[Wikipedia-l] Re: Cooperating with IMDB, FreeDB etc.

I think it would be great if we could make attempts to cooperate with large, proprietary and open content suppliers that do not directly compete with us. I am specifically referring to databases like - IMDB.com for movies, games, TV - freedb.org for albums - Amazon.com for books and .. lots of other stuff. We would ask these groups to provide a link for each entry in their database to the Wikipedia article about that entry, whether it exists or not. For example, if I looked up "Bowling for Columbine" in IMDB I would get "Description at Wikipedia: 'Bowling for Columbine is a Academy Award- winning documentary film starring Michael Moore. It opened ..' (more)" If I looked up a non-existent movie, I would get "Describe this movie at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Links to existing articles would point to locally stored copies at IMDB, with an "edit the current revision of this article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" link at the bottom. Why would IMDB do this? 1) IMDB doesn't have many good movie summaries because they lack a collaborative writing module. They could implement one, but why not just use existing resources? 2) IMDB visitors would only leave IMDB when following an explicit link to Wikipedia. Otherwise they would stay within the site. 3) With some Sifter-like interface, we could make sure that IMDB always has the latest trusted copy, thereby giving them an advantage even over Wikipedia proper. 4) Because of the FDL, they can tear their bonds with us whenever they want, without losing the content. 5) Wikipedia already has some brand name recognition. We have a positive image that might rub off on those who cooperate with us. Why would we do this? 1) IMDB has a huge community of movie enthusiasts who could contribute much useful information. 2) Similarly, in the case of freedb, instead of just importing tracklists, we would invite people to actually describe the content of albums, to write real articles about them. 3) Being linked prominently from large sites like these would strengthen our brand substantially and increasingly turn Wikipedia into a household name. There are some possible problems: - Free databases tend to list lots of obscure stuff that probably does not warrant encyclopedic inclusion. Similarly, we would not want an article about every toy or product listed at Amazon.com. We would have to negotiate with each database supplier the criteria for when the Wikipedia link/copy is shown. For example, we could ask IMDB to only do it on movies that have a gross earnings listing (usually only the larger ones), or FreeDB to only do it on albums that have all data fields filled etc. - We might not want to be associated with shady businesses bent for world domination like Amazon.com. However, sooner or later we will have to think about with whom we want to cooperate, and IMHO "only open content people" is too tight a rule. - The mere inquiry might inspire these groups to think about creating their own, proprietary content collaborative writing modules, e.g. an IMDB article writing module whose contents are copyrighted by their authors and cannot be used by us. However, if that is a real threat, then it will probably happen sooner or later anyway, and it could be argued that we should give these people an alternative *before* they do it. What do you think? Perhaps we should wait with more concrete inquiries until we have more resources to handle the traffic, but in general I believe it's worth giving it a shot. Regards, Erik