Wikipedia Pages Now On Amazon — With Product Links

An anonymous reader writes "Last month, e-commerce marketplace Amazon.com launched a relatively unnoticed new feature that brings content from Wikipedia pages to its own servers in a shadowy new project that appears to be called 'Shopping Enabled Wikipedia Pages.' Hosted on the Amazon.com domain, they replicate Wikipedia's content but have added links to where a book can be purchased on Amazon. Amazon representative Anya Waring told CNET when asked via e-mail, 'As of November, we have rolled out in the books category, however [it] will be expanding to new categories in 2011.' If Average Joe scrapes Wikipedia and adds affiliate links to it, Google will remove and punish the domains with duplicate pages."

Comments

Really?

[TheRaven64]

Google punishes wikipedia clones with adverts? Are you sure, because one of the things that made me stop using Google was the large number of results that were either mailing list archives with ads (the same list post on the top 10 hits, just different ads), or Wikipedia copies with ads. In fact, the 'Google will remove and punish' link refers to domains that contain the same content on different pages, rather than domains that duplicate the content of other domains, so is completely inapplicable to pages hosting Wikipedia content plus adverts.

Average Joe

[Alrescha]

From Google:

"Duplicate content on a site is note grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results"

ie: the 'Average Joe' can scrape wikipedia all he wants and Google will not punish him unless his intent is to deceive. But thanks for the conspiracy theory attempt just the same.

A.

Re:Amazon

[TheRaven64]

Wikileaks was going to publish the fact that Amazon is a pediaphile.

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[jeffasselin]

No, they don't. Wikipedia will not be getting a SINGLE DOLLAR out of this, and this is almost certainly not something that was decided by any of the wikipedia administrators.

Amazon can do this legally on their own.

Re:Loosey-goosey Creative Commons

[Afforess]

Let's play this game. Assume Wikipedia was using a more draconian licence that restricted monetary gain. Then it would become a much less valuable as source material. If I was working on a research grant, I couldn't touch wikipedia, not even to check their sources, out of fear of getting sued for copyright violations. Do we really want more of that?

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[Khyber]

Well, that will happen until Wikipedia directly blocks Amazon IP addresses because of a sudden uncontrollable spike in bandwidth usage/bandwidth bill.

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[suv4x4]

No, they don't. Wikipedia will not be getting a SINGLE DOLLAR out of this, and this is almost certainly not something that was decided by any of the wikipedia administrators.

Aww, don't be so cynical. Not a single dollar? Do you know what Wikipedia's biggest expense is? Serving their pages. It's a burden for them.

Answers.com, Amazon and a bunch of other sites host mirrors of Wikipedia for free, in exchange for putting some of their own ads on it. Wikipedia serves their information to more people, while serving less traffic directly.

Everybody wins.

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[larry bagina]

citation

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[CRCulver]

I doubt that, Wikipedia has thousands of revisions on even less important topics and mistakes get corrected out pretty quick, of course, if you find any 'mistakes' then perhaps you should try to fix them as any expert in any field should be doing..

I stopped editing Wikipedia in 2005 or so. I can go back to articles in my subject (linguistics) that I used to follow, and I find mistakes that are still left there half a decade later. There have been plenty of edits in the meantime, but they've never fixed specific factual errors.

And you'll find a lot of people disagree with your claim that fixing them is what "any experts in any field should be doing." My own specific branch of linguistics is tiny, it has a handful of experts. Several of them gave Wikipedia a try and then gave up on it pretty fast, as they felt that effecting any real beneficial change was impossible when you have cabals of non-expert editors. Besides, there's an occasional feeling in my field that our research doesn't really concern the public; it benefits them indirectly, but reaching out to the layman ourselves is a waste of time. Experts have a duty to do expert research, not writing popular science.

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[Petrushka]

I doubt that, Wikipedia has thousands of revisions on even less important topics and mistakes get corrected out pretty quick, of course, if you find any 'mistakes' then perhaps you should try to fix them as any expert in any field should be doing..

I can certainly vouch for the GP's sentiment in my own area of expertise. I actually use Wikipedia primarily as a tool for finding out what kinds of misinformation there are floating around in the wild; it's a useful gauge of what misinformation is popularly perceived to be "true".

Experts have much better things to do than edit Wikipedia; it's abundantly clear that all editing is controlled by people with vested interests who use opaque processes to silence dissent. Experts do have a responsibility to write popular science, targetted at educated non-specialists. However, there's absolutely no point doing so in a venue that will invariably introduce errors after it's been written.

Re:very disappointing, but perhaps inevitable

[jcwayne]

...there's an occasional feeling in my field that our research doesn't really concern the public; it benefits them indirectly, but reaching out to the layman ourselves is a waste of time.

I find that attitude, which is prevalent in many fields, very troubling.