[WikiEN-l] Innovative (re)uses of Wikipedia content

William Pietri william at scissor.com
Thu Apr 26 21:04:57 UTC 2007


Sorry for the late reply on this one; I'm just back from vacation.

Aude wrote:
> What innovative (re)uses of Wikipedia or Wikimedia content are out there?


One interesting one is freebase.com. (Disclaimer; I have pals who work 
there, and have done some work for them myself.) They are calling 
themselves a "data commons", and are importing information from a number 
of open sources and turning it into API-friendly structured data.

Unfortunately it's in private beta right now, but I have a couple of 
spare invitations for people who are likely to be either active 
contributors or active API users and would give them good feedback.

> I'm seeking permission to license images I have of NHL trophies under GFDL
> or compatible license.  I'd like to give them examples or explanation of
> positive benefits of such licensing and reuse of content and the philosophy
> behind it.

Part of the magic of an open content license is that you don't know 
quite what people will do with this. The Wikipedia-on-DVD and the One 
Laptop Per Child projects are great examples of how your info might be 
used for public benefit.

With Freebase, the notion is that people will be able to easily build 
data-driven sites. So for example some hockey fan might build per-team 
discussion areas or some cute fan game using the open content. Perhaps 
it would end up in a kiosk at a hockey museum.


Hoping that helps,

William

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri



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