[Foundation-l] PediaPress

[Noein]

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On 13/11/2010 19:14, phoebe ayers wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 12:51 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 13:59, Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> I know that also this example is not without flaw, as comparisons always
>>> are. What I want to say is, if a company can provide us a service that
>>> we really desperately need and we cannot get elsewhere, and it shares
>>> the same value as we are, I think it is a correct decision to take that
>>> service. I am sure this answer is maybe not satisfactory, but I hope it
>>> can explain a little what my personal opinion is.
>>
>> I understand exactly what you're saying, Ting, and I appreciate your
>> thoughtful response. I suppose my reaction is an emotional one, but
>> I'd argue no less valid for that. It's that much of the content of
>> Wikipedia is written and administered by a surprisingly small number
>> of people. We do it for nothing because we believe in the concept of
>> free (in all senses) information. But now to the left of my vision,
>> with every edit I make, there is a "create book" button, where a
>> private company is quite openly making money from our work. That feels
>> discouraging.
> 
> Every edit you make is also mirrored by answers.com, which quite
> openly makes money off of our work as well. This particular line of
> reasoning has not historically served as a discouragement to most of
> our editor base.
I didn't know that. How can a site be only a motor of search of our
pages and at the same time charge for it? Aren't we already doing the
same? We can even do it better since we're at the source of this
service. With google ranking us high, we are an "answer.com" too,
naturally. We don't need a professional counterpart, they have no
plus-value to add to us that we can't add ourselves. Knowledge is not
for elitists, knowledge is for everybody, and thus, as free of charges
as possible.

> 
> The crux of the question seems to me to rather be who and how we
> directly partner with, and what services do we offer to readers (and
> contributors) by such partners through the site itself. In the case of
> PediaPress, it's fairly low-key; what you see in the sidebar is
> actually a link to the "book creator" tool, which is extension code to
> make a collection of pages that can then be generated as a pdf. It is
> only after you click through and do this that you are offered a link
> to "Get a printed book from our print-on-demand partner" and a link to
> PediaPress appears. 
You mean "Get a printed book from our print-on-demand partnerS" and
several links of several partners, among them PediaPress in alphabetical
order to be exact, I presume. All of those partners should be
non-profit, of course.



>People are quite free to create a pdf collection
> and never send it to PediaPress, which wouldn't generate a dime for
> them, and my instinct is that this accounts for the majority of the
> tool's use.
Then the service would be "pdf creator", not "book creator", right?


> 
> I don't mean to be dismissive, though; asking about partnerships is a
> totally valid question, and we should at the very least keep any such
> partnerships open so that we can always consider if there are other
> and better services, extensions, etc. available to offer in addition
> to or in place of existing ones.
Yes. And discussing about their moral interest could our first
discussion, actually.




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