YKY (Yan King Yin) wrote:
...
I think a project like this one requires substantial efforts, so
people would need to be paid to do some of the work (programming,
interface design, etc), especially if we want to build a high quality
knowledgebase. If we make it free then a likely outcome is that we
get a lot of noise but very few people actually contribute.
I'm not an academic (left uni a couple years ago) so I can't get
academic funding for this. If I can't start an AI business I'd have
to entirely give up AI as a career. I hope you can understand these
circumstances.
YKY
I can understand those circumstances, but if you expect people to
contribute, you must give them something back. One thing that's cheap
to give back is the work that they and others have contributed. Giving
back less generally results in people not being willing to participate.
Even if you claim sole rights to commercially exploit the work, you will
find it much more difficult to get folk to participate. They will feel
that you are stealing their work without just compensation.
You raise the issue of compensation to you, and that's fair. But if you
take out too much, you will cause the project to fail just as surely as
if you hadn't put in the time to design the interface. If you merely
make a requirement that people be a better than average contributor to
be entitled to download the "current results", then you will eliminate
most potential competitors...and the remaining ones will be those who
are also dedicating time and effort to making your project work. It's
true that "old versions" of your work will circulate, but that should do
little harm.
People only participate in a public project if they feel they are
getting a "good return" out of it. What a good return is, is
subjective, but few people consider "I put in a bunch of work, and they
don't even mention my name" to be a good return. You want to give
people a return that they see as more valuable than their efforts, but
which costs you a lot less than their efforts. Status in a community
requires that the community exist. (At some point you'll want to give
people scores depending on the amount of their work that is included in
the current project...or something that will relate positively to that.
This is a cheap status reward, and will boost community participation.
On Slashdot I notice that just having a low numbered user ID has become
a status marker of sorts. I.e., "you've been a member of the community
for a long time". That was a REALLY cheap status gift, but it took a
long time to build to anything of value. Much quicker was the right to
meta-moderate. Slightly less quick was the right to moderate. Note
that these are both seen by the Slashdot community as "things of worth",
yet to the operator of Slashdot they were instituted as ways of cutting
cost while improving quality. Also note that it took a long time for
them to become worth much as status markers. You need something else to
use while you're getting started.)
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