[Foundation-l] I didn't know we're on the BBC!

[quiddity]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just discovered that the BBC's music site [1] is using our
> content for their biographies of musicians/bands [2].
>
> This makes me happy.
>
> [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/
> [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/faqs#why_is_the_bbc_using_wikipedia
>

Marvelous! They appear to be using just the lead section from our
articles, and then from Musicbrainz.org they're pulling the metadata
(band members, collaborations) and external links list.

Examples (they use the same unfortunate url scheme as musicbrainz...)
The Beatles
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d
Ludwig van Beethoven
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/1f9df192-a621-4f54-8850-2c5373b7eac9
Portishead
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/8f6bd1e4-fbe1-4f50-aa9b-94c450ec0f11


-
It's not fully automated. They're missing a few obscure bands (that we
and musicbrainz have the relevant content for) such as Lullatone.
Also they're occasionally missing Wikipedia's content when we've
disambiguated the page name, such as Solex
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/e064f6f6-76a8-4efe-a94b-09bec8942347
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solex_%28musician%29
On the other hand, they have pages for artists that we don't cover
yet, such as Ogurusu Norihide.

-
Relatedly, all their album reviews (including items from c.2002) seem
to be released under CC BY-NC-SA


-
Separately,
I tried to send the BBC this bug report, but the webform refused to
send because "is not plain text"... Gah! Maybe someone here can pass
it along to their webmaster?

"Broken link in FAQ:
The link here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/faqs#what_happens_if_wikipedias_vandalised
currently points to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_vandalism
which is incorrect. It should point to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism
"



Thanks for the pointer, Bod.

Quiddity