[Foundation-l] Heads up: Wikipedia on Facebook

[Steven Walling]

Will there be any way to encourage/allow people to edit the Wikipedia
articles Facebook will be using?

On the one hand, I think it's definitely praiseworthy that we have found
another outlet for distributing Wikipedia articles and thus fulfilling our
mission. But to be perfectly honest, the idea of a Facebook mirror that
siphons off potential editors and lets Facebook slap ads around our work
feels like a bum deal for Wikimedia.

Steven Walling

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwa
<kwadhwa at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I just wanted to let you know about new features Facebook is planning on
> launching later today that involve articles from Wikipedia. Facebook is
> going to begin integrating Wikipedia’s free knowledge into a new part of
> the Facebook.com site experience to help users be more connected and
> informed about the topics and activities that interest them. They're
> calling this service Facebook Community Pages, portal pages which will
> be owned and managed by the Facebook community.
>
> Wikipedia articles on Facebook will further increase the reach of free
> knowledge on the internet.  Facebook has hundreds of millions of users,
> and now more than 70% of their traffic is coming from outside of the US.
> Our hope is that many Facebook users (if they are not already) will also
> be inclined to join the large community of Wikipedia contributors.
> Facebook will follow the free licenses (CC-BY-SA) and help us find more
> ways people can share knowledge. Furthermore, we will be looking at
> other ways that both parties can cooperate in the future.
>
> Initially it looks like this service will be focussed on English
> Wikipedia, but considering Facebook's multi-lingual community it seems
> likely that other languages will be brought in quickly. Because Facebook
> members build the Community Pages, they will be able to suggest or add
> more Wikipedia articles (as well as other relevant content from the
> web).  They will also have a built-in feedback system in case the
> article provided is not correct or has any display problems.
>
> It's going to be a learning situation for both us and them so we'll see
> how this goes.
>
> --Kul
>
> --
> Kul Takanao Wadhwa
> Head of Business Development
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> kul at wikimedia.org
> (415) 839-6885 ext. 603
>
>
>
>
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