Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] For Wikipedia's 15th Birthday, what does Wikipedia mean to the world?

[Lodewijk]

Oh, this video is amazing! It could make a great introduction as background
information for an educational talk, and so much more :)

Lodewijk

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Claudia Garad 
wrote:

> Thanks for the resources Zack!
>
> Our project partner the simpleshow foundation made a freely licensed
> educational video about Wikipedia as a birthday present - feel free to use
> and share everyone:
>
> Commons:
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_Wikipedia_contributes_to_free_knowledge.webm#
>
> youtube:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cndZ9jISks
>
> Regards from Vienna!
> Claudia
>
> --
> Claudia Garád
> Geschäftsführerin
>
> Wikimedia Österreich - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> www.wikimedia.at
>
>
>
> Am 15.01.2016 01:41, schrieb Zachary McCune:
>
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>>
>> 15 January is Wikipedia's 15th birthday. That's right, it's Wikipedia Day!
>> This is the day we celebrate the beginning of the Wikimedia movement and
>> all of the free knowledge projects we share with the world.
>>
>> To celebrate, we are asking Wikipedia visitors (both anonymous readers and
>> logged-in users)  to tell us what Wikipedia means to them. It's all about
>> celebrating the impact of our movement.
>>
>> For the next 6 days, we will use some Central Notice banners to notify
>> users of our birthday milestone and ask for their thoughts. The banners
>> will be visible on Meta, Commons, and all language Wikipedias. The
>> messages
>> have been translated by the community into more than 98 languages (and
>> counting). The banners will link to the Wikipedia15 microsite [1], where
>> visitors can read the stories of 15 Wikimedians, review milestones from 15
>> years of Wikipedia, and contribute thoughts on what Wikipedia means to
>> them.
>>
>> Per MediaWiki, the timing will follow UTC. And of course, if you dismiss
>> the notice, it will permanently opt you opt of seeing Wikipedia15 banners
>> for the rest of the week.
>>
>> Questions? Send them my way.
>>
>> Want to get involved? Why not go to a Wikimedia party or event[2], edit
>> something new, share a Wikipedia15 illustration[3], or share a Wikipedia
>> birthday wish with #Wikipedia15 on your preferred social media!
>>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> - Zack
>>
>>
>> [1] https://15.wikipedia.org
>> [2] There are 149 events planned! Find one near you:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events
>> [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia15_Mark
>>
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[Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Pete Forsyth]

I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:

Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
-Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Gnangarra]

"imagine a world where every human being can freely share in the sum of all
knowledge" - forget that we can make a quid by charging now as we are the
best and only remaining  encyclopedia


   - suppose its time stop imagining anything beyond a dollar sign,
   - WMF could start by charging Google for WikiData access
   - millions of contributors and benefactors over the last 15 years have
   worked to create and support that  idea

those be my perspective, now my thinking is not so great and definitely not
repeatable even on this list

Monetizing Wikimedia, premium access mumble mumble mumble,
cough

On 16 January 2016 at 17:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
> ___
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> 




-- 
GN.
President Wikimedia Australia
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Craig Franklin]

On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> services and APIs,


Brace yourselves...


> expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07


Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for
premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make
the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.

Cheers,
Craig
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Andrea Zanni]

Do you think?

I'm genuinely not sure.
I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data
and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big.
I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually
exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge
Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to
share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA:
they can keep it hidden.

There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we
need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?

Aubrey

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin 
wrote:

> On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>
> > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> thinking:
> >
> > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
> the
> > services and APIs,
>
>
> Brace yourselves...
>
>
> > expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> > access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> > line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> > in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> strategies.
> > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
>
>
> Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for
> premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make
> the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

> Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for
> premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make
> the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.

That's definitely a conversation worth having, as it helps us understand
what we want to do, and who we want to be.

Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be
able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google
is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time
earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk.

I don't intuitively object to Google paying for some additional features,
they ride on the back of our content in many situations, and we don't even
know how many people see it (content is cached).

I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the
community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there
should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as "
premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general
public).

Best,

Dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Craig Franklin]

On 16 January 2016 at 22:09, Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:

> Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be
> able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google
> is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time
> earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk
>
Realistically, the only way that I can see that the community would stand
for this is if the tool in question was something that was unquestionably
of use to a large segment of the community as a whole, and if the WMF
clearly did not have the resources to build it themselves without outside
assistance.  But perhaps I'm wrong there.


> I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the
> community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there
> should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as "
> premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general
> public).
>
If we're going to go down this road, I agree with this.

Cheers,
Craig
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Tanweer Morshed]

Great!

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive) <
nhas...@wikimedia.org.bd> wrote:

> Great! Thanks for sharing Anna!
>
>
> -Hasive
> WMBD
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 5:10 AM, Samir Elsharbaty <
> selsharb...@wikimedia.org
> > wrote:
>
> > Thanks for sharing, Anna!
> >
> > It is really interesting!
> > On Jan 16, 2016 12:50 AM, "Anna Torres"  wrote:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> > > film based on the community, the editors and their work.
> > >
> > > Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the
> > 15th
> > > anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in
> > Argentina,
> > > we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
> > >
> > > Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Commons->
> > > In spanish:  here
> > > 
> > > In english -> here
> > > 
> > >
> > > Youtube->here <
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXokeuQFJnM&feature=youtu.be>
> > >
> > > Vimeo:here 
> > >
> > > Hope you like it
> > >
> > > --
> > > Anna Torres Adell
> > > Directora Ejecutiva
> > > *A.C. Wikimedia Argentina*
> > > ___
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> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive) **:: **নুরুন্নবী চৌধুরী (হাছিব)*
> User: Hasive  |
> GSM/WhatsApp/Viber: +8801712754752
> ​
> Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia <
> http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Hasive>
> 
> fb.com/Hasive  | @nhasive
>  | Skype: nhasive | www.nhasive.com
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>



-- 
Regards,
Tanweer Morshed
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Richard Ames]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation,
...
> or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth.

What a good idea.

Richard.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Redon Skikuli]

I'll propose to project it to Open Labs, our hackerspace in Tirana.
Congrats!

*---*

*Redon Skikuli*
*e-mail: **re...@skikuli.com *
*web: **www.skikuli.com *


On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 7:07 AM, Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive) <
nhas...@wikimedia.org.bd> wrote:

> Great! Thanks for sharing Anna!
>
>
> -Hasive
> WMBD
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 5:10 AM, Samir Elsharbaty <
> selsharb...@wikimedia.org
> > wrote:
>
> > Thanks for sharing, Anna!
> >
> > It is really interesting!
> > On Jan 16, 2016 12:50 AM, "Anna Torres"  wrote:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> > > film based on the community, the editors and their work.
> > >
> > > Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the
> > 15th
> > > anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in
> > Argentina,
> > > we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
> > >
> > > Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Commons->
> > > In spanish:  here
> > > 
> > > In english -> here
> > > 
> > >
> > > Youtube->here <
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXokeuQFJnM&feature=youtu.be>
> > >
> > > Vimeo:here 
> > >
> > > Hope you like it
> > >
> > > --
> > > Anna Torres Adell
> > > Directora Ejecutiva
> > > *A.C. Wikimedia Argentina*
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > ___
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive) **:: **নুরুন্নবী চৌধুরী (হাছিব)*
> User: Hasive  |
> GSM/WhatsApp/Viber: +8801712754752
> ​
> Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia <
> http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Hasive>
> 
> fb.com/Hasive  | @nhasive
>  | Skype: nhasive | www.nhasive.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Yury Bulka]

Fantastic work, Anna!

Do you have the subtitles (*.srt) file so we can start translating the
subtitles? I'd like to translate in into Ukrainian and share here)

Best,
Yury Bulka
from Wikimedia Ukraine

Anna Torres  writes:

> Dear all,
>
> Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> film based on the community, the editors and their work.
>
> Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the 15th
> anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in Argentina,
> we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
>
> Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
>
> Wikimedia Commons->
> In spanish:  here
> 
> In english -> here
> 
>
> Youtube->here 
>
> Vimeo:here 
>
> Hope you like it

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Ricordisamoa]

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share 
in the sum of all knowledge." XD


Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:

I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:

Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
-Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Bodhisattwa Mandal]

Hi,

Great work, Anna.

Best wishes,
Bodhisattwa
from Bengali Wikipedia community
On 16 Jan 2016 18:34, "Yury Bulka"  wrote:

> Fantastic work, Anna!
>
> Do you have the subtitles (*.srt) file so we can start translating the
> subtitles? I'd like to translate in into Ukrainian and share here)
>
> Best,
> Yury Bulka
> from Wikimedia Ukraine
>
> Anna Torres  writes:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> > film based on the community, the editors and their work.
> >
> > Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the
> 15th
> > anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in
> Argentina,
> > we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
> >
> > Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
> >
> > Wikimedia Commons->
> > In spanish:  here
> > 
> > In english -> here
> > 
> >
> > Youtube->here <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXokeuQFJnM&feature=youtu.be>
> >
> > Vimeo:here 
> >
> > Hope you like it
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] For Wikipedia's 15th Birthday, what does Wikipedia mean to the world?

[Bodhisattwa Mandal]

Hi,

The video was awesome. :-)

Regards,
Bodhisattwa
On 16 Jan 2016 13:47, "Lodewijk"  wrote:

> Oh, this video is amazing! It could make a great introduction as background
> information for an educational talk, and so much more :)
>
> Lodewijk
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Claudia Garad <
> claudia.ga...@wikimedia.at>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for the resources Zack!
> >
> > Our project partner the simpleshow foundation made a freely licensed
> > educational video about Wikipedia as a birthday present - feel free to
> use
> > and share everyone:
> >
> > Commons:
> >
> >
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_Wikipedia_contributes_to_free_knowledge.webm#
> >
> > youtube:
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cndZ9jISks
> >
> > Regards from Vienna!
> > Claudia
> >
> > --
> > Claudia Garád
> > Geschäftsführerin
> >
> > Wikimedia Österreich - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> > www.wikimedia.at
> >
> >
> >
> > Am 15.01.2016 01:41, schrieb Zachary McCune:
> >
> >> Hello everyone!
> >>
> >>
> >> 15 January is Wikipedia's 15th birthday. That's right, it's Wikipedia
> Day!
> >> This is the day we celebrate the beginning of the Wikimedia movement and
> >> all of the free knowledge projects we share with the world.
> >>
> >> To celebrate, we are asking Wikipedia visitors (both anonymous readers
> and
> >> logged-in users)  to tell us what Wikipedia means to them. It's all
> about
> >> celebrating the impact of our movement.
> >>
> >> For the next 6 days, we will use some Central Notice banners to notify
> >> users of our birthday milestone and ask for their thoughts. The banners
> >> will be visible on Meta, Commons, and all language Wikipedias. The
> >> messages
> >> have been translated by the community into more than 98 languages (and
> >> counting). The banners will link to the Wikipedia15 microsite [1], where
> >> visitors can read the stories of 15 Wikimedians, review milestones from
> 15
> >> years of Wikipedia, and contribute thoughts on what Wikipedia means to
> >> them.
> >>
> >> Per MediaWiki, the timing will follow UTC. And of course, if you dismiss
> >> the notice, it will permanently opt you opt of seeing Wikipedia15
> banners
> >> for the rest of the week.
> >>
> >> Questions? Send them my way.
> >>
> >> Want to get involved? Why not go to a Wikimedia party or event[2], edit
> >> something new, share a Wikipedia15 illustration[3], or share a Wikipedia
> >> birthday wish with #Wikipedia15 on your preferred social media!
> >>
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >>
> >> - Zack
> >>
> >>
> >> [1] https://15.wikipedia.org
> >> [2] There are 149 events planned! Find one near you:
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events
> >> [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia15_Mark
> >>
> >> ___
> >> Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately
> >> directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia
> >> community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >> ___
> >> WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
> >> wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
> >>
> >
> > ___
> > Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately
> > directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia
> > community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> > ___
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> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one 
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial 
restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An added 
bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations of 
content if we allowed an non-commercial option.
My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are 
allowing Google to have a priviledged position.  There is no way around that.
What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking money.  
And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at least not to the 
community.


> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> From: ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
> 
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share 
> in the sum of all knowledge." XD
> 
> Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
> > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
> >
> > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> > services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> > access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> > line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> > in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> > -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> > 
> 
> 
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> 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Ilario Valdelli]

Interesting.

It would make sense in general, but if we de-contextualize Wikimedia.

The potential of Wikimedia projects are connected with the question that 
they are free. Having a premium access means two kind of risks:


a) losing the community, and Wikipedia will become quickly a "big 
outdated content repository" without the community
b) managing a service, because a premium access would have a "premium 
service"


It's normal that someone else build a business on Wikimedia's content, 
but this allowed by the license, it's more difficult that Wikimedia 
Foundation can do a business with this content.


Kind regards

On 16.01.2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth wrote:

I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:

Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
-Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Tanweer Morshed]

The video is fantastic, Anna. Great job!

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Bodhisattwa Mandal <
bodhisattwa.rg...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Great work, Anna.
>
> Best wishes,
> Bodhisattwa
> from Bengali Wikipedia community
> On 16 Jan 2016 18:34, "Yury Bulka" 
> wrote:
>
> > Fantastic work, Anna!
> >
> > Do you have the subtitles (*.srt) file so we can start translating the
> > subtitles? I'd like to translate in into Ukrainian and share here)
> >
> > Best,
> > Yury Bulka
> > from Wikimedia Ukraine
> >
> > Anna Torres  writes:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> > > film based on the community, the editors and their work.
> > >
> > > Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the
> > 15th
> > > anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in
> > Argentina,
> > > we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
> > >
> > > Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Commons->
> > > In spanish:  here
> > > 
> > > In english -> here
> > > 
> > >
> > > Youtube->here <
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXokeuQFJnM&feature=youtu.be>
> > >
> > > Vimeo:here 
> > >
> > > Hope you like it
> >
> > ___
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> > 
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> 
>



-- 
Regards,
Tanweer Morshed
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[WereSpielChequers]

If an API license raised a meaningful amount of money then whoever bought
it would have some influence over the organisation, and if it didn't raise
a meaningful amount of money I  doubt it would be worth doing.

There are other options that should be less contentious:

Emailing donors, explaining that we have now launched an endowment fund and
inviting them to mention Wikimedia in their will. We currently email donors
annually - a mid year endowment fund email should not conflict with that.

License the logos for some merchandising aimed at the public. I would
happily buy a couple of Wikimedia calendars to give as Christmas/New Year
gifts, and yes I appreciate that for timing reasons that would mean using
the Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 winners to illustrate a 2017 calendar.

Shift from asking for one off donations to asking people to sign up for a
regular donation. I don't know about other countries, but this would be an
easy move in the UK - it's what every efficient charity fundraiser would do.

Where you can take legally advantage of the tax man, go for it.  In the UK
if you have registered charity status as WMUK does, then under the Gift Aid
system the Taxman will add 25% to every donation where the donor confirms
they are a UK taxpayer. I would be disappointed if WMUK couldn't get a
clear majority of UK donors to tick the box  if they took over fundraising
in the UK. But having looked at the current WMF system  I seriously doubt
the WMF gets even a quarter of UK donors to go through Gift Aid.

WereSpielChequers


>
>
>
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 21:59:50 +1000
> From: Craig Franklin 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
> Message-ID:
> <
> cahf+k39bidmp4ycdda+7ncalkjjpigdnffad25+46g4asp8...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>
> > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> thinking:
> >
> > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
> the
> > services and APIs,
>
>
> Brace yourselves...
>
>
> > expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> > access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> > line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> > in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> strategies.
> > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
>
>
> Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for
> premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will make
> the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Fæ]

Thanks for raising this Pete. I am interested in both the ethics and
practicalities of this change, as a long established unpaid volunteer
API user.

Sorry to raise the obvious, but while Geshuri is on the board, someone
found in court to have acted *illegally* on behalf of Google resulting
in damages of nearly half a billion dollars, yet still voted in
unanimously by the rest of the trustees as a jolly good chap (and
praised by Lila due to his worthiness), the idea of the board
discussing fundamental ethical changes that /may benefit Google/ to
the potential disadvantage of volunteers or charitable organisations
who will then no doubt be excluded from using a "1st class API,
reserved for rich global corporations" is abhorrent.

Let's wait and see if the community needs to play a game of
brinkmanship with a formal vote of no confidence in the WMF board of
trustees, before the current Chairman is seen to raise his hands and
admit there is a problem, or do anything about the WMF board's
blatantly broken or incompetently managed system of governance (it's 9
days now since my open letter, but there has yet to be a polite
acknowledgement of receipt from the Chair). If we end up forcing major
changes to the board through a form of democratic commercial
embarrassment, then this decision need to wait until there are
trustees in place that *we* have confidence in again, not just the
majority of current trustees.

Fae

On 16 January 2016 at 09:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
> ___
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> 
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Peter Southwood]

What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the costs 
significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that, it would be 
reasonable for them to support the extra costs.
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Andrea Zanni
Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM
To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

Do you think?

I'm genuinely not sure.
I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data and 
the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big.
I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually exploit 
free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge Vault is 
probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to share it. It's 
an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA:
they can keep it hidden.

There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we need/have 
the right to address this? Is it a problem?

Aubrey

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin 
wrote:

> On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>
> > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> thinking:
> >
> > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the 
> > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access 
> > to
> the
> > services and APIs,
>
>
> Brace yourselves...
>
>
> > expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific 
> > services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth. 
> > The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the 
> > existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with 
> > the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in 
> > the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> strategies.
> > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential 
> > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
>
>
> Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging 
> for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that 
> will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite 
> murmuring.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> 
>
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-
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Version: 2016.0.7294 / Virus Database: 4489/11412 - Release Date: 01/16/16


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Todd Allen]

I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no".
(My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation,
so I'll refrain.)

I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all
purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to
make that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a
multibillion dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a
fundamental principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access,
reuse, whatever have you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford
to pay.

Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia
or Mediawiki. And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check,
lot of cards. If they want to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their
interest to, they certainly make significant use of our content), great! If
they want to donate with strings attached, thanks but no thanks. We're
certainly not hurting for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation
if we do or don't do something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see
you go. Thanks for the donations in the past."

I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence
Fae keeps putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often
agree with Fae, nor am I the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and
Wikimedia at every opportunity" type. Rather, it's out of deep concern and
care for the project I've spent a lot of time helping to build, and a lot
of other people have too. I don't want to take that step, but this has got
to stop, here and now.

Todd

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the
> costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like that,
> it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs.
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Andrea Zanni
> Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM
> To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
>
> Do you think?
>
> I'm genuinely not sure.
> I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our data
> and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big.
> I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually
> exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their Knowledge
> Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not supposed to
> share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or CCBYSA:
> they can keep it hidden.
>
> There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we
> need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
>
> Aubrey
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin <
> cfrank...@halonetwork.net>
> wrote:
>
> > On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> >
> > > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> > thinking:
> > >
> > > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> > > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
> > > to
> > the
> > > services and APIs,
> >
> >
> > Brace yourselves...
> >
> >
> > > expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing specific
> > > services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth.
> > > The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the
> > > existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line with
> > > the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation in
> > > the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> > strategies.
> > > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> > > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> >
> >
> > Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging
> > for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that
> > will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite
> murmuring.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Craig
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
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> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[MZMcBride]

Pete Forsyth wrote:
>Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
>Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
>the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
>providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
>Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
>access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
>line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
>in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
>strategies.

This reminds me of the Wikimedia update feed service:
. The
Wikimedia Foundation basically allowed large search engines to access a
private faster and dedicated stream of recent changes to Wikimedia wikis
for a fee. While Google isn't mentioned on the Meta-Wiki page, I have a
vague memory that they were (and maybe still are) involved.

Somewhat related, there is also search.wikimedia.org:
. This service
was designed to give Apple a fast and dedicated stream for title prefix
searches. Apple's built-in Dictionary application has been the primary
consumer of this feed, though I believe it's open to anyone.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Peter Southwood]

I agree with Todd on most, possibly all points, but if Google want to finance 
faster access for their search engine, in way of hardware, software or 
development, with no strings attached, as long as it puts no-one at a 
disadvantage at the time or in future, then why not?
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Todd Allen
Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 6:02 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no".
(My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation, so 
I'll refrain.)

I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all 
purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to make 
that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a multibillion 
dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a fundamental 
principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access, reuse, whatever have 
you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford to pay.

Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia or 
Mediawiki. And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check, lot of 
cards. If they want to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their interest to, 
they certainly make significant use of our content), great! If they want to 
donate with strings attached, thanks but no thanks. We're certainly not hurting 
for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation if we do or don't do 
something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see you go. Thanks for the 
donations in the past."

I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence Fae 
keeps putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often agree with 
Fae, nor am I the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and Wikimedia at every 
opportunity" type. Rather, it's out of deep concern and care for the project 
I've spent a lot of time helping to build, and a lot of other people have too. 
I don't want to take that step, but this has got to stop, here and now.

Todd

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood < 
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the 
> costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like 
> that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs.
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
> Behalf Of Andrea Zanni
> Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM
> To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
>
> Do you think?
>
> I'm genuinely not sure.
> I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our 
> data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times 
> big.
> I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually 
> exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their 
> Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not 
> supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or 
> CCBYSA:
> they can keep it hidden.
>
> There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we 
> need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?
>
> Aubrey
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin < 
> cfrank...@halonetwork.net>
> wrote:
>
> > On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> >
> > > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> > thinking:
> > >
> > > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for 
> > > the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium 
> > > access to
> > the
> > > services and APIs,
> >
> >
> > Brace yourselves...
> >
> >
> > > expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing 
> > > specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's 
> > > growth.
> > > The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the 
> > > existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line 
> > > with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for 
> > > innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential 
> > > fundraising
> > strategies.
> > > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these 
> > > potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> >
> >
> > Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but 
> > charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a 
> > degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like some 
> > quiet and polite
> murmuring.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Craig
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wik

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[MZMcBride]

James Alexander wrote:
>I think everyone knows there are a lot of legitimate concerns to be
>concerned about and certainly Arnnon's actions at Google are legitimate
>for question however this whole "google is controlling the board/wmf"
>line of thought is turning into a huge and enormous conspiracy theory and
>what seems to be a giant school of red herring
>. We haven't quite yet gotten
>to "Frieda has 6 letters in her name and you know what else has 6 letters
>in it's name? GOOGLE!" but we're getting damn close. If anything the only
>concern about google I've heard within the actual WMF is that the
>"Knowledge Engine" was a plan to 'compete' against google for traffic (for
>the record my personal opinion is that would be a waste of money on
>something we could never succeed if true but ALSO that it isn't actually
>true at all at this point).

A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google Apps
platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain is
now hosted by Google. Along with e-mail services, Google Apps also
includes Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc., which the Wikimedia Foundation
now regularly makes use of. The Wikimedia Foundation is quite literally
pumping a large portion of its data directly into Google's servers. This
applies to Wikimedia Foundation staff, contractors, and Board members.

About a year ago, PiRSquared17 began documenting the relationship between
Wikimedia and Google: . This page
needs additional expansion, but it already mentions the millions of
dollars that Google has directly donated to the Wikimedia Foundation and
related organizations. (It's not quite clear how Google funded Wikidata,
possibly via Wikimedia Deutschland.)

Before you try to dismiss the people with concerns about the relationship
between Wikimedia and Google as conspiracy theorists and quacks, perhaps
we should first have a full accounting of the tangled web that's been
woven. My suspicion is that if you or others put in the time to thoroughly
document the connection between the two entities, you'd miraculously find
more than a single concern about a failed project, as your reply suggested.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Magnus Manske]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:09 PM MZMcBride  wrote:

> Pete Forsyth wrote:
> >Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> >Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to
> >the services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> >providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> >Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> >access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> >line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> >in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> >strategies.
>
> This reminds me of the Wikimedia update feed service:
> . The
> Wikimedia Foundation basically allowed large search engines to access a
> private faster and dedicated stream of recent changes to Wikimedia wikis
> for a fee. While Google isn't mentioned on the Meta-Wiki page, I have a
> vague memory that they were (and maybe still are) involved.
>

I believe it was Yahoo. They were allowing us to use some of their servers
in Asia back in the day, and I believe they also paid for large-scale
access. There was even a special dump with the article start sections for
them.


> Somewhat related, there is also search.wikimedia.org:
> . This service
> was designed to give Apple a fast and dedicated stream for title prefix
> searches. Apple's built-in Dictionary application has been the primary
> consumer of this feed, though I believe it's open to anyone.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Advisory Board and Board-appointed seats (was: Beyond the Board)

[MZMcBride]

Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:
> I've been also thinking about revitalizing our Advisory Board - the way I
> would like to see it would be dividing it into (a) community (b) tech and
> (c) academic subgroups, available for immediate consulting and feedback.

As Adam Wight recently pointed out on wikimediafoundation.org, it's not
clear that the Advisory Board currently has any appointees:
.

Relevant Board resolutions:
* "Advisory board" (2006)
  https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/98250
* "Amending the Term of Advisory Board Members" (2013)
  https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/98267

There were appointments made in 2014 that carried through until the first
Board meeting of 2015. There's no indication that appointments were made
for 2015 or now 2016, which seems to mean that the Advisory Board still
exists, but without any members currently.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees apparently discussed the
Advisory Board in July 2015 at Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City:
.

I think it would be nice to get clarification on the current status of the
Advisory Board before discussing ways to improve it.

MZMcBride



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[Wikimedia-l] Transparency of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[MZMcBride]

Pine W wrote:
>2. While I understand that some Board conversations are best held in
>private, for example conversations involving attorney-client privilege, I
>continue to believe that there is a misalignment between the democratic
>and open-source values of the Wikimedia movement and the limited
>information that the community is provided about WMF Board deliberations.
>There seems to be an assumption that full and honest discussions are best
>held behind closed doors so that people in the room feel comfortable with
>voicing their opinions. It seems to me that this is a doctrine which is
>contrary to the values of our movement, and I would urge the Board to
>change its approach. I would also note that many jurisdictions in the
>United States have laws requiring government bodies like city councils
>and legislatures to have their meetings in full view of the public unless
>there is a specific exemption for a subject that is to be discussed in
>private. These governments, in many cases, continue to function
>effectively despite the public and sensitive nature of deliberations on
>topics like budgets, land use planning, environmental regulations,
>appointments of judges, service contracts, and allegations of misconduct
>against fellow elected officials. The WMF Board should be a model of
>openness and good governance. Now is a good time for the Board to take
>meaningful steps toward aligning itself with our collective values.

It's pretty simple to get access to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
meetings. You do it in roughly the same way that you get an appointed
seat: by donating a couple million dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation:
. By my
count, the Board of Trustees has passed six separate resolutions to
accommodate the Sloan Foundation's request to have a Board observer.

I agree with you that the current lack of openness and transparency
surrounding the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is disgraceful and
antithetical to Wikimedia's values.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
To be perfectly honest, the biggest gift of Google is to recognise
Wikipedia as significant. I like to think that it is because of the
algorithms they use and even when it is not it is what makes Wikipedia
significant. When they value us not only through their algorithms and give
us money because we add value to their search results, there is something
to find, I welcome their money as long as it fits with our stated
principles.

Google did invest in Wikidata and It became a vital tool for Wikipedia
through its interwiki links. Their thoughts on why they did this is not
that relevant to me. What they did is end their superior tool and they
spend money to end their product gracefully.

My thoughts on this are simple. The relation with Google is symbiotic. We
both do better because of the other. Those that do not see this are not
dismissed because they are quacks but because they do not see what is in
front of them; they are imho irrelevant.

The suggestion that there might be something is great. The suggestion is to
waste even more time. Time we could spend on researching how we can make a
better mouse trap out of Wikipedia. My conclusion is that the people that
waste their time politicking are in reality satisfying their own curiosity
and not improving what we do or how we do it.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 16 January 2016 at 17:31, MZMcBride  wrote:

> James Alexander wrote:
> >I think everyone knows there are a lot of legitimate concerns to be
> >concerned about and certainly Arnnon's actions at Google are legitimate
> >for question however this whole "google is controlling the board/wmf"
> >line of thought is turning into a huge and enormous conspiracy theory and
> >what seems to be a giant school of red herring
> >. We haven't quite yet gotten
> >to "Frieda has 6 letters in her name and you know what else has 6 letters
> >in it's name? GOOGLE!" but we're getting damn close. If anything the only
> >concern about google I've heard within the actual WMF is that the
> >"Knowledge Engine" was a plan to 'compete' against google for traffic (for
> >the record my personal opinion is that would be a waste of money on
> >something we could never succeed if true but ALSO that it isn't actually
> >true at all at this point).
>
> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google Apps
> platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain is
> now hosted by Google. Along with e-mail services, Google Apps also
> includes Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc., which the Wikimedia Foundation
> now regularly makes use of. The Wikimedia Foundation is quite literally
> pumping a large portion of its data directly into Google's servers. This
> applies to Wikimedia Foundation staff, contractors, and Board members.
>
> About a year ago, PiRSquared17 began documenting the relationship between
> Wikimedia and Google: . This page
> needs additional expansion, but it already mentions the millions of
> dollars that Google has directly donated to the Wikimedia Foundation and
> related organizations. (It's not quite clear how Google funded Wikidata,
> possibly via Wikimedia Deutschland.)
>
> Before you try to dismiss the people with concerns about the relationship
> between Wikimedia and Google as conspiracy theorists and quacks, perhaps
> we should first have a full accounting of the tangled web that's been
> woven. My suspicion is that if you or others put in the time to thoroughly
> document the connection between the two entities, you'd miraculously find
> more than a single concern about a failed project, as your reply suggested.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
If anything the Wikimedia Foundation is about providing free access and
provide it to everyone who needs it on an equal basis. When this changes,
when people pay for superior service that is not available for everyone I
will really hate it and the people who had us deviate so much from where we
came from.

There is a difference for paying for a general service we do not provide
yet. There is a difference for paying for additional hardware, bandwidth
and services at cost. As long as the services are advertised openly I do
not mind. When a specialised service provides a general need, it should
become freely available.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 16 January 2016 at 10:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Yury Bulka]

MZMcBride  writes:

> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google Apps
> platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain is
> now hosted by Google.
Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's servers:
https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org

Yury

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Lila Tretikov]

To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of
the issue we are facing.

Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We
have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
help guide us.

Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.

We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and
ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.

Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.

As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will
decline as well.

The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this
challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to
Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a
trend that has been accelerating)?

Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.

Lila



On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter 
wrote:

> If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one
> simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial
> restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An
> added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations
> of content if we allowed an non-commercial option.
> My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are
> allowing Google to have a priviledged position.  There is no way around
> that.
> What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking
> money.  And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at
> least not to the community.
>
>
> > To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > From: ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
> > Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
> >
> > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share
> > in the sum of all knowledge." XD
> >
> > Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
> > > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of
> thinking:
> > >
> > > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> > > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access
> to the
> > > services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> > > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> > > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping
> free
> > > access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> > > line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
> innovation
> > > in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising
> strategies.
> > > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> > > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> > > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> > > -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.or

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Pierre-Selim]

2016-01-16 19:21 GMT+01:00 Lila Tretikov :

> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of
> the issue we are facing.
>
> Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in
> the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We
> have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
> help guide us.
>
> Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet
> as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started
> the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
> human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
> issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
>
> We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
> supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet
> it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and
> reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from
> our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and
> ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people
> on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
>

Isn't that the point of using free licence (not NC, nor ND) ? I guess we do
so
to allow people/company/the world to reuse our content  the way they want.

If we have problem attracting people to our plateform, then the problem is
not
about our API, it's about attractiveness and maybe we should focus on our
products.

I might be wrong, but what I understand when I read this discussion or the
board
minutes, is that we want to increase traffic because it's our best known way
to raise money (correlation with the endowement ?). This looks like a wrong
reason to not respect our values.

I do understand that such a discussion can reach the board, it's healthy to
list
lots of different solutions, that said I don't think it aligns with the
core values of
our movement.


>
> Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that
> scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power,
> servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content
> is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to
> do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we
> can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
>

Isn't that part of sharing the sum of human knowledge ?


> As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline
> will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will
> decline as well.
>
> The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely
> on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this
> challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do
> so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to
> Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more
> people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into
> our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund
> this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a
> trend that has been accelerating)?
>
> Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some
> uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The
> conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.
>
> Lila
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter 
> wrote:
>
> > If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia,
> one
> > simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial
> > restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An
> > added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional
> donations
> > of content if we allowed an non-commercial option.
> > My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are
> > allowing Google to have a priviledged position.  There is no way around
> > that.
> > What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking
> > money.  And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at
> > least not to the community.
> >
> >
> > > To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > From: ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
> > > Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
> > >
> > > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share
> > > in the sum of all knowledge." XD
> > >
> > > Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:
> > > > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Johan Jönsson]

2016-01-16 20:40 GMT+01:00 Pierre-Selim :

> Isn't that the point of using free licence (not NC, nor ND) ? I guess we do
> so
> to allow people/company/the world to reuse our content  the way they want.
>
> If we have problem attracting people to our plateform, then the problem is
> not
> about our API, it's about attractiveness and maybe we should focus on our
> products.
>
> I might be wrong, but what I understand when I read this discussion or the
> board
> minutes, is that we want to increase traffic because it's our best known way
> to raise money (correlation with the endowement ?). This looks like a wrong
> reason to not respect our values.

One of my main worries is that our content being reused somewhere else
means that we're losing our ability to engage new contributors, which
in the long runt could threaten the projects, at the same time as no
one else is stepping up to do our job because the traffic is still
going to our content – just not to us. There's a tradeoff between
readability and editability, especially on the small screen. Anyone
not concerned with editing will have a head start when it comes to
presenting the information in a less cluttered way, which makes it
easier to read and the experience more enjoyable.

//Johan Jönsson
--

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[MZMcBride]

Yury Bulka wrote:
>MZMcBride  writes:
>> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google
>>Apps platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org
>>domain is now hosted by Google.
>Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's
>servers: https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org

Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation switched to Google Apps around October 2010.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2010-October/108636.html

My understanding is that the MX records show where the mail goes
initially, before being re-routed to either Google Apps for most staff,
contractors, et al.; to OTRS if it's a particular set of addresses; or
elsewhere as needed. If you'd like more detail, we can start a new thread.

Careful readers will note that the timeline of the Wikimedia Foundation's
Annual Plan 2016-17 is living at docs.google.com, not meta.wikimedia.org.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/081120.html

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Tim Landscheidt]

Yury Bulka  wrote:

>> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google Apps
>> platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain is
>> now hosted by Google.
> Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's 
> servers:
> https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org

Cf.
http://git.wikimedia.org/blob/operations%2Fpuppet.git/production/templates%2Fexim%2Fexim4.conf.mx.erb#L261:

| […]

| ldap_account:
| driver = manualroute
| domains = wikimedia.org
| condition = ${lookup ldap \
| 
{user="cn=eximagent,ou=other,dc=corp,dc=wikimedia,dc=org" pass=LDAPPASSWORD \
| 
ldap:///ou=people,dc=corp,dc=wikimedia,dc=org?mail?sub?(&(objectClass=inetOrgPerson)(mail=${quote_ldap:$local_part}@$domain)(x121Address=1))}
 \
| {true}fail}
| local_part_suffix = +*
| local_part_suffix_optional
| transport = remote_smtp
| route_list = *  aspmx.l.google.com
  ^^
| ldap_group:
| driver = manualroute
| domains = wikimedia.org
| condition = ${lookup ldap \
| 
{user="cn=eximagent,ou=other,dc=corp,dc=wikimedia,dc=org" pass=LDAPPASSWORD \
| 
ldap:///ou=groups,dc=corp,dc=wikimedia,dc=org?businessCategory?sub?(businessCategory=${quote_ldap:$local_part}@$domain)}
 \
| {true}fail}
| local_part_suffix = +*
| local_part_suffix_optional
| transport = remote_smtp
| route_list = *  aspmx.l.google.com
  ^^
| […]

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Andreas Kolbe]

I think if anyone were to pay, they should all pay at the same rate,
according to their usage.

Moreover, those whose usage is minimal should not pay at all. You might
have a threshold – say, if it's $X or less, no need to pay a dime.

So the Indian or African start-up would have access for free, while the
search giants might pay what is, from the WMF perspective, a considerable
sum (but peanuts for them).

What is vitally important though is that no one should be able to buy a
better service just because they are rich. That would just slant the
playing field in favour of the existing giants and suppress competition.

That would be an evil thing to do.

But if the above caveats are observed, it might be a good idea.

Andreas

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:09 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak 
wrote:

> > Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but charging for
> > premium access is likely to annoy the community to a degree that will
> make
> > the great Visual Editor revolt look like some quiet and polite murmuring.
>
> That's definitely a conversation worth having, as it helps us understand
> what we want to do, and who we want to be.
>
> Do we want to charge for knowledge? Of course not. But do we want to be
> able to introduce cool new tools for everyone faster, because e.g. Google
> is willing to pay for their development if they can use it for some time
> earlier as "premium"? I don't know yet. Let's talk.
>
> I don't intuitively object to Google paying for some additional features,
> they ride on the back of our content in many situations, and we don't even
> know how many people see it (content is cached).
>
> I do, however, believe that if we ever decide to do this, with the
> community's backing, any charging should resemble grants a bit (there
> should be a clear time horizon when what we are able to develop as "
> premium" becomes standard and free; if it is also useful for the general
> public).
>
> Best,
>
> Dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Advisory Board and Board-appointed seats (was: Beyond the Board)

[Andreas Kolbe]

Having "Jimmy's technolibertarian ubercapitalist friends" (to use Milos'
inimitable diction) as board *advisors* rather than voting board members
and *decision-makers* directing the movement's course strikes me as a very
worthwhile idea.

Andreas
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Asaf Bartov]

So, in one of the last 15th birthday celebrations around the world, we just
watched a lightning talk from New York City, where a young hacker[1] was
demonstrating her Wiki-sonnets engine:

http://wikison.net/

Here's the one it made me given the starting article [[Homer]]:


*Homer*


Before the April Theses put an end

performed it, in a version cut almost

for treatment and recovery with a friend

of the division moved along the coast.

According to The Independent, he

provides the names of other authors where

it was announced that loyal servants Lee

salvation and the Word of God and Prayer.

Her education and genteel background

are taken separate from other tests,

related to the name of Homer found

for major demonstrations and protests.

This word is in the Attic dialect,

and lubrication system are suspect.


[1] regrettably I did not catch her name, and the About link does not seem
to be working yet.
-- 
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
https://donate.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Johan Jönsson]

2016-01-16 23:36 GMT+01:00 Asaf Bartov :
> So, in one of the last 15th birthday celebrations around the world, we just
> watched a lightning talk from New York City, where a young hacker[1] was
> demonstrating her Wiki-sonnets engine:
>
> http://wikison.net/
>

I was very active in my student nation
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_in_Swedish_universities) when I
was at university, so I found the last lines of the sonnet served when
I chose the article of my alma mater, Uppsala University, slightly
worrying – but very Wikipedian.

The residential campus in Nyack,
and implementing a strategic plan
in these apartments and the general lack
of research institutes in Pakistan.

The motto of the school is "The pursuit
of scientific work and was therefore
an independent "royal institute"
in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

A copy of the interview can still
declare her abdication in the great
connection with civilian life, a skill
became a part of Chattanooga State.

The status as a student union will
be nominated for deletion still.


//Johan Jönsson
--

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Vituzzu]

I agree, we shouldn't fee anything but a "reimburse" for the massive 
usage of our hardware/networking resources would be ok.


Using over the tops' facilities would be great but it would also bring 
to privacy concerns.


Finally if an over the top wants some further feature it can fund 
scholarships, easy, transparent and without any side effect.


Vito


Il 16/01/2016 17:22, Peter Southwood ha scritto:

I agree with Todd on most, possibly all points, but if Google want to finance 
faster access for their search engine, in way of hardware, software or 
development, with no strings attached, as long as it puts no-one at a 
disadvantage at the time or in future, then why not?
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Todd Allen
Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 6:02 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

I wonder how many ways there are to say "No"? Well, let's start with "no".
(My actual thoughts on this idea would probably get me put on moderation, so 
I'll refrain.)

I helped build this project to be freely available to all reusers for all 
purposes. The WMF's job should be to provide as many ways as possible to make 
that reuse easy by anyone who wants to, whether that reuser be a multibillion 
dollar tech company or a kid in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a fundamental 
principle that no one, ever, should be charged to access, reuse, whatever have 
you, Wikimedia content. Not even if they could afford to pay.

Conversely, Google should never get a foot in the door to control Wikimedia or Mediawiki. 
And anyone who's writing a check holds some cards. Big check, lot of cards. If they want 
to donate to Wikimedia (and it'd be in their interest to, they certainly make significant 
use of our content), great! If they want to donate with strings attached, thanks but no 
thanks. We're certainly not hurting for money. If they want to pull a recurring donation 
if we do or don't do something, the answer should always be "Sorry to see you go. 
Thanks for the donations in the past."

I am becoming more and more convinced that the formal vote of no confidence Fae keeps 
putting forth is in fact necessary. And I don't exactly often agree with Fae, nor am I 
the Wikipediocracy "Beat up Wikipedia and Wikimedia at every opportunity" type. 
Rather, it's out of deep concern and care for the project I've spent a lot of time 
helping to build, and a lot of other people have too. I don't want to take that step, but 
this has got to stop, here and now.

Todd

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Peter Southwood < 
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:


What do they cost the foundation for their access? If they put up the
costs significantly in way of bandwidth or servers or anything like
that, it would be reasonable for them to support the extra costs.
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
Behalf Of Andrea Zanni
Sent: Saturday, 16 January 2016 2:08 PM
To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

Do you think?

I'm genuinely not sure.
I think that the difference in scale from what Google does with our
data and the general developer/researcher is pretty big. One million times big.
I actually think that "over-the-top" players like Google do actually
exploit free licensed materials like Wikipedia... I mean, their
Knowledge Vault is probably 100 bigger than Wikidata, but they are not
supposed to share it. It's an internal asset. And it's not matter of CC0 or 
CCBYSA:
they can keep it hidden.

There very, very few players who can exploit commons like this: do we
need/have the right to address this? Is it a problem?

Aubrey

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Craig Franklin <
cfrank...@halonetwork.net>
wrote:


On 16 January 2016 at 19:23, Pete Forsyth  wrote:


I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of

thinking:

Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for
the Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium
access to

the

services and APIs,


Brace yourselves...



expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, providing
specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia Foundation's growth.
The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free access to the
existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in line
with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for
innovation in the Foundation's activities, and other potential
fundraising

strategies.

The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these
potential strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07


Looking for additional revenue sources isn't a bad idea, but
charging for premium access is likely to annoy the community to a
degree that will make the great Visual Editor revolt look like s

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Alex Monk]

On 16 January 2016 at 10:08, Yury Bulka 
wrote:

> MZMcBride  writes:
> > A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google
> Apps
> > platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain
> is
> > now hosted by Google.
> Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's
> servers:
> https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org


It's true that individual inboxes for staff/contractors/board/etc. are
hosted in Google Apps. WMF Operations controls the mail routing (hence the
MX record) and directs mail sent to different addresses to different places
- including rules for allowing Office IT (via foundation corporate LDAP) to
route addresses to Google:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/OPUP/browse/production/templates/exim/exim4.conf.mx.erb;51327368b853ffabcc93ea336c7e9e603354a077$261-292
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Vituzzu]

Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.

IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as 
possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete 
one of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering 
we have.


Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any 
kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase. 
I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to 
add an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users" 
agreement.


So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will 
pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our 
resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).


Vito

Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:

To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core of
the issue we are facing.

Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in
the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together. We
have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
help guide us.

Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet
as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started
the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.

We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet
it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and
reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from
our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons) and
ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people
on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.

Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that
scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power,
servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content
is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to
do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we
can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.

As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline
will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will
decline as well.

The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely
on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this
challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do
so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to
Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more
people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into
our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund
this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a
trend that has been accelerating)?

Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some
uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The
conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join it.

Lila



On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter 
wrote:


If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one
simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial
restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An
added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional donations
of content if we allowed an non-commercial option.
My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are
allowing Google to have a priviledged position.  There is no way around
that.
What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking
money.  And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing... at
least not to the community.



To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
From: ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:13:06 +0100
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freemiumly share
in the sum of all knowledge." XD

Il 16/01/2016 10:23, Pete Forsyth ha scritto:

I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of

thinking:

Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access

to the

services and APIs, expanding major dono

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Asaf Bartov]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:08 PM, Johan Jönsson  wrote:

> >
> > http://wikison.net/
>
> The status as a student union will
> be nominated for deletion still.
>

Hilarious. :)

Also, Richard Knipel has helpfully informed me that the hacker's name is Cassie
Tarakajian.
https://github.com/catarak

   A.
-- 
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
https://donate.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Risker]

Hmm.  The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very
search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in
the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to
survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their
algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to catch
updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead paragraphs,
which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the
same articles).  Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to
read, to make donations, to possibly edit.  Of course there are lesser
crawlers, but they're not really big players.

I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on the
costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay API
that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one
customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access.  If they want a
specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM
hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source
way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be
modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.

It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns.  Could a link be
given to the report, please?  It's public, correct?  This is exactly the
point of transparency.  If only the WMF has the information, then it gives
an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't
know the facts".  So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.

Risker/Anne



On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu  wrote:

> Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
>
> IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as
> possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete one
> of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we have.
>
> Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any
> kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase.
> I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add
> an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users"
> agreement.
>
> So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will
> pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our
> resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
>
> Vito
>
>
> Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
>
>> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
>> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
>> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core
>> of
>> the issue we are facing.
>>
>> Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in
>> the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together.
>> We
>> have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
>> help guide us.
>>
>> Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet
>> as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started
>> the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
>> human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
>> issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
>>
>> We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
>> supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet
>> it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and
>> reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from
>> our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons)
>> and
>> ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people
>> on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
>>
>> Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that
>> scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power,
>> servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content
>> is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to
>> do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we
>> can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
>>
>> As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline
>> will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will
>> decline as well.
>>
>> The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely
>> on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this
>> challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do
>> so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to
>> Wikipedia, what would w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Todd Allen]

Folks (WMF board, and those closely related), do we really have to hold a
vote of no confidence to get your attention? Do you have any doubt that
it'd pass?

Absent that, please start listening to the volunteers. Listening, as in
doing what they'd like you to do. Otherwise, I'll be putting forth that
no-confidence vote shortly.

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Vituzzu  wrote:

> Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
>
> IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as
> possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete one
> of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we have.
>
> Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any
> kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase.
> I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add
> an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users"
> agreement.
>
> So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will
> pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our
> resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
>
> Vito
>
>
> Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
>
>> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
>> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
>> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core
>> of
>> the issue we are facing.
>>
>> Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge in
>> the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together.
>> We
>> have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
>> help guide us.
>>
>> Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic, internet
>> as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we started
>> the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
>> human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
>> issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a lot.
>>
>> We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
>> supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge. Yet
>> it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies and
>> reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers from
>> our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons)
>> and
>> ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a problem? I'd like to hear if people
>> on this list see it as such. And how we sustain contributions over time.
>>
>> Meanwhile estimated half of our hosting is used to support crawlers that
>> scan our content. This has an associated cost in infrastructure, power,
>> servers, employees to support some well-funded organizations. The content
>> is used for a variety of commercial purposes, sometimes having nothing to
>> do with putting our contributor's work in front of more readers. Still, we
>> can say this is tangentially supportive of our mission.
>>
>> As these two trends increase without our intervention, our traffic decline
>> will accelerate, our ability to grow editors, content and cover costs will
>> decline as well.
>>
>> The first question on the upcoming consultation next week will be squarely
>> on this. Please help us. API conversation is a consequence of this
>> challenge. If we were to build more for reuse: APIs are a good way to do
>> so. If we are to somehow incentivize users of SIri to come back to
>> Wikipedia, what would we need to do? Should we improve our site so more
>> people come to us directly as the first stop? How do we bring people into
>> our world vs. the world of commercial knowledge out there? How do we fund
>> this if the people moved to access our content through other interfaces (a
>> trend that has been accelerating)?
>>
>> Those are the core questions we need to face. We will have to have some
>> uncomfortable, honest discussions as we test our hypothesis this year. The
>> conversation next week is a good start to prioritize those. Please join
>> it.
>>
>> Lila
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter > >
>> wrote:
>>
>> If we are concerned about Google taking unfair advantage of Wikipedia, one
>>> simple solution is to allow content donations with a non-commercial
>>> restriction. Right now, the concept of "free" include commercial use. An
>>> added bonus to this is that we would get a lot more institutional
>>> donations
>>> of content if we allowed an non-commercial option.
>>> My problem with allowing for paying for "premium access" is that we are
>>> allowing Google to have a priviledged position.  There is no way around
>>> that.
>>> What is the impetus behind this proposal? Its not like we are lacking
>>> money.  And limiting growth of the Foundation is not a bad thing.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Michael Peel]

> On 16 Jan 2016, at 18:39, Alex Monk  wrote:
> 
> On 16 January 2016 at 10:08, Yury Bulka 
> wrote:
> 
>> MZMcBride  writes:
>>> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google
>> Apps
>>> platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain
>> is
>>> now hosted by Google.
>> Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's
>> servers:
>> https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org
> 
> 
> It's true that individual inboxes for staff/contractors/board/etc. are
> hosted in Google Apps. WMF Operations controls the mail routing (hence the
> MX record) and directs mail sent to different addresses to different places
> - including rules for allowing Office IT (via foundation corporate LDAP) to
> route addresses to Google:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/OPUP/browse/production/templates/exim/exim4.conf.mx.erb;51327368b853ffabcc93ea336c7e9e603354a077$261-292

Open source email options apparently aren't up to the job. As demonstrated by 
the number of times that the gmail-only 'mute thread' functionality has been 
mentioned on this list of late...

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Samuel Klein]

What a delight! A truly glorious commemoration. Thanks to Cassie T and to
Asaf for sharing this with us, transmuting prose to timeless poetry.
On Jan 16, 2016 18:32, "Asaf Bartov"  wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:08 PM, Johan Jönsson 
> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > http://wikison.net/
> >
> > The status as a student union will
> > be nominated for deletion still.
> >
>
> Hilarious. :)
>
> Also, Richard Knipel has helpfully informed me that the hacker's name is
> Cassie
> Tarakajian.
> https://github.com/catarak
>
>A.
> --
> Asaf Bartov
> Wikimedia Foundation 
>
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> https://donate.wikimedia.org
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Denny Vrandecic]

I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with
most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.

To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current
crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide
more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc.
These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say,
to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens
or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot
of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose
mission might or might not be aligned with our.

Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under
restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions
we should discuss?
On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker"  wrote:

> Hmm.  The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very
> search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in
> the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to
> survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their
> algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to catch
> updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead paragraphs,
> which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the
> same articles).  Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to
> read, to make donations, to possibly edit.  Of course there are lesser
> crawlers, but they're not really big players.
>
> I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on the
> costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay API
> that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one
> customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access.  If they want a
> specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM
> hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source
> way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be
> modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
>
> It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns.  Could a link be
> given to the report, please?  It's public, correct?  This is exactly the
> point of transparency.  If only the WMF has the information, then it gives
> an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't
> know the facts".  So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
> On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu  wrote:
>
> > Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real data.
> >
> > IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as
> > possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete
> one
> > of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we
> have.
> >
> > Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any
> > kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our userbase.
> > I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to add
> > an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users"
> > agreement.
> >
> > So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will
> > pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to *our
> > resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as usual).
> >
> > Vito
> >
> >
> > Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
> >
> >> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
> >> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely and
> >> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the core
> >> of
> >> the issue we are facing.
> >>
> >> Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free knowledge
> in
> >> the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them together.
> >> We
> >> have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week will
> >> help guide us.
> >>
> >> Over the last year we looked at the trends in Wikimedia traffic,
> internet
> >> as a whole and user behaviors. It took a lot of research. When we
> started
> >> the process we have not had solid internal data about unique visitors or
> >> human vs. crawler usage on the site. For a top 10 website this is a big
> >> issue; it hurts our ability to make smart decisions. We've learned a
> lot.
> >>
> >> We found data that supports Leigh's point -- our permissive license
> >> supports our core value, we are (I know I am) here for free knowledge.
> Yet
> >> it allows others to use the content in ways that truncates, simplifies
> and
> >> reduces it. More importantly this type of reuse separates our readers
> from
> >> our site, disconnecting readers from our contributors (no edit buttons)
> >> and
> >> ultimately reduces traffic. Is this a

[Wikimedia-l] Proposal for New Project - Wikilore

[Satdeep Gill]

Hello Everyone,

I have proposed a new Wikimedia project on Meta. I hope you guys can take a 
look and give your views.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilore

Regards
Satdeep Gill


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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Thank yous and video recordings for the Wikipedia 15 joint celebrations (SF, NYC, and Seattle)

[Pine W]

Forwarding video links (:

-- Forwarded message --
From: Pine W 
Date: Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 6:43 PM
Subject: Thank yous and video recordings for the Wikipedia 15 joint
celebrations (SF, NYC, and Seattle)
To:



Video links to Youtube (Commons uploads will happen in the near future, I
believe):

* Welcome and lightning talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGhxEpowM6A
* "Wikipedia's content gender gap":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW1WSVmpvwk
* "Stories from the weird old days":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLmGc-hpp3U
* Panel discussion "The impact of 15 years of Wikipedia":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiEjkxCGmgU

Here's to the next 15 years!

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[John]

In cases of excessive resource usage we have several options. Contact the
source, throttle them, or flat out disable access depending on what each
case calls for.

I have seen the dev team to this liberally in the past when needed. If any
one person or group is exploiting us by using unproportionate amounts of
resources  thats one thing, if we are just trying to make money by selling
access to what we already have thats another. Limiting abusive sources
shouldnt be an issue, but as soon as we start selling access we loose sight
of our mission.

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic 
wrote:

> I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with
> most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
>
> To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current
> crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide
> more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc.
> These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say,
> to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens
> or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot
> of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose
> mission might or might not be aligned with our.
>
> Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under
> restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions
> we should discuss?
> On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker"  wrote:
>
> > Hmm.  The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very
> > search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in
> > the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to
> > survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their
> > algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
> catch
> > updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
> paragraphs,
> > which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the
> > same articles).  Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to
> > read, to make donations, to possibly edit.  Of course there are lesser
> > crawlers, but they're not really big players.
> >
> > I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
> the
> > costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
> API
> > that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one
> > customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access.  If they want a
> > specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let THEM
> > hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately open-source
> > way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be
> > modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
> >
> > It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns.  Could a link be
> > given to the report, please?  It's public, correct?  This is exactly the
> > point of transparency.  If only the WMF has the information, then it
> gives
> > an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they don't
> > know the facts".  So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> >
> >
> >
> > On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu  wrote:
> >
> > > Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
> data.
> > >
> > > IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as
> > > possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely deplete
> > one
> > > of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering we
> > have.
> > >
> > > Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but any
> > > kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
> userbase.
> > > I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
> add
> > > an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users"
> > > agreement.
> > >
> > > So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will
> > > pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
> *our
> > > resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
> usual).
> > >
> > > Vito
> > >
> > >
> > > Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
> > >
> > >> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this -- I
> > >> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
> and
> > >> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
> core
> > >> of
> > >> the issue we are facing.
> > >>
> > >> Today Wikimedia is the largest internet channel for open free
> knowledge
> > in
> > >> the world. But the trends are against us. We have to face them
> together.
> > >> We
> > >> have to have the answers on how. The strategic discussion next week
> will
> > >> help guide us.
> > >>
> > >> Over the last year we looked at the t

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Salvador A]

What a delight!

For those who love iterations, the sonneto of Wikipedia itself:


*Wikipedia*

In many cases this is very far

are written in a form that deviates

from an assumption that conceptions are

been sold for use in the United States.

A "flagged revisions" system can prevent

is: If this person were alive today

is :hover, which identifies content

especially variation in delay.

The inspiration for the movie came

allowing him or her to verify

an album or an artist, or the name

of taxi drivers who can qualify.

The problem is that DES require a lot

depending on the risk of getting caught.


2016-01-16 18:57 GMT-06:00 Samuel Klein :

> What a delight! A truly glorious commemoration. Thanks to Cassie T and to
> Asaf for sharing this with us, transmuting prose to timeless poetry.
> On Jan 16, 2016 18:32, "Asaf Bartov"  wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:08 PM, Johan Jönsson 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > http://wikison.net/
> > >
> > > The status as a student union will
> > > be nominated for deletion still.
> > >
> >
> > Hilarious. :)
> >
> > Also, Richard Knipel has helpfully informed me that the hacker's name is
> > Cassie
> > Tarakajian.
> > https://github.com/catarak
> >
> >A.
> > --
> > Asaf Bartov
> > Wikimedia Foundation 
> >
> > Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> > sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> > https://donate.wikimedia.org
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ___
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> 
>



-- 
*Salvador Alcántar*
*@salvador_alc*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Mitar]

Hi!

I have been recently investigating business models for community based
and collaborative online services. You do not have to reinvent the
wheel (or discussions), there is some experience in this field from
other projects. So, to move the discussion away from just opinions and
feelings...

I would suggest that anyone interested in monetizing APIs check how
MusicBrainz (https://musicbrainz.org/) is doing it.

An open encyclopedia for music metadata. Their data is all open,
collaboratively made, and APIs are free to use, but big users are
asked to pay. In this way they are getting money from Google, for
example. You should contact them and check how they feel about issues
raised here: Do they feel that they get strings attached for receiving
money from Google? How do their contributors feel about them getting
money in this way? How do they achieve that big players pay, but
community projects, researchers, and others do not? What is the
process to determine that? In fact, I am CCing Rob from MusicBrainz
here.

You could also check Crossref, another non-profit serving APIs to the
community and commercial entities. To my knowledge their approach is
that they provide free API for everyone, but if you require uptime and
SLAs then you pay. CCing Geoffrey from Crossref.

Another project to look at is Arxiv, an archive of academic articles'
preprints. Their model is to look from which
universities/organizations the most requests are coming based on IPs
and then contacting them and suggesting that they pay/donate for their
service. In this way the service is free for users, but organizations
behind big groups of users are paying for service to be online for
everyone.


Mitar

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 1:23 AM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking:
>
> Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
> Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
> services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
> providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
> Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
> access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
> line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
> in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
> The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
> strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
> Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
> -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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> 



-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
https://twitter.com/mitar_m

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Denny Vrandecic]

So how to deal with legitimate uses that require many requests?

Is it better to not serve them at all?
On Jan 16, 2016 19:50, "John"  wrote:

> In cases of excessive resource usage we have several options. Contact the
> source, throttle them, or flat out disable access depending on what each
> case calls for.
>
> I have seen the dev team to this liberally in the past when needed. If any
> one person or group is exploiting us by using unproportionate amounts of
> resources  thats one thing, if we are just trying to make money by selling
> access to what we already have thats another. Limiting abusive sources
> shouldnt be an issue, but as soon as we start selling access we loose sight
> of our mission.
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic  >
> wrote:
>
> > I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement
> with
> > most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
> >
> > To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current
> > crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide
> > more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
> etc.
> > These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
> say,
> > to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens
> > or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
> lot
> > of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
> whose
> > mission might or might not be aligned with our.
> >
> > Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under
> > restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such
> restrictions
> > we should discuss?
> > On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker"  wrote:
> >
> > > Hmm.  The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very
> > > search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often
> in
> > > the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to
> > > survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their
> > > algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
> > catch
> > > updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
> > paragraphs,
> > > which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling
> the
> > > same articles).  Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites,
> to
> > > read, to make donations, to possibly edit.  Of course there are lesser
> > > crawlers, but they're not really big players.
> > >
> > > I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
> > the
> > > costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
> > API
> > > that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than
> one
> > > customer) that hasn't even agreed to pay for access.  If they want a
> > > specialized API (and we've been given no evidence that they do), let
> THEM
> > > hire the staff, pay them, write the code in an appropriately
> open-source
> > > way, and donate it to the WMF with the understanding that it could be
> > > modified as required, and that it will be accessible to everyone.
> > >
> > > It is good that the WMF has studied the usage patterns.  Could a link
> be
> > > given to the report, please?  It's public, correct?  This is exactly
> the
> > > point of transparency.  If only the WMF has the information, then it
> > gives
> > > an excuse for the community's comments to be ignored "because they
> don't
> > > know the facts".  So let's lay out all the facts on the table, please.
> > >
> > > Risker/Anne
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 16 January 2016 at 15:06, Vituzzu  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Thank you for sharing this but, above all, to focus on digging real
> > data.
> > > >
> > > > IMHO we shouldn't forget our mission, so licenses must be as free as
> > > > possible. Turning into something "more closed" would definitely
> deplete
> > > one
> > > > of the most valuable source (the open source world) of volunteering
> we
> > > have.
> > > >
> > > > Crawlers' owner should definitely share our increasing expenses but
> any
> > > > kind of agreement with them should include ways to improve our
> > userbase.
> > > > I'm wondering about an agreement with Google (or any other player) to
> > add
> > > > an "edit" button to knowledge graph. Sort of a "knowledge vs. users"
> > > > agreement.
> > > >
> > > > So, we definitely need a long term strategy which the Foundation will
> > > > pursue in *negotiating* with anyone who wants a big scale access to
> > *our
> > > > resources* (while access to our knowledge will have no limits, as
> > usual).
> > > >
> > > > Vito
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Il 16/01/2016 19:21, Lila Tretikov ha scritto:
> > > >
> > > >> To share some context of the discussion the board had around this
> -- I
> > > >> don't think the minutes give enough detail. APIs -- as we are freely
> > and
> > > >> rapidly creating them today are important, but are not quite at the
> > core
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[WereSpielChequers]

If we are running dedicated services for free on behalf of a major search
engine as  part of our symbiotic relationship with them, then kudos to Lila
for putting it on the trustees agenda and getting some discussion in the
movement.

I can understand how we get into a situation where a known major search
engine is allowed a level of web crawling that would be treated as a denial
of service attack if it came from elsewhere.

Echoing Andreas and Denny I can see the case for asking for some
contribution to cost recovery when we do something extra for a major reuser
of our data. But I would prefer this to be couched as part of a wider
strategic dialogue with those entities.

My particular concern is with attack pages, and if we are providing the
service that crawls all edits including new pages then I think we can do
what has in the past been dismissed as impossible or outside our control:
Shift the new page process to one where unpatrolled pages are not crawled
by search engine bots until after someone has patrolled them.
Treat "flagged for deletion" as a third status in addition to patrolled and
unpatrollled..
If we do this then when someone creates an article about their high school
prom queen and her unorthodox method for getting good grades from male
teachers, we should be able to delete it without it being mirrored for
hours by search engines.

Others might want the dialogue to be more about how much content can be
shown in an uneditable unattributed way by being treated as simply
extracted facts and thereby public domain.

I'm keen that the WMF board has oversight of these arrangements,  I
appreciate that some data about crawl frequencies and algorithms will be
confidential to the commercial entities involved, So I could understand if
some discussions or  briefing papers to the board were confidential.

What I don't want is for cost recovery to be the first item on the agenda
when we talk about these relationships. Less mirroring of vandalism and
attack pages, better compliance with CC-BY-SA and other licenses and more
opportunities for readers to edit are more important to me, and considering
our current financial health should be to us all..

This does of course bring us back to the discussion about conflicts of
interest and the need for staff and trustees to recuse, not just when their
employer's crawler is being discussed, but also when making decisions about
entities in which they own any shares. I think we should also add when the
trustees are discussing their employer's direct competitors. It might also
help if more of the trustees had the detachment and neutrality of say a
Canadian Medic as opposed to a silicon valley insider whose future
employers could easily be other tech giants.

WereSpielChequers/Jonathan



Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 18:11:51 -0800
> From: Denny Vrandecic 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
> Message-ID:
> <
> calurxatfxjs9a3oo-kz_w+prdqshgfxhye5kq23rgfhetax...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> I find it rather surprising, but I very much find myself in agreement with
> most what Andreas Kolbe said on this thread.
>
> To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current
> crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide
> more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, etc.
> These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - say,
> to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens
> or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a lot
> of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies whose
> mission might or might not be aligned with our.
>
> Is monetizing such use cases really entirely unthinkable? Even under
> restrictions like the ones suggested by Andreas, or other such restrictions
> we should discuss?
> On Jan 16, 2016 3:49 PM, "Risker"  wrote:
>
> > Hmm.  The majority of those crawlers are from search engines - the very
> > search engines that keep us in the top 10 of their results (and often in
> > the top 3), thus leading to the usage and donations that we need to
> > survive. If they have to pay, then they might prefer to change their
> > algorithm, or reduce the frequency of scraping (thus also failing to
> catch
> > updates to articles including removal of vandalism in the lead
> paragraphs,
> > which is historically one of the key reasons for frequently crawling the
> > same articles).  Those crawlers are what attracts people to our sites, to
> > read, to make donations, to possibly edit.  Of course there are lesser
> > crawlers, but they're not really big players.
> >
> > I'm at a loss to understand why the Wikimedia Foundation should take on
> the
> > costs and indemnities associated with hiring staff to create a for-pay
> API
> > that would have to meet the expectations of a customer (or more than one
> > customer) th

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offlist Re: In Support of Community

[Philippe Beaudette]

You called? :)

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 1:42 AM, Chris Keating 
wrote:

> Ok, spot the idiot who can't send an offlist email offlist.
> On 13 Jan 2016 09:38, "Chris Keating"  wrote:
>
> > That's what the Googleplex wants you to think!
> > On 13 Jan 2016 00:56, "Asaf Bartov"  wrote:
> >
> > > (perhaps it would be nice to stop wasting everyone's time with this.)
> > >
> > >A.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> > >
> > > > I've written a guess on what Damon is hinting at. I will reveal this
> > > guess
> > > > at some later date, but for now here is the hash value:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> bd17ae9eef103aec4ce75c8e8ba0c0b9cb45bc63c7bb0b52145642b68b1c6bfb586ea67f18e07e6767b5522765a00e096cf29eceadc0450e8840a19bacb692f2
> > > > ___
> > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > 
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Asaf Bartov
> > > Wikimedia Foundation 
> > >
> > > Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the
> > > sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> > > https://donate.wikimedia.org
> > > ___
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> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > ___
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> > 
> ___
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> 
>



-- 


Philippe Beaudette

phili...@beaudette.me
415-691-8822
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