert
On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 4:41 PM, Adam Wight adam.m.wight@gmail.com wrote:
Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.
For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to the agencies in question.[1]
We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API endpoints. If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.
Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any "monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in
disguise,
and not a long-term win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998
Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn: http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415
Adam Wight
mw:user:adamw
On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 PM, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement
with
most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
etc.
These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
say,
to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve
tens
or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
lot
of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
whose
mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such
restrictions
we should discuss? On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the
very
search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often
in
the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling
the
same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our
sites,
to
read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are
lesser
crawlers, but they're not really big players.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take
on
the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a
for-pay
API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than
one
customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let
THEM
hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately
open-source
way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link
be
given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly
the
point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it
gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they
don't
know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table,
please.
Risker/Anne
On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
data.
IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free
as
possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely
deplete
one
of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering
we
have.
Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but
any
kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
userbase.
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player)
to
add
an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs.
users"
agreement.
So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation
will
pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
*our
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
usual).
Vito
Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
To share some context of the discussion the board had around this
-- I
don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are
freely
and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at
the
core
of the issue we are facing.
Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
knowledge
in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
together.
We have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next
week
will
help guide us.
Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique
visitors
or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is
a
big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've
learned a
lot.
We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive
license
supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free
knowledge.
Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates,
simplifies
and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our
readers
from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit
buttons)
and ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if
people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over
time.
Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support
crawlers
that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure,
power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The
content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having
nothing
to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers.
Still,
we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic
decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover
costs
will
decline as well.
The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be
squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way
to
do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so
more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring
people
into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do
we
fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other
interfaces
(a
trend that has been accelerating)?
Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have
some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this
year.
The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please
join
it.
Lila
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <
osamadre@hotmail.com
> wrote:
If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of
Wikipedia,
one
> simple solution is to allow content donations with a
non-commercial
> restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial
use.
An
> added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional > donations > of content if we allowed an non-commercial option. > My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that
we
are
> allowing Google to have a priviledged position. There is no way
around
> that. > What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are
lacking
> money. And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad
thing...
at
> least not to the community. > > > To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> From: ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org >> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100 >> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs >> >> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can
freemiumly
share
>> in the sum of all knowledge." XD >> >> Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto: >> >>> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line
of
>>> >> thinking: > >> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for
the
>>> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access
>>> >> to the > >> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation
fundraising,
>>> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the
Wikimedia
>>> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of
keeping
>>> >> free > >> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational
growth
in
>>> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for >>> >> innovation > >> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising >>> >> strategies. > >> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these
potential
>>> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. >>> Source:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
>>> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >>> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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Hi,
On 01/16/2016 06:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc. These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say, to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Why do they need to use our APIs? As I understand it, the Wikidata SPARQL service was designed so that someone could import a Wikidata dump, and have their own endpoint to query. I'm sure that someone who has the need to make millions of requests per day also has the technical resources to set up their own local mirror. I don't think setting up a MW mirror would be quite so simple, but it should be doable.
One problem with relying on dumps is that downloading them is often slow, and there are rate limits[1]. If Google or other some other large entity wanted to donate some hosting space and bandwidth by re-hosting our dumps, I think that would be a win-win situation all around - they get their dumps and can directly rsync from us, as well as taking pressure off of our infrastructure and letting other people access our content more easily.
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114019#1892529
-- Legoktm
Our users are the world in general; the decision not to make our license -NC is a basic part of our fundamental understanding. If were were asked by a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then I can see the need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to provide information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not the case--we can afford what is asked of us. While people access knowledge through commercial systems, we should provide the knowledge. The world is as it is. It the same principle as WP Zero.
It is important that we never become a commercial player in the world of information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose. We ask them to acknowledge that honest information is always and unreservedly a good thing in itself. Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe our principles ,that the good will use - will use it is more important, and that we not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part of the principle of honest reporting as distinct from advocacy. We Our customers are the world in general; the decision not to make our license -NC is a basic part of the fundamental understanding. If were were asked by a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then I can seethe need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to provide information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not the case--we can afford what is asked of us. I hold no brief for the commercial world and might not even describe myself as a supporter of the capitalist system. But while people access knowledge through commercial systems, we should provide the knowledge. The world is as it is. It the same principle as WP Zero.
It is important that we never become a commercial player in the world of information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose. We ask them to acknowledge that honest information is always and unreservedly a good thing in itself. Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe our principles, that the good will use it is more important, and that we not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part of the principle of honest reporting and honest research as distinct from advocacy.
Advocacy is good also. The WMF and the people who support it should engage in advocacy for free knowledge. That the Foundation supports this freedom, and opposes those who would restrict it, is important; one of the justifications for having the Foundation is to concentrate and mobilize the power of our users for effective action. This too is part of our mission, but it is separate from providing access to the encyclopedia.
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:22 AM, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On 01/16/2016 06:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
etc.
These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
say,
to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
lot
of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
whose
mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Why do they need to use our APIs? As I understand it, the Wikidata SPARQL service was designed so that someone could import a Wikidata dump, and have their own endpoint to query. I'm sure that someone who has the need to make millions of requests per day also has the technical resources to set up their own local mirror. I don't think setting up a MW mirror would be quite so simple, but it should be doable.
One problem with relying on dumps is that downloading them is often slow, and there are rate limits[1]. If Google or other some other large entity wanted to donate some hosting space and bandwidth by re-hosting our dumps, I think that would be a win-win situation all around - they get their dumps and can directly rsync from us, as well as taking pressure off of our infrastructure and letting other people access our content more easily.
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114019#1892529
-- Legoktm
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On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of bandwidth and electricity). If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide, and they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT sharing it.
I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players. I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just that I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this list are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or Facebook) exploits us?
Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of thought.
Aubrey
Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com a écrit :
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of bandwidth and electricity). If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide, and they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT sharing it.
I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players. I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just that I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this list are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or Facebook) exploits us?
Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of thought.
Aubrey
CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for instance, to enrich) and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. That means Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to carry the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience wider than the changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).
CC0 obviously permits everything, including not sharing back at all.
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:38 AM, Isaac David isacdaavid@isacdaavid.info wrote:
Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com a écrit :
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of bandwidth and electricity). If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide, and they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT sharing it.
I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players. I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just that I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this list are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or Facebook) exploits us?
Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of thought.
Aubrey
CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for instance, to enrich) and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. That means Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to carry the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience wider than the changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).
By this logic, and it is reasonable but debatable, if a Google search infobox should be CC-BY-SA, then Wikidata items that contain all the same infobox values from a Wikipedia article should also be CC-BY-SA.
Hi!
I think this conversation is diverging from the question of the *service* we should offer to others to licensing of the content. Licensing does not say anything about the service one should offer for the content. Any service, any API, is more or less something one does extra on top of the licensing requirements. We could just offer dumps of data and this is it. But if we offer more, some specialized services, uptime and availability and so on, that does not have much with the licensing of the content. That discussion should thus be on some other layer. Investigating licensing will not give us much insight into the question if we should go into the business of offering data services or not.
Mitar
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:02 AM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:38 AM, Isaac David isacdaavid@isacdaavid.info wrote:
Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com a écrit :
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of bandwidth and electricity). If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide, and they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT sharing it.
I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players. I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just that I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this list are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or Facebook) exploits us?
Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of thought.
Aubrey
CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for instance, to enrich) and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. That means Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to carry the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience wider than the changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).
By this logic, and it is reasonable but debatable, if a Google search infobox should be CC-BY-SA, then Wikidata items that contain all the same infobox values from a Wikipedia article should also be CC-BY-SA.
-- John Vandenberg
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Il 17/01/2016 00:49, Risker ha scritto:
Hmm. The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to catch updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead paragraphs, which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the same articles). Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to read, to make donations, to possibly edit. Of course there are lesser crawlers, but they're not really big players.
As usual you nailed it! That's why I wrote "negotiation" implying any extra cost should be fairly modulated but also it shouldn't force over the tops to leave our services.
I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on the costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay API that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access. If they want a specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
+1 is not enough let's +1e12
It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns. Could a link be given to the report, please? It's public, correct? This is exactly the point of transparency. If only the WMF has the information, then it gives an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't know the facts". So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
From Lila's ongoing choices I'm pretty sure they will.
Il 17/01/2016 03:11, Denny Vrandecic ha scritto:
To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc. These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say, to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose mission might or might not be aligned with our.
Then a good synthesis would be "let's Google(*) fund scholarships/summer of codes/whatever to build new functionalities then make Google reimburse (**) our facilities' usage/increase our userbase(***)".
Notes: (*) by "Google" I mean any big player (**) by "reimburse" I mean give us a fairly and proportionally determined amount of money based upon *actual* exploitation of our hardware/networking resources. This "reimburse" could also be colo space or whatever we'd need. (***) as several people already pointed out we're in a symbiotic relationship with Google (and others): they need our knowledge, we need their traffic. As long as our sectors are distinct all is right with the symbiosis.
IMHO there's room to increase our advantages without breaking the symbiosis but, above all, without missing our mission.
Vito
On 16 January 2016 at 18:21, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't think the minutes give enough detail.
Well, quite.
Interesting.
It would make sense in general, but if we de-contextualize Wikimedia.
The potential of Wikimedia projects are connected with the question that they are free. Having a premium access means two kind of risks:
a) losing the community, and Wikipedia will become quickly a "big outdated content repository" without the community b) managing a service, because a premium access would have a "premium service"
It's normal that someone else build a business on Wikimedia's content, but this allowed by the license, it's more difficult that Wikimedia Foundation can do a business with this content.
Kind regards
On 16.01.2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Thanks for raising this Pete. I am interested in both the ethics and practicalities of this change, as a long established unpaid volunteer API user.
Sorry to raise the obvious, but while Geshuri is on the board, someone found in court to have acted *illegally* on behalf of Google resulting in damages of nearly half a billion dollars, yet still voted in unanimously by the rest of the trustees as a jolly good chap (and praised by Lila due to his worthiness), the idea of the board discussing fundamental ethical changes that /may benefit Google/ to the potential disadvantage of volunteers or charitable organisations who will then no doubt be excluded from using a "1st class API, reserved for rich global corporations" is abhorrent.
Let's wait and see if the community needs to play a game of brinkmanship with a formal vote of no confidence in the WMF board of trustees, before the current Chairman is seen to raise his hands and admit there is a problem, or do anything about the WMF board's blatantly broken or incompetently managed system of governance (it's 9 days now since my open letter, but there has yet to be a polite acknowledgement of receipt from the Chair). If we end up forcing major changes to the board through a form of democratic commercial embarrassment, then this decision need to wait until there are trustees in place that *we* have confidence in again, not just the majority of current trustees.
Fae
On 16 January 2016 at 09:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Pete Forsyth wrote:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
This reminds me of the Wikimedia update feed service: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_update_feed_service. The Wikimedia Foundation basically allowed large search engines to access a private faster and dedicated stream of recent changes to Wikimedia wikis for a fee. While Google isn't mentioned on the Meta-Wiki page, I have a vague memory that they were (and maybe still are) involved.
Somewhat related, there is also search.wikimedia.org: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Search.wikimedia.org. This service was designed to give Apple a fast and dedicated stream for title prefix searches. Apple's built-in Dictionary application has been the primary consumer of this feed, though I believe it's open to anyone.
MZMcBride
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:09 PM MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Pete Forsyth wrote:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
This reminds me of the Wikimedia update feed service: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_update_feed_service. The Wikimedia Foundation basically allowed large search engines to access a private faster and dedicated stream of recent changes to Wikimedia wikis for a fee. While Google isn't mentioned on the Meta-Wiki page, I have a vague memory that they were (and maybe still are) involved.
I believe it was Yahoo. They were allowing us to use some of their servers in Asia back in the day, and I believe they also paid for large-scale access. There was even a special dump with the article start sections for them.
Somewhat related, there is also search.wikimedia.org: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Search.wikimedia.org. This service was designed to give Apple a fast and dedicated stream for title prefix searches. Apple's built-in Dictionary application has been the primary consumer of this feed, though I believe it's open to anyone.
MZMcBride
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Hoi, If anything the Wikimedia Foundation is about providing free access and provide it to everyone who needs it on an equal basis. When this changes, when people pay for superior service that is not available for everyone I will really hate it and the people who had us deviate so much from where we came from.
There is a difference for paying for a general service we do not provide yet. There is a difference for paying for additional hardware, bandwidth and services at cost. As long as the services are advertised openly I do not mind. When a specialised service provides a general need, it should become freely available. Thanks, GerardM
On 16 January 2016 at 10:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi!
I have been recently investigating business models for community based and collaborative online services. You do not have to reinvent the wheel (or discussions), there is some experience in this field from other projects. So, to move the discussion away from just opinions and feelings...
I would suggest that anyone interested in monetizing APIs check how MusicBrainz (https://musicbrainz.org/) is doing it.
An open encyclopedia for music metadata. Their data is all open, collaboratively made, and APIs are free to use, but big users are asked to pay. In this way they are getting money from Google, for example. You should contact them and check how they feel about issues raised here: Do they feel that they get strings attached for receiving money from Google? How do their contributors feel about them getting money in this way? How do they achieve that big players pay, but community projects, researchers, and others do not? What is the process to determine that? In fact, I am CCing Rob from MusicBrainz here.
You could also check Crossref, another non-profit serving APIs to the community and commercial entities. To my knowledge their approach is that they provide free API for everyone, but if you require uptime and SLAs then you pay. CCing Geoffrey from Crossref.
Another project to look at is Arxiv, an archive of academic articles' preprints. Their model is to look from which universities/organizations the most requests are coming based on IPs and then contacting them and suggesting that they pay/donate for their service. In this way the service is free for users, but organizations behind big groups of users are paying for service to be online for everyone.
Mitar
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 1:23 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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