[Foundation-l] Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages

Ziko van Dijk zvandijk at googlemail.com
Sun Dec 5 12:34:51 UTC 2010


Hello,

Ultimately, this is a kind of the Clone War, when in 2005 Google
search hits were manipulated. Of of the problems of the clones is that
they show no "edit this page" and no "donate now".

Kind regards
Ziko



2010/12/5 Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>:
> Ah, Erik, thank you so much for writing this. I'd just been about to
> write something similar: you beat me to it :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
> On 05/12/2010, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> 2010/12/4 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
>>> Personally, I think that this is a good opportunity to get money from
>>> payed ads. It is not even on Wikimedia servers.
>>
>> As I said on wikien-l, the current Amazon.com use is not part of any
>> official relationship. We're concerned about the degree to which the
>> Amazon.com pages resemble Wikipedia pages. The content use itself is
>> clearly permitted, and we're not opposed to commercial use per se. On
>> the contrary, free licenses encourage this kind of experimentation by
>> anyone.
>>
>> The potential issue with this kind of commercialization is that it
>> creates confusion about the "Wikipedia" brand and what it stands for.
>> Wikipedia is currently understood to be one of the few mainstream
>> sources of information that isn't commercialized, and which aims to
>> provide a neutral and inclusive view of any given topic. A third party
>> adding single-vendor shopping ads into the content, while the way the
>> content is presented closely resembles Wikipedia, threatens to
>> undermine that perception, as Amazon.com visitors may assume that this
>> is something that's part of our operating model.
>>
>> This is why we're first and foremost concerned about the risk of
>> identity confusion here, about the impact of such confusion on how
>> Wikipedia is perceived, and about finding ways to reduce that risk.
>> We'll continue our exploration of this issue and will let you know as
>> things develop. It may also well be that this turns out to be a
>> short-lived experiment on Amazon.com's part.
>>
>> In general, our relationship with businesses is shifting from
>> revenue-focused trademark licensing agreements to mission-focused
>> partnerships closely aligned with our strategic plan. For example,
>> we're trying to find the best possible partners to distribute very
>> large numbers of offline copies of Wikimedia content (e.g. on low-end
>> mobile phones used in the developing world, or as part of computing
>> projects targeting disadvantaged communities).
>> --
>> Erik Möller
>> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>>
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>
>
> --
> Sue Gardner
> Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> 415 839 6885 office
> 415 816 9967 cell
>
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/




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