Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Legoktm]

Hi,

On 01/16/2016 06:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
> 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.

Why do they need to use our APIs? As I understand it, the Wikidata
SPARQL service was designed so that someone could import a Wikidata
dump, and have their own endpoint to query. I'm sure that someone who
has the need to make millions of requests per day also has the technical
resources to set up their own local mirror. I don't think setting up a
MW mirror would be quite so simple, but it should be doable.

One problem with relying on dumps is that downloading them is often
slow, and there are rate limits[1]. If Google or other some other large
entity wanted to donate some hosting space and bandwidth by re-hosting
our dumps, I think that would be a win-win situation all around - they
get their dumps and can directly rsync from us, as well as taking
pressure off of our infrastructure and letting other people access our
content more easily.

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114019#1892529

-- Legoktm

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Keegan Peterzell]

I've been thinking about it and this is just bothering me too much.

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 5:48 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> 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?
>
>
​The Wikimedia Foundation is a private non-profit corporation registered in
Florida. It is not structured as a membership organization (after all,
every human being is technically a member), it is but a single part of the
Wikimedia movement. You have no standing for such a vote, and neither do I.



> 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.
>

​You mean to say, "please start listening to the volunteers ***that agree
with me*. Listening, as in doing what *the people that I agree with* would
like you to do."

Personally, I agree with your position against monetizing any part of our
services.​

​I'm pleasantly surprised that some people that I thought would agree with
me are at least open to the theory, it makes for very interesting
discussion. I do not think that making threats on behalf of everyone, when
it's clear that we are not all in agreement, is useful at all, particularly
when they are toothless.

Personal opinion from a personal account as a longtime Wikimedian, as the
line three bars down after the signature indicates.​

-- 
~Keegan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan

This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address
is in a personal capacity.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Selling infrastructure is not cheap. The organisations that buy this
service need a service level agreement. They require this service to be
always on. This means that we need at least three times the number of
hardware. One for development and at least two for production. This will
need some staffing that has this as its priority.

No, this is not cheap

Compare it with Labs. It has several people working for it, its reliability
has improved over time but it is nowhere close to what a commercial service
would be.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 18 January 2016 at 06:41, rupert THURNER 
wrote:

> lol, "suggest commercial income" seems to be revolving every 7-8 years in
> our movement. when wikipedia was founded in 2001 larry sanger tried to sell
> something (ads), when sue gardner joined she tried to sell something in
> 2008 (kul was doing business development at the time), and now lila
> tretikov again tries to sell something. this did not work in the past and
> will not work now. the reason is simple: providing infrastructure is cheap
> compared to the rest of what WMF does, and it anyway is the main motivation
> for people to give money to WMF. if you sell providing infrastructure to
> businesses you risk a direct and hard effect in donation income. of course
> you can disguise it through intransparency, various licensing models, etc.
>
> the problem is always the same imo. people who do not edit fail to
> understand why people edit, and why they stop doing so. they tend to fail
> to understand what else editing folks would contribute. this leads to
> mis-representing "growth" in number of employees, or yearly budget, and
> trials to directly influence income. it leads to trials that consuming
> contents is only good through a WMF owned domain. thoughts like "what data
> do we not provide", "what group of persons do we not address well", "how
> can the data be structured so more can be made out of it", "how many
> persons do we reach direct or indirect" are not so common. are we a website
> operator or a free content provider? i always have to cry when i read
> another version of the strategy missing out there.
>
> at times, the search for strategy and what to measure reminds me on an old
> east frisian joke:
> a drunken frisian searches a key looking around a street lamp. a passerby
> helps him. after an hour the passerby asks: are you sure you lost the key
> here? the frisian says: no, i lost it back there. but here is the only
> place where is light.
>
> best
> rupert
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 4:41 PM, Adam Wight 
> wrote:
>
> > Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.
> >
> > For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A
> > wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little
> > section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to
> > the agencies in question.[1]
> >
> > We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of
> > dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API
> > endpoints.  If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the
> > process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give
> > them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.
> >
> > Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any
> > "monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in
> disguise,
> > and not a long-term win.
> >
> >
> > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
> >
> > https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998
> >
> > Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn:
> > http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415
> >
> >
> > Adam Wight
> >
> > mw:user:adamw
> >
> >
> > On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 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 en

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[rupert THURNER]

lol, "suggest commercial income" seems to be revolving every 7-8 years in
our movement. when wikipedia was founded in 2001 larry sanger tried to sell
something (ads), when sue gardner joined she tried to sell something in
2008 (kul was doing business development at the time), and now lila
tretikov again tries to sell something. this did not work in the past and
will not work now. the reason is simple: providing infrastructure is cheap
compared to the rest of what WMF does, and it anyway is the main motivation
for people to give money to WMF. if you sell providing infrastructure to
businesses you risk a direct and hard effect in donation income. of course
you can disguise it through intransparency, various licensing models, etc.

the problem is always the same imo. people who do not edit fail to
understand why people edit, and why they stop doing so. they tend to fail
to understand what else editing folks would contribute. this leads to
mis-representing "growth" in number of employees, or yearly budget, and
trials to directly influence income. it leads to trials that consuming
contents is only good through a WMF owned domain. thoughts like "what data
do we not provide", "what group of persons do we not address well", "how
can the data be structured so more can be made out of it", "how many
persons do we reach direct or indirect" are not so common. are we a website
operator or a free content provider? i always have to cry when i read
another version of the strategy missing out there.

at times, the search for strategy and what to measure reminds me on an old
east frisian joke:
a drunken frisian searches a key looking around a street lamp. a passerby
helps him. after an hour the passerby asks: are you sure you lost the key
here? the frisian says: no, i lost it back there. but here is the only
place where is light.

best
rupert


On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 4:41 PM, Adam Wight  wrote:

> Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.
>
> For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A
> wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little
> section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to
> the agencies in question.[1]
>
> We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of
> dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API
> endpoints.  If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the
> process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give
> them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.
>
> Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any
> "monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in disguise,
> and not a long-term win.
>
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
>
> https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998
>
> Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn:
> http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415
>
>
> Adam Wight
>
> mw:user:adamw
>
>
> On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 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 indemnit

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia Workshop for student of Fountain University

[Tanweer Morshed]

Congratulations Olatunde and others who were involved with the effort!

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:33 AM, olatunde isaac 
wrote:

> Dear all,
> On behalf of WUGN,  this is to congratulate all the Wikimedia communities
> for the success of the celebration of Wikipedia at 15.
> We held an event at Fountain University in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria as
> a way of commemorating the 15th years anniversary in the country. It was
> also a moment to reflect on the significance of Wikipedia, as the largest
> encyclopedia in the world and her plans for the future.
> No doubt, the event was a great  success. We were hosted by the Vice
> Chancellor of the Institution with over 100 students in Attendance. One of
> the major highlights is the cutting of cake to celebrate the event.
> The event was followed with 3days workshop tagged: Wikipedia Workshop for
> student of Fountain University, to be concluded on the 28th January, 2016.
>
> Best,
>
> Olatunde Isaac,
>
> Secretary, WUGN
> Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
>
> -Original Message-
> From: wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org
> Sender: "Wikimedia-l" Date: Sun,
> 17 Jan 2016 12:00:17
> To: 
> Reply-To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 142, Issue 102
>
> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
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> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Re: Offlist Re: In Support of Community (Philippe Beaudette)
>2. Re: Monetizing Wikimedia APIs (Vituzzu)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 22:33:38 -0800
> From: Philippe Beaudette 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offlist Re: In Support of Community
> Message-ID:
> <
> cab-zubwk9c+innvfhfazhqmqv1bzwrkchujueey2xte-9iy...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> 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
> > > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > >  ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > 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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> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
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> > 

[Wikimedia-l] How to value good contributions?

[Romaine Wiki]

Hello all!

Two days ago, around the 15th birthday of Wikipedia, the Dutch Wikipedia
community awarded in seven categories the users and projects most valued
for their contributions to Wikipedia in the past year.

In seven categories a WikiOwl has been awarded, symbolizing the ancient
Greek owl for wisdom and knowledge. Free knowledge!

The WikiOwls given recognition and appreciation for all the work done by
the users and their projects. Recognition and appreciation that stimulates
and gives much enthusiasm to enrich the world of free knowledge even more,
essential for Wikipedia's continuation.


https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiUilen
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiUilen/2015

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiUilen_2015_%283%29.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiEule2015-DD1.JPG
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiEulen_2.jpg



This makes me think again about Wikimania in the past years. The
conferences are great and have a nice program. At the same time I sense
something important is missing. I miss in the large plenary sessions the
attention for specific users and their projects that are of most value for
the movement.

Wikimania is the conference intended for contributors to share their
experiences, learn about best practises, work together to use the synergy
to get done more. That is what this community conference is about.

Hopefully we will fill this small but important gap of the plenary
session(s) with the coming Wikimania, and have more attention for the
specific contributions that we as community value most. Let's have many
many users inspired by great ideas that they can bring home and into
practise.

Thank you.

Romaine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikisonnets!

[Ricordisamoa]

Just found https://github.com/starakaj/wikisonnet. Apparently it's a 
family-run project :-D


Il 17/01/2016 00:31, Asaf Bartov ha scritto:

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.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Adam Wight]

Charging Google for computing power is a Quixotic business model.

For comparison, Google's own approach to this same problem, when the N$A
wants to run so many ongoing searches that it would vaporize a little
section of the Columbia River, is to lease a search appliance cluster to
the agencies in question.[1]

We could easily take the same approach, providing a near-realtime feed of
dumps and a basic appliance which can render pages and provide API
endpoints.  If the reduced bandwidth needs and better control over the
process isn't enough to incentivize our biggest customers, we could give
them extra encouragement by throttling direct access to our services.

Breaking even would be a nice target either way, it seems like any
"monetization" of access is at best just a charitable subsidy in disguise,
and not a long-term win.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance

https://support.google.com/earthenterprise/?hl=en#topic=2802998

Speculation on why GEE was recently deprecated, lessons we might learn:
http://geospatialworld.net/Professional/ViewBlog.aspx?id=415


Adam Wight

mw:user:adamw


On Jan 16, 2016 6:12 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 h

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia Workshop for student of Fountain University

[olatunde isaac]

Dear all,
On behalf of WUGN,  this is to congratulate all the Wikimedia communities for 
the success of the celebration of Wikipedia at 15.
We held an event at Fountain University in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria as a way 
of commemorating the 15th years anniversary in the country. It was also a 
moment to reflect on the significance of Wikipedia, as the largest encyclopedia 
in the world and her plans for the future.
No doubt, the event was a great  success. We were hosted by the Vice Chancellor 
of the Institution with over 100 students in Attendance. One of the major 
highlights is the cutting of cake to celebrate the event.
The event was followed with 3days workshop tagged: Wikipedia Workshop for 
student of Fountain University, to be concluded on the 28th January, 2016.

Best, 

Olatunde Isaac,

Secretary, WUGN
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

-Original Message-
From: wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org
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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Offlist Re: In Support of Community (Philippe Beaudette)
   2. Re: Monetizing Wikimedia APIs (Vituzzu)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 22:33:38 -0800
From: Philippe Beaudette 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offlist Re: In Support of Community
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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
> > > > ___
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> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > 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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-- 


Philippe Beaudette

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


--

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 11:35:06 +0100
From: Vituzzu 
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs
Message-ID: <569b6e5a.6040...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed



Il 17/01/2016 00:49, Risker ha scritto:
> Hmm.  The major

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Andy Mabbett]

On 16 January 2016 at 18:21, Lila Tretikov  wrote:

> I don't think the minutes give enough detail.

Well, quite.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Vituzzu]

Il 17/01/2016 00:49, Risker ha scritto:

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.
As usual you nailed it! That's why I wrote "negotiation" implying any 
extra cost should be fairly modulated but also it shouldn't force over 
the tops to leave our services.


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.

+1 is not enough let's +1e12


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.



From Lila's ongoing choices I'm pretty sure they will.

Il 17/01/2016 03:11, Denny Vrandecic ha scritto:

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.
Then a good synthesis would be "let's Google(*) fund scholarships/summer 
of codes/whatever to build new functionalities then make Google 
reimburse (**) our facilities' usage/increase our userbase(***)".


Notes:
(*) by "Google" I mean any big player
(**) by "reimburse" I mean give us a fairly and proportionally 
determined amount of money based upon *actual* exploitation of our 
hardware/networking resources. This "reimburse" could also be colo space 
or whatever we'd need.
(***) as several people already pointed out we're in a symbiotic 
relationship with Google (and others): they need our knowledge, we need 
their traffic. As long as our sectors are distinct all is right with the 
symbiosis.


IMHO there's room to increase our advantages without breaking the 
symbiosis but, above all, without missing our mission.


Vito

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