Does Amazon Owe Wikipedia For Taking Advantage of The Free Labor of Their Volunteers? (slate.com)

Slate's Rachel Withers argues that "tech companies that profit from Wikipedia's extensive database owe Wikimedia a much greater debt." Amazon's Alexa, for example, uses Wikipedia "without credit, contribution, or compensation." The Google Assistant also sources Wikipedia, but they credit the encyclopedia -- and other sites -- when it uses it as a resource. From the report: Amazon recently donated $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment, a fund that keeps Wikipedia running, as "part of Amazon's and CEO Jeff Bezos' growing work in philanthropy," according to CNET. It's being framed as a "gift," one that -- as Amazon puts it -- recognizes their shared vision to "make it easier to share knowledge globally." Obviously, and as alluded to by CNET, $1 million is hardly a magnanimous donation from Amazon and Bezos, the former a trillion-dollar company and the latter a man with a net worth of more than $160 billion. But it's not just the fact that this donation is, in the scheme of things, paltry. It's that this "endowment" is dwarfed by what Amazon and its ilk get out of Wikipedia -- figuratively and literally. Wikipedia provides the intelligence behind many of Alexa's most useful skills, its answers to everything from "What is Wikipedia?" to "What is Slate?" (meta).

Amazon's know-it-all Alexa is renowned for its ability to answer questions, but Amazon didn't compile all that data itself; according to the Amazon developer forum, "Alexa gets her information from a variety of trusted sources such as IMDb, Accuweather, Yelp, Answers.com, Wikipedia and many others." Nor did it pay those who did: While Amazon customers pay at least $39.99 for an Echo device (and the pleasure of asking Alexa questions), Alexa freely pulls this information from the internet, leeching off the hard work performed by Wikipedia's devoted volunteers (and unlike high school students, it doesn't even bother to change a few words around). It's hardly noble for Amazon to support Wikipedia, considering how much Alexa uses its services, nor is it particularly selfless to fund the encyclopedia when it relies upon its peer-reviewed accuracy; ultimately, helping Wikipedia helps Amazon, too. [...] We all benefit from Wikipedia, but arguably no one more than the smart speakers, for which the internet's encyclopedia is a valuable and value-adding resource. It's frankly a little exploitative how little they give back. Withers goes on to note that Wikipedia seeks donations from its users -- it's a non-profit that runs entirely on donations from the general public. While one can argue that "Amazon is only packing up information that we ourselves leech for free all the time, [...] Alexa is also diverting people away from visitng Wikipedia pages, where they might noticed a little request for a donation, or from realizing they are using Wikipedia's resources at all," Withers writes.

A report from TechCrunch earlier this year pointed out that Amazon is the only one of the big tech players not found on Wikimedia's 2017-2018 corporate donor list -- one that includes Apple, Google, and even Amazon's Seattle-based sibling Microsoft, all of which matched employee donations to the tune of $50,000.

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

This question is also sneaky. It asks if Amazon owes Wikimedia for the free work of its volunteers, not if Amazon owes the volunteers.

This is wikimedia trying for more money, errrrrrrrrrrrrrr, Jimmy Wales salary since it is a non-profit.

Anyone who falls for this is an idiot.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a violation of the license not to credit

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

If you voluntarily give something away for free, you have no right to complain if people use it and don't pay you.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Laughable article, the cunt who wrote it has no idea what it takes to run a company of that size, and Bezos doesn't keep 160 billion as liquid in the bank. Maybe a few million tops. Also, Amazon also donates to thousands of charities, and commits millions to helping the homeless and low income families in Washington. I live in Seattle and see the positive and negative effects of Amazon on the community. So get off your high horse because Amazon only donated "1 million" dollars to one non-profit. Why don't you write an article on how Amazon is pioneering $15/hour minimum wage across the nation? Oh you cannot because negativety is all you know.

Re: No

[DontBeAMoran]

negativety is all you know.

You spelled "negativity" wrong...

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

So....credit the source.

That is a well-established practice, even when dealing with freely-available information.

Amazon owes that to Wikipedia, socially if not legally.

Re:No

[rtb61]

More specifically, most tech corporations look at wikiepedia and think, how can I steal it and force government to make all citizens pay to access it, and make those payments compulsory and tied to capital assets, also if children fail to pay they must donate organs to cover expenses.

Face it most corporations only donate for the PR=B$ and would rather steal want they are donating too, plus of course all the other money that was donated by others. The only thing ringing in their heads is, infinite greed, infinite power and of course their genitals.

Most large corporations should be broken up or changed from limited liability too full liability for all investors should the corporation exceed a set size. Privatise the profit and socialise the losses needs to come to an end.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I thought. I know she probably isn't nerdly or old enough to read Slashdot, but:

Rachel, that attitude is scummy as fuck. The word "volunteer" means a person who freely and willingly gives their time. They don't want compensation, they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that's the whole fucking point. Saying "Amazon Owes Wikipedia Big-Time" is no different than saying "Wikipedia Owes Volunteers Big-Time". If you only do things for pay, then don't volunteer to do things, you entitled little millennial shit.

By the way, how much are you compensating all of the open source developers for being on the internet or using smartphones and mobile devices for commercial purposes? Don't you owe them "big time" too?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You are technically right, but the problem isn't the documentation. Morally speaking, Amazon's use of scraping other sites for free implies they see nothing wrong with doing so. Unfortunately, this is not what they actually believe, since they believe it is wrong to scrape their own site. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20160903083414/pricezombie.com/announcement

Having a TOS with onerous conditions doesn't make those conditions moral. It only most of the time makes them legal.

Re:No

[angel'o'sphere]

No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.
In what fucked up society did you grow up that you don't owe the courtesy of indicating who you quote?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look another baby boomer/gen xer pedantically bitching to no one. About nothing. Thanks for running the world so well guy, you're doing great.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the volunteers contributing content to Wikipedia have their work reverted by "an editor." I tried contributing valuable information, backed by sources including other Wikipedia articles, only to have my IP address blocked and the contribution removed and replaced by the previous incomplete and non-standard presentation. I was undertaking a data analysis project at the time which led me to supplement the existing article content as well as restructure it to facilitate web scraping. Wikipedia is nothing more than a fiefdom of lords denying the peasants.

Re: No

[Excelcia]

I've never had sourced quality content reverted without recourse. There is only your assertion that the content was valuable. If it was repeatedly reverted, and if it was sourced and relevant, then there is recourse where you can force a community vote on the dispute. If your IP was banned, then it was for violation of a Wikipedia rule. Sounds like you got into a reversion war with someone.

I am relatively happy with Wikipedia's model. It's not perfect, but it's good and it's effective enough to have lasted. It has scaled very well and has survived the age of rampant vandalism, special interest group abuse, and trolls. I have far more confidence that the Wikipedia system worked correctly in your case, than in your (ironically, unsourced and unverified) assertions.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the little shit who has never worked a day in his life and expects everything to be handed to him. Millennials have never created anything of value.

Re:No

[infolation]

No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.

In what fucked up society did you grow up that you don't owe the courtesy of indicating who you quote?
© 2018 angel'o'sphere. All rights reserved.

Re: No

[NicBenjamin]

Other Wikipedia articles are not on Wiki's list of "reliable sources." To use them you have to do stuff like click through to their sources, verify those sources support the tex ton Wikipedia, and then cite them. You don't actually ever cite the wikipedia article itself.

Re: No

[tinkerton]

There is truth in that but I think you don't hear much about special interest groups on wikipedia because they won. I followed the Philip Cross case ( https://wikipedia.fivefilters.... ). The people who challenged Cross got exactly the treatment you're dealing out and it was very hard to prevail. The professionalization of Wikipedia always carries a danger. The complex rules allow people with clout to drown out those without. Not in principle, but in practice. People who want to want to take on subjects where big interests are involved quickly find out that it's very hard, especially when the big interests also manage to get their narrative into the reputable sources. And those who disagree, well, they're not reputable.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Indicate != pay.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Gen X gets it from both sides now apparently.

Re: No

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

There is truth in that but I think you don't hear much about special interest groups on wikipedia because they won. I followed the Philip Cross case ( https://wikipedia.fivefilters.... ). The people who challenged Cross got exactly the treatment you're dealing out and it was very hard to prevail. The professionalization of Wikipedia always carries a danger. The complex rules allow people with clout to drown out those without. Not in principle, but in practice. People who want to want to take on subjects where big interests are involved quickly find out that it's very hard, especially when the big interests also manage to get their narrative into the reputable sources. And those who disagree, well, they're not reputable.

Reading the link you provided (as I've honestly never heard of this case), it seems to me like Philip Cross is a proficient editor accused of being a one man conspiracy by advocates of fringe view proponents. Googling the articles of those who claim to have been wronged is quite enlightening. It puts the finger on an interesting problem . How do you settle the debate when some people weigh facts from a very different view? To take an unrelated example: What if I held the view that Robin Hood was not as the wiki article claims "a legendary heroic outlaw", but a terrorist in violent opposition to taxation and government? Obviously any sources that has spoken against higher taxation, the government or supported anyone who has ever broken the law are biased and are only speaking from their own self-interest while my own have a fair and balanced view.

Re: No

[Moryath]

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH The list of Wikipedia scandals - admins sockpuppeting, admins abusing power, etc - is a mile long. Start with Essjay, who was bosom buddies with the corrupt cadre that makes up the Wikipedia board, and it actually gets WORSE from that fraudulent little racist.

Re: No

[SlashGodet]

I suffered the same reverting of excellent and sourced facts (and professional writing.) Early days I was able to contribute occasional information in my field of expertise, but as time went on, _occasional_ careful contributions were treated dismissively.

Gradually only those with reputations in the fiefdom of Wikipedia were welcomed to contribute (bored homebounds) while careful contributions by unknowns (people with actual lives) were thoughtlessly reverted.

I assume many valuable contributions were being sidelined, not jut my own, and no longer viewed Wikipedia as a great source of information.

And stopped wasting time making careful smart edits, when it was always a dispiriting struggle against revert-ionists.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Entitled whiners gonna whine.

Re: No

[SlashGodet]

You are wrong, careful sourced contributions ARE reverted, as AC stated:

I was undertaking a data analysis project at the time which led me to supplement the existing article content as well as restructure it to facilitate web scraping.

Sounds a lot like my contributions - made while I was actively working on the topic, in my field of expertise - and flow edits, carefully made to put the article in line with Wikipedia's own flow model.

AC writes clearly and lucidly. What would you have AC do, spend an hour or two coming up with examples and quotes from long-buried Wikipedia discussion pages?

As I recall there are automatic revert 'bots as well as human editors.

Re:No

[Cederic]

Just write a bot that never reads the TOS and doesn't agree to comply with it.

Instead it can use a defined protocol to request responses from a server, and the server can choose whether to provide those responses. Maybe something like HTTP, that seems quite good at this sort of thing.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Millennials have never created anything of value

Except the open floor plan.

Oh, you said "value" -- my bad. Never mind; carry on.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

The volunteers get paid from other sources to attempt to inflict misinformation on wikipedia anyways.

Re: No

[Excelcia]

What would you have AC do, spend an hour or two coming up with examples and quotes from long-buried Wikipedia discussion pages?

If he wants to elicit credibility, then I would have him give the page. No hours of examples required. Then it's trivial to see the edits he did and the discussions on why they were reverted.

Did your own experience include getting IP banned? I suspect your behaviour didn't descend into the equivalent of Wikipedia civil disobedience.

Re: No

[tinkerton]

I was thinking how to reply to this but it easily becomes very long. But maybe I can summarize it with a simple rule don't escalate the effort to push out the wrong ideas and don't raise the bar to only keep the best ideas:

Different groups have different ideas of common sense. Sometimes these differences are a matter of taste. Sometimes they are better founded. In hard science they can be pretty well founded. In journalism there are some rules to give some foundation to this common sense. In Wikipedia as well. But there still is a lot of freedom in constructing a narrative. Conflicts between common sense groups are difficult to resolve because arguments lose value when they are placed in the mouth of someone from the other camp. Even when something is accepted as a truth it doesn't mean that you have to assign it importance.

When there are competing commonsense groups you can be more aggressive if the common sense ideas have a harder foundation. In real world issues there is too much room for different cases of common sense. There is no such luxury to restrict yourself to issues where there is a hard foundation. In political issues you also get a lot of efforts to distort your common sense and that makes it even worse.

PR and propaganda is all about tuning people's common sense. It tells you which sources to trust and which sources to dismiss. When PR is involved in a subject you cannot trust dominant common sense and you need to keep the debate open. The Iraq war issue is certainly such a case. This means that even if you feel that you're on the right side you have to be very careful pushing people out because your common sense is being massaged. The West has a democratic tradition, that means the amount of propaganda being put out is immense.

I see Philip Cross as a bad faith actor who played the system. what Philip Cross did was avoid direct confrontation but massage credibility. His aim was to push the dissenters more and more into the fringe, so that readers use their common sense and decide these sources can be dismissed. That they don't deserve attention. Without ever checking out what these sources even say. Cross's opponents are people who opposed the Iraq war. Why are these fringe? And why are the supporters of the Iraq war still so credible? Because of facts? the antiwar people were right overall, and the supporters of war were wrong overall. Because they clearly don't trust the system? Yes, that is likely a major factor.

Instead of aiming to resolve such issues one should maintain a window, to what extent you can allow one side to dominate. The central question from a 'management' point of view becomes how much fringe is acceptable and how much is too much.
Do you think these fringe people should be allowed as wikipedia editors? Should they be made more invisible or less?
There are systems for this, often based on ignoring this credibility part: some arguments should be treated independently of who says them.

Currently we're in an all out war on fake news. It's framed as a war against Russian influence but that is itself group think and linking to russia is a way to discredit opponents. The war on fake news is a large scale effort to push all dissent into the fringe and more into the fringe. This is more or less independent of whether this dissent is justified or not. It's just a dominant scheme trying to push out the rest.To move dissent from fringe to even more fringe .It becomes increasingly hard to even google it, which makes it more fringe if you tell someone about it and which helps your common sense to stick to the other group. Mainstream journalism has become too aligned with power and will go along with the effort. They already share the same common sense of who should be taken seriously and who not. I fear Wikipedia is also evolving in that direction, that it where it matters it will be dominated by people with 'the right ideas', who know which sources are good enough to refer to, to be quoted, and which sources are not good enough and are not allowed.

Re: No

[farble1670]

You are wrong, careful sourced contributions ARE reverted, as AC stated:

Then offer some evidence. Don't be part of the current culture that just expects the world to believe something because it came out of your pie hole. Seriously, I know very little about this, and I'd like to know more, but just batting yes / no back and forth wastes bits.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.
In what fucked up society did you grow up that you don't owe the courtesy of indicating who you quote?

Citation needed.

Re: No

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I just don't see what you are seeing. Philip Cross does a huge amont of work, and you can nitpick, but the examples against him aren't really convincing to me. The people against him doesn't seem to have a claim to fame by opposing the Iraq war, nor would I describe such a view as "fringe" so I don't see that connection. What I see is people expressing anti-Semitic views and supporting Assad and I consider such views "fringe".There certainly is a lot of propaganda in western media, but I don't believe that the Telegraph, Guardian and FT, would/could collectively push a government controlled narrative in the way of RT and Sputnik.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

What evidence? The Wikipedia admins got rid of all of that long ago. That's part of the problem.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Try it. Ask pricezombie.com how that worked out for them.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG: Amazon is violating the wikipedia license. Amazon probably owes wikipedia damages for copyright infringement at this point.

Attribution is required by the license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License

They are not attributing. They are free to negotiate another license if they can't abide by those terms. Maybe they have? I doubt it.

Re: No

[tinkerton]

I think my point would be that what you consider fringe should not be fought by any other means than debate on content.

Re: No

[SlashGodet]

pie hole

Yum, pie!
You deride the "current culture that just expects the world to believe something"
and yet believe without evidence that Wikipedia editing is a Virtuous System.

Re: No

[farble1670]

and yet believe without evidence that Wikipedia editing is a Virtuous System.

I don't believe either way. I *suspect* Wikipedia is mostly factual with some bias and has blatantly incorrect information in a smaller number of cases. I'm not even crying about it either, because I'm able to see the world as neither black or white. I guess I'm just special.

If you make a claim, it's up to you to back it it. It's not up to the rest of us to disprove it. For example, I could claim your spouse is a whore. You'd probably laugh at me unless I provided some evidence of it. You probably wouldn't feel compelled to get back to me with dates and times and itineraries proving that they are not a whore. See how that works?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've never had sourced quality content reverted without recourse" - your assertion is also unsourced and unverified.

"If your IP was banned, then it was for violation of a Wikipedia rule" - your assertion is also unsourced and unverified.

Double irony.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

False comparison. He knows his wife very well. You don't know Wikipedia or the people behind it at all.

Re: No

[farble1670]

False comparison. He knows his wife very well. You don't know Wikipedia or the people behind it at all.

My god you are trying hard.

I tell you that Apple Computer employees are secretly being drugged by the cafeteria food to make them more "compliant" with company policy. By all accounts you ought to be running to the local police and reporting this. Of course you don't, because I'm just some random guy with a story about Apple.

A little Occam's Razor goes a long way here. What's more likely... Wikipedia is run by a secret cabal of editors that distort facts. Or you tried to make an edit to an article and had it rejected, damaging your fragile psyche. This is a terrible injustice, but you can't even tell us the page in question, nor did you bother to capture any screen shots, or describe the changes that were rejected. Well, that's typical. Because if you provided that someone would be able to disprove your claims. Poof, there goes your FUD.

Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's literally the whole point of Wikipedia, to distribute knowledge for free, is it not?

Re:Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be free for consumers; paid support for for-profit corps. And BTW, Amazon should also pay those developers who built Linux and helps Amazon make $5.5B/year from web hosting services.

Free work = slavery for mega corps.

Re:Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, Alexa. But should Amazon at least pay for the network and server resources it consumes? Anyway, knowing that Amazon quotes Wikipedia will open nice new ways to troll and affect on idiots who buy a spying device to their homes.

Re:Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Volunteers don't want to be paid. Why don't you respect that?

No.

[rsilvergun]

What an incredibly stupid idea.

Donating to Wikipedia is fine, but at the end of the day their a charity making a public resource. Are we running out of things to criticize Amazon for now that they've been shamed into paying living wages?

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't. Amazon should be attributing better, but they owe Wikipedia no money.

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not their information in most cases. More like a collection of citations. There is no original information on wikipedia.

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, original research is explicitly banned from Wikipedia.

On top of that - how much of those donations does Wikipedia owe to the people that write the articles? Just because they volunteered their time and knowledge doesn't mean those don't "deserve" a cut of those tens of millions of dollars every year, right?

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon was paying livable wages before. They were shamed into helping raise the poverty level from $20k/yr to $30k/yr. Putting a huge percentage of middle class income households closer to poverty. Don't worry though. The teachers are still doing great with a huge portion of them making $90k/yr and much higher. These are your kindergarten to 5th grade teachers not college professors. Keep those fucking unions in place. We have got to get these teachers more money....

Re: No.

[youngone]

You're a good slave A/C for doing your master's bidding here on Slashdot.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alexa should state that Wikipedia is the source. Amazon absolutely owes Wikipedia that much.

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which part did he say that was wrong? Given the topic, please cite Wikipedia in your reply.

Oh wait, he is right and you are a troll. Remain silent.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Their_/_They%27re_/_There

Their / They're / There - know the difference. It may save your life

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean other than the ridiculous part where they claim that a "huge portio kindergarten teachers make 90 grand?

In most states the starting salary is 1/3 of that and the averaged are mostly around 60% or less of his claim. So even if 25% of teachers made 90 grand (probably grossly overestimating) when the average is 60 grand (being overly generous as that is anywhere from 12-15 grand higher than the median salary depending on if it's elementary (45 grand), middle school (47 grand) and high school teachers (48 grand)) that means the other 75% have an average salary of 50 grand.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

at the end of the day their a charity

at the end of the day they're a charity.

their != they are

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like saying that Intel and Microsoft should be donating oodles of money since we use devices powered by their tech to access these services by typing at the keyboard. A user using an alexa or google home device is just doing the same search by voice that they might have done at the keyboard previously.

Now maybe they should be crediting their sources so if you for instance as google home or alexa how big the average pen*s is? it could then respond with according to wikipedia the average pen*s is 3 inches.

Re:No.

[ShanghaiBill]

Are we running out of things to criticize Amazon for now that they've been shamed into paying living wages?

Well, if we want to close the loop, we could criticize them for contributing to wage inflation.

Re:No.

[gravewax]

No they don't deserve a fucking cut. Wikipedia were donated that information on the basis it would be made freely available to everyone and anyone. Wikipedia don't produce or research anything themselves.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

amazon isn't paying 'living wages', even with the recent PR stunts.

they need to offer affordable insurance benefits for the workers that lose their state plans due to their "raise" boosting their income past the threshold to qualify for them.

15 bucks an hour for even just 30 hours (the common hourly limit greedy employers set to avoid having to offer insurance) puts you over the limit for even a family of three and close to that for a family of four. 15 bucks an hour full time disqualifies a family of five from state plans.

Re: No.

[astrofurter]

You're so right! Well-paid workers is a terrible thing, something we must avoid at all costs. I mean, just think of it - teachers earning enough money to rent a small apartment WITHOUT ROOMMATES - oh the outrage, the OUTRAGE! This, my friends, is why unions are bad.

DOWN WITH UNIONS!!!1!! Down with wages! Hard working people deserve less! I've got mine, so screw you Jack!

Re:No.

[astrofurter]

Thank you, Dr Pedant, for those original and enlightening thoughts.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

why? it isn't like Wikipedia owns or produces any of the information themselves!

Re:No.

[AmiMoJo]

Actually under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that Wikipedia uses they are legally obliged to give attribution. So it appears that they are at the very least in breech of that licence, leaving aside any moral arguments about contributing to a resource that is absolutely vital to the performance of their highly profitable product.

Re:No.

[DrSpock11]

What makes Alexa so special here? Should Dell and every other OEM also pay Wikipedia money because I can use their computers to visit Wikipedia? And what about phone manufacturers? I guess they should pony up too.

Re:No.

[pslytely psycho]

I like knowing the source of the information. Wikipedia isn't my first choice.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

What an incredibly stupid idea.

Donating to Wikipedia is fine, but at the end of the day their a charity making a public resource. Are we running out of things to criticize Amazon for now that they've been shamed into paying living wages?

Unethical companies will do the minimum required without going to jail, and may risk that. So, they aren't going to give back. In short they leech whatever they can.

Somewhat ethical companies will do what they can, but won't risk profits in a large way. They may donate back, and may even try to make it a positive for good PR.

Highly ethical companies are fairly likely to be driven out of business by the first two. Basically if you want to see company ethics increase you have to change the rules, but of course that will only affect your country unless you penalize imports from other countries who do not obey your rules, and that is hardly easy, though possible I think. Note this is different than Trump's "winning", as their is an ethical stance behind it. If you have similar rules to protect basic ethics the environment/etc you would have no tariffs.

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you should be doing more in depth research then just asking Alexa what she thinks

Re:No.

[im_thatoneguy]

Also we're blaming them for

"Alexa gets her information from a variety of trusted sources such as IMDb, Accuweather, Yelp, Answers.com, Wikipedia and many others." Nor did it pay those who did:

Amazon owns imdb !

Re:No.

[Hognoxious]

So it appears that they are at the very least in breech of that licence

Is that a good reason to muzzle them?

No!

[Arzaboa]

Isn't that one of the points of the internet... to share knowledge?

--
I can't accept this! - Monica Swinton, A.I.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free, uninhibited exchange of information has proven conducive to thoughtcrime.

Fuck no

[Anonymous Coward]

Their $1m they raise every year is more than enough.

Re:Fuck no

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the volunteers that write the wikipedia articles? They need to get paid, not wikimedia.

Re:Fuck no

[sabbede]

You mean they should be volunteers, but for money?

Isn't that called a job?

Wouldn't that defeat the entire concept behind wikipedia?

Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Information WANTS TO BE FREE don't you remember?
Amazon owes wikipedia nothing and should be proud for not paying since paying for information is always evil.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source mentality.

1. Start Project.
2. ???
3. Don't profit

Be surprised when people don't pay for something they don't have to.

Re: Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Refuse to shower or engage in any personal hygiene

No

[registrations_suck]

No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.

Wikipedia makes itself available as a free service. If it wants to GET PAID for its use, it needs to update its TOS appropriately, and start charging as it sees fit.

Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Amazon just save the donation, and instead host all of wiki (media, commons, and others) all free of charge on AWS. This cost Amazon less, and greatly reduces cost for the foundation.. win-win. Though, personally, I'd argue the site should be mirrored at least across the three largest cloud providers to keep it up at all times.

Re:Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is a bad idea - it would give Amazon far too much leverage. It's best for Wikipedia to remain as independent as possible.

Re: Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not interesting at all. Complete conflict of interest. Really super very basic stuff here. Great way for amazon to hold the Wikimedia foundation by the balls though.

Re:Hosting

[mysidia]

Hosting and the technical operation is such a SMALL percentage of the Wikimedia foundation's $76 Million in annual operating expenses: it's kind of ridiculous.

They would still complain that Amazon's contribution is paltry.

Consider this though: The people contributing FREE LABOR to build the encyclopedia are not getting paid by the foundation, BUT the foundation has many hired staff and buildings.... so the donations are going to pay people, But the people who develop the software and write the articles on the encyclopedia are largely unpaid volunteers ---- Meanwhile the WM foundation spends more than $6 million on administrative employees, close to a $1 million each on a bunch of different categories like "branding and brand identity, community health, etc"

In short.... they seem like a sprawling non-profit that has a disproportionately large and disproportionately expensive operation leeching off the public good done by unpaid volunteers to provide personal salaries for an entity that serves itself and uses donations to grow itself and pay administrative overheads to people that own itself, whereas an organization of 10% of its size would be more than adequate to support the technical infrastructure and systems that the unpaid volunteers doing 99% of the real work require for all languages of the global free encyclopedia to exist.

Re:Hosting

[serviscope_minor]

In short.... they seem like a sprawling non-profit that has a disproportionately large and disproportionately expensive operation leeching off the public good done by unpaid volunteers to provide personal salaries for an entity that serves itself and uses donations to grow itself and pay administrative overheads to people that own itself, whereas an organization of 10% of its size would be more than adequate to support the technical infrastructure and systems that the unpaid volunteers doing 99% of the real work require for all languages of the global free encyclopedia to exist.

I have noticed that an awful lot of people underestimate the complexity of large operations especially when the end goal seems simple. Running something with the size and reach of wikipedia is not simple.

You probably think "it's just a website" and you could host it. You couldn't.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik...

Re:Hosting

[Daralantan]

I vaguely remember around 10ish(?) years ago seeing Wikipedia having a donation thing across the top. There was something saying they didn't need money to have the site up, that they had enough to keep it up for a long long time. I can't remember what they said it was for, but it specifically stated it had nothing to do with keeping the site active online.

Now it feels like anytime they have the donation up, the wording is basically: "If you don't donate, Wikipedia might die forever. If everyone just gave a dollar Wikipedia could be up for years!" So I looked up a lot of stuff about Wikipedia and found yep... most donations don't go to keeping the site up. Kind of hate that they put up a giant banner acting like the website and information on it will be lost forever if you don't donate.

Re:Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be enough to keep Wikipedia up for a long time, in the state that it is, but that is not the same as saying it is enough to keep it up for a long time, given projected demand for it, and keeping it abreast of modern standards and security concerns.

Re:Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

"You probably think "it's just a website" and you could host it. You couldn't."

No, your incompetent ass couldn't. Most of us competent hobbyists could run such a site all day long, moron. Don't lump us in with your retarded self.

Re:Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

Na, I'm 100% sure you couldn't figure out how to host it.

Re:Hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but the people profiting off the "non-profit" are still largely a waste of money. Don't "donate" your money to them.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You made the information available for free. They took it in accordance with the terms you offered.

If you don't like the results, change the terms.

Re:What?

[darkain]

You: "They took it in accordance with the terms you offered."

The article: "Amazon's Alexa, for example, uses Wikipedia 'without credit, contribution, or compensation.'"

Wiki's licensing terms: "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License"

"Credit", in other words, is a requirement of the "attribution" clause. So maybe rethink your stance?

Commercial use is allowed

[Arnold Reinhold]

Amazon doesn't owe Wikipedia contributors anything. Contributions to Wikipedia are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licensed, under which "You are free: to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix—to adapt the work, for any purpose, even commercially." You still have to attribute the work and license your modifications under similar terms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License) Contributors agree to this license when they click "Publish changes." So maybe Amazon needs to do a better job of attribution, and million dollar gifts are always appreciated, but that about it.

Re: Commercial use is allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

>> So maybe Amazon needs to do a better job of attribution

A MUCH better job.

Re:Commercial use is allowed

[Todd Knarr]

All that's correct. OTOH, that license doesn't cover continuing access to Wikimedia's servers and network. I'd think it'd only make good business sense, if Wikipedia's such a valuable source of information for Amazon, for Amazon to have a contract in place insuring continued server and network capacity for Wikimedia to provide for Amazon's needs and for continued editor/moderator support. The ongoing cost for Amazon would probably be negligible, the direct benefits should be obvious and the benefits in terms of public relations and goodwill would be immense. Which can all be summed up in the old rule: "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Re:Commercial use is allowed

[religionofpeas]

If they ever get to a point where they need money to keep the lights on, I'm sure Amazon will chip in.

Re:Commercial use is allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

Although they aren't legally required to donate, I think companies that benefit off open-source and free resources provided on the 'net have a moral obligation to contribute back. If your business is based on Linux, contribute to Linux. If it's off Wikipedia, contribute to Wikipedia.
Nice that Amazon gave $1m to Wikipedia, but that's like me giving less than a dollar (based on Amazon's $1Tn valuation). Pretty cheap of them, really.

Re: Commercial use is allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually give them a dollar, though?

Re:Commercial use is allowed

[darkain]

Who needs network capacity when you can literally just dump all of wikipedia into your own (AWS) databases all at once for faster access? https://dumps.wikimedia.org/

Re:Commercial use is allowed

[Shaitan]

Legally you are correct but ethically is another matter. Alexa is almost certainly costing the project money to serve content up.

Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day?

[brian.stinar]

This question makes no sense. Why would someone owe for free things, which there is no contract/terms-of-service/financial agreement?

Today must be a slow news day....

Re:Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day?

[physicsphairy]

While the summary comes off as a clumsy hitjob and I somewhat resent siding with it, there is more to the concept of "owing" than what is laid out in legal contracts. Just because the state won't enforce the repayment of a debt doesn't mean the debt doesn't exist.

Once you've turned eighteen you don't legally owe your parents anything, but you owe them a lot personally if they've given you a good home, and you would be quite a crummy person if you didn't pay it back by taking care of them if they become decrepit and infirm. You certainly have the freedom to be a crummy person if you want, but society might pick up where the government leaves off. Your friend list may grow shorter and you may find the willingness of people to help you when you won't help others is severely diminished.

If Amazon has benefitted extensively from Wikipedia, then it owes Wikipedia a moral debt. If it subsequently acts miserly towards Wikipedia, then we as a society may wish to consider how much we want to be benefactors to Amazon. Certainly, if Amazon won't repay Wikipedia, we shouldn't have much hope that they will repay us for our support given in the form of tax incentives or custom.

Re:Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day?

[LostMyBeaver]

If Wikipedia is truly a non-profit, then the contributions it gains above and beyond its normal revenue stream should produce a trust that if managed correctly will cover its expenses.

A million here and a million there by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc... as well as governments and such is very generous. I'm quite sure Amazon would also be very happy to contribute hosting, bandwidth, counter-DDoS, etc...

A major part of running a non-profit is long term ambitions. In other words, it's in the interest of the organization and the world as a whole to continuously improve wikipedia over the next 100+ years. As such, if each year Amazon and others contribute to them allowing their reserves to grow at a rate faster than inflation, then Wiki over time could be entirely self-sufficient to the point that they offer scholarships and more.

People are missing that you don't want to get a $50 million payment today if you can instead get $500 million over the next 100 years from Amazon or whoever beats them out. Also, graciously accepting the handout and spending some time publicizing how grateful you are for it would attract other businesses who would like to be seen as positive contributors to the organization.

Wikipedia is not a business, it's an organization. So long as this is true, it should operate as one.

Re:Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day?

[Kjella]

This question makes no sense. Why would someone owe for free things, which there is no contract/terms-of-service/financial agreement?

Different life philosophies. Some people seem to more or less believe in moral karma, no matter how much you say it's free with no strings attached they feel an obligation to reciprocate and if they can't pay it back, they should pay it forward. These people are often those who refuse charity, because to them it's a debt no matter what. On the other extreme of the scale you have people who aren't even grateful, it's more like disdain "If these fools are giving it away I'm grabbing all I can" and you find some really obnoxious variations of this in the welfare system. Most of us are somewhere in the middle where we're kinda grateful but not really enough to open our wallets, except when it's really some form of informal "You scratch my back if I scratch yours" agreement or cost splitting like me buying this round and you the next one.

When these world's collide it tends to get ugly, because what happens is the first group says "We gave you all this free stuff, you should give some back" and the second group goes "Oh so it wasn't really free stuff, it was a bait-and-switch and now you're going to guilt-shame me into paying for it" and it goes downhill from there. Then a third group comes in and says if you wanted obligations, you should put them in writing and make them sign on it up front, that's what we did. Then the first group will say it's not about bludgeoning them with the law because that's a cat and mouse game with legal loopholes, it's about doing the right thing. Then the third group will say fuck that, they're a bunch of amoral assholes so stop being naive crybabies. Then the second group will say fuck both of you, we have an license and we're following it, we didn't sign up for a philosophy or cause.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to apply labels for software but it's really much broader than that and apply to a lot of community resources and services that don't operate on formal agreements.

Re:Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day?

[brian.stinar]

I like your explanation, and hypothetical examples. Thank you for spending the time to explain these viewpoints as you did.

It seems to me like the critical portion of this question is the definition of the word "owe." I tend to take the viewpoint of the third group when it comes to the word "owe." I don't believe it's possible to "owe" someone something without some kind of agreement. I pay for my employees to provide "free" WordPress support, since my company makes a decent chunk of our income on the "free" WordPress ecosystem. I do this because I'd like to contribute back to WordPress, it's a good marketing channel to show people what we're capable of, and I appreciate the fact that I, individually, was able to un-learn programming and learn WordPress configuration through these Meetups. I think that is a good thing to do, but I do not owe this to anyone. Whenever someone says that my company owes this, I correct them, and let them know that we do not owe anyone for the use of WordPress. This mentality, and way of phrasing this sense of obligation, makes moderate, reasonable, people angry and consider the speaker to be an entitled person that does not properly understand obligation.

I also think the term "taking advantage of" in the headline puts the person that created the headline into the first group. This seems like a petitio principii (begging the question) rhetorical technique, which already assumes that the answer to the question is "Yes, Amazon owes for unfairly taking advantage of the free labor provided by Wikipedia."

No, but . . .

[shplopt]

This is clear distillation of the move from the late 90s internet that escaped AOL's walled garden–idealistic, DIY, open-standard based, focused on the free (and I do mean free) flow of information, naive but hopeful–to the modern internet–cynical, monetized, closed platform based, focused on emotionally charged political (of all stripes) outrage.

I don't care one bit for this development, but I don't think that top-down solutions, whether technical, monetary, or bureacratic, could be successful. This is a social issue, a reflection of our collective values of convenience over all else. We could very easily find the way out of this, if we cared to.

If they do, then Google does in spades

[Crashmarik]

Google just about anything and the first result and the sidebar will have links to Wikipedia.

How does someone reach this conclusion?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is such an incredible lack of logic. I truly would be embarrassed if I where the articles author. The sad thing is that the author is sitting back smugly patting him/her self on the back for their amazing insight. So the one huge glaring stick that collapses the argument is:

HOW in the fuck is asking Alexa any different than using a browser. Should the maker of any browser have to pay extra just because of the results?

That is it, done.... mic drop.

No good deed goes unpunished

[Anonymous Coward]

No good deed goes unpunished. If Amazon hadn't made any donation, this wouldn't be in the news, but because they made a donation of ONLY a million dollars people complain. Nobody OWES wikipedia any money. People can donate if they wish. I have donated before, but once I realized they pretend to be almost out of money and ask for donations to "save" wikipedia when they already have boatloads of money, I decided I need my money more than they do. As of their 2016-2017 tax form 990, they had net assets of more than $113 million dollars. They made a profit of almost $21 million in one year. They took in $88 million that year and spent $69 million (about half of that $69M was on salaries).

Now attribution, sure, that's another thing. If Amazon directly quotes wikipedia text and really doesn't give credit to wikipedia anywhere (including marketing materials or product user manual, or whatever) then they should, because CC-A-SA requires them to. In fact, they ought to also be "sharing-alike".

It's right in TFS

[viperidaenz]

Amazon's Alexa, for example, uses Wikipedia "without credit, contribution, or compensation."

Amazon recently donated $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment, a fund that keeps Wikipedia running

Re:It's right in TFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a million. Hmfff. Fucking tightwads.

Re:It's right in TFS

[Errol backfiring]

The "without credit" might be wrong, but if volunteers* are paid voluntarily for a job well done, it is a bit daft to complain about it.

* There probably are a lot more volunteers outside the wikimedia foundation who contributed. I think no penny goes to them. Not that they expected to.

Amazon should be broken up

[Anonymous Coward]

Just paying wikipedia is not enough. Amazon must be dismantled piece by liberal piece. Tthey cencor conservative products all the times like books and the videos so that people cannot buy them, but they make it so easy to buy sex toys and islamic propaganda.

It's free already

[DNS-and-BIND]

What, is Wikipedia hurting for cash? No. No they are not. They are swimming in cash. So much that I'm baffled by their need to do fundraising campaigns. The whole idea behind Wikipedia is that information wants to be free, and now Slate thinks it should cost money? WTF I thought they were socialists?

Just Imagine...

[Luthair]

What they must owe the Linux foundation following this hare brained logic.

Re:Just Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine the state of technology if everyone agreed with yours.

No contract, no sense of reciprocity. No wikipedia and no Linux.

We would have the locked-down world that Microsoft always wanted.

Yes. Same as GPL license

[goombah99]

Sure no problem. Just change the liscene terms of Wikipedia to no commercial use unless .... then choose something viral like you open source Alexa or the AI using it. Or payment. I'd be opposed to a profit model for Wikipedia but a support model would be reasonable.

GNU GPL is essentiall that. if you use it you open source it. BSD is if you use it you cite it.

Here we go ...

[daveime]

Todays thread about something that has been released under a CC licence, free for anyone to use or modify provided the attribute the source ... and then wanting to add EXTRA conditions after the fact because someone uses it in a way they don't like.

That's not how licences work. If you want more restrictions, or a non-profit clause, then use the correct licence to begin with.

Re:Here we go ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could have some reading comprehension and understand the meaning of attribution. Attribution is what immediately struck me as a foul on the part of Amazon and Google. Attribution is not just respect and license consideration owed to the Wiki. It is also part of information hygiene. People WILL hear wrong information when gadgets use Wikipedia as a source. I increasingly run across poor articles where the editors did not take the time to even read and understand their own cited sources. Attribution allows people who receive bad information to contact the source to correct or to at least list the source when noting the bad info for others.

Re:Here we go ...

[Dragonslicer]

Todays thread about something that has been released under a CC licence, free for anyone to use or modify provided the attribute the source ... and then wanting to add EXTRA conditions after the fact...

If the summary is accurate (I know, I know), that emphasized bit is what Amazon isn't doing. Requiring monetary payment would be adding extra conditions, but requiring attribution is part of the license.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[ShanghaiBill]

Sure no problem. Just change the liscene terms of Wikipedia to no commercial use unless ....

They can not retroactively change the license. I contributed many articles and edits to Wikipedia, and I absolutely would NOT agree to "no commercial use". I contributed so that anyone can use it for any purpose, and Wikipedia has no right to change that just because they feel greedy.

No good deed goes unpunished

[Njovich]

This type of article is the type of lazy journalism that I hate. They gave one million dollars, that's a real sum for Wikipedia. It's a generous donation when none was needed. Normally no journalist would ever think to write 'does amazon owe money to wikimedia'. Yet, now it has reached the news that Amazon gave a million, they get pointed to the subject and start berating Amazon for it somehow not being to their standards (which it will never be, if it's too much they'll find something else wrong with it - Amazon powergrab on wiki or publicity stunt or whatever). The real takeaway these journalists give is to never do anything good, or they'll hunt you down.

Absolutely Not

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a free resource, expect to get used. So much of what is contributed to Wikipedia is given freely and is edited out and censored. Nothing controversial goes in. Suck it up Jimmy Wales and take it like a ... whatever the flavor of the week is...

You could ask Wikipedia the same thing

[Solandri]

Amazon can agree to pay Wikipedia when Wikipedia agrees to pay the volunteers who maintain and update its info.

The volunteers agreed to provide that service without compensation.

Wikipedia agreed to provide its service without compensation. If it now wants to switch to a pay model (and that's what this is - wanting to be paid for the service it's providing), it's free to do so (provided it can figure out a way to placate the volunteers who gave freely of their time and labor to make Wikipedia possible). Hint: Encyclopedia Britannica already tried the pay model.

I want compensation

[Anonymous Coward]

For all of the comments I have donated.

Death of Wikipedia

[speedplane]

The day Wikipedia starts licensing it's content commercially will be the day that it dies.

Re:Death of Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-commercial licenses are prohibited on Wikipedia. You explicitly have to allow commercial use.

Owe... whom?

[m.alessandrini]

Possibly they owe the volunteers writing Wikipedia contents, not Wikipedia.

No. But They Do Owe Attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

A volunteer does free work entirely by choice and there is no obligation, legally or morally, for another party to bestow monetary compensation.

However, there *is* a moral, if not legal, obligation for any party who uses the knowledge that is compiled by Wikipedia volunteers to give attribution to Wikipedia. The situation is no different than quoting a book or academic paper. Amazon did not create the sources which they exploit and therefore they should give attribution to those sources, including, of course, Wikipedia.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia can change their terms of service as they please. They can also block anyone as they please.

Just because you don't like it does not change reality.

We already talked about this with the Linux Kernel Code of Conduct change. Just because you don't like it does not mean you have any control or rights over your past contributions.

Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia shoud try a fundraising drive by going on strike for a day ...

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit on them nerds. They brought it on themselves. :) Staring at screens and banging on keyboards ain't no work.

No and yes.

[houghi]

Legally absolutely not. Morally, absolutely. Mentioning your sources is just a good thing to do. All the rest would be OK.

Obviously not only Amazon is guilty of this. Almost everybody is (including myself).

Search Engine

[cowdung]

Alexa is a search engine. Just like Google.
Should Google pay Wikipedia for reading results?

Re:Search Engine

[f00zbll]

Google does make regular donations to wikipedia, google it and you'll see for yourself.

Re:Search Engine

[superwiz]

That wasn't the question though, was it?

Re:Search Engine

[yared0319]

I was writing up something similar, but realized the difference ... Alexa doesn't attribute her answers to Wikipedia, robbing Wikipedia of potential brand awareness and future donation. Alexa's lack of a UI and repatriation also robs any ad-serving websites of ad revenue. In a web browser/search engine, the consumer can at least see the ads that help sustain the website.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What about

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the free data give by people to google for their self driving car?
Shouldn't everyone access this data too?

Another detail on that, it's be easy to have some bot spam some place, then suggest the solution of google capcha.
That reminds me of something.

We should just donate ourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better for wikipedia if we all just stop passing the buck and pay what we think its worth. I realised I needed to do this a few years ago and started donating a small amount each month to make sure I had paid towards my regular use of this resource. I remember when I was a kid and encycopedias cost a fortune.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't owe Linus anything for using the software he released for free.

I don't owe Dostoyevsky's kids anything for reading novels that are in the public domain.

I don't owe Amazon anything for using their free tier AWS services

I don't owe Wikipedia anything for their many articles on Sonic the Hedgehog fandom

Ehhh?

[Charcharodon]

Wikipedia "We are doing this for the benefit of all mankind and expect nothing in return!!"

Amazon "Cool beans thanks"

Wikipedia "WTF AMAZON?!! WHY HAVEN'T YOU GIVEN US MONEY (billions)??!!"

Amazon "lol, typical"

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[JackieBrown]

A code of conduct is not a licence.

They cannot change their licence without approval from all contributors.

We went through this discussion during the GPL2 to GPL3 conversions.

Gift Economies

[Immerman]

In a market economy sense of Wikipedia being owed compensation for services rendered - absolutely not. You're right about that.

However, in a gift economy sense of maintaining a balanced flow of wealth - absolutely. Those who accept your gifts but never give gifts to you, gradually stop receiving gifts. (That was essentially what motivated the GPL3 - too many high-profile for-profit freeloaders building resentment in the community caused enough upset that some of the GPL2 community decided to further restrict the conditions of their gift, despite it costing them compatibility with the rest of the GPL2 community.)

And it seems to me that Amazon is doing just that with their donation, which from the limited information google quickly volunteered, would seem to be among the most generous contributions made.

Re:Gift Economies

[Cederic]

Alexa grants people access to shared knowlege. That knowledge was shared by people.

So really Alexa is merely granting people access to their own knowledge.

Unless you can demonstrate that users of Alexa and contributors to Wikipedia are very separate communities, people are granting gifts to themselves.

Re:Gift Economies

[Immerman]

Lets run the numbers, shall we?

This page looks a little outdated, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but claims only 130,675 editors have contributed in the last 30 days, and only ~48,000 editors have made 600 total contributions. With about 3,500 editors make >100 contributions per month.

Meanwhile, around 50 million Alexa devices have been sold.

Unless the participation rates have increased dramatically, or all 48,000 major contributors purchased an average of 1000 Alexa devices each, it's very unlikely that most Alexa users have made major contributions to Wikipedia.

Re:Gift Economies

[Hognoxious]

Alexa grants people access to shared knowlege[sic]. That knowledge was shared by people.

So really Alexa is merely granting people access to their own knowledge.

Unless you precede the first instance of "people" with "some" and the second with "those exact same" then the conclusion doesn't follow. Statistically it's very unlikely to be the case.

Re:Gift Economies

[Cederic]

Alexa, a web browser. The some/many ratio is consistent whichever tool people use to access the information.

Re:Gift Economies

[Hognoxious]

If I'm reading an article about (to choose a topic totally at random) aspie fucktards who don't understand logic, and I happen to be the one who wrote it, then in that case I'm sharing information with myself.

The other 6,999,999,999 people aren't.

Re:Gift Economies

[Cederic]

You are a member of a community. You access a resource created by that community. You benefit from the community's contribution. The community just shared knowledge with itself.

Aspie fucktard logic still beats your idiocy.

Re:Gift Economies

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? How does that change the fact that the information is free and was always meant to be free? You shouldn't be volunteering to do things if you expect a reward.

Wikipedia should move to free for non commercial u

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want to get paid. Same argument applies to any OSS software or content.

So either change your license or STFU.

Same applies to Google who also use Wikipedia to vet fake news - and net $70+B a year. So why pick on AMAZ?

Conundrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider this: If Amazon had not donated $1 million to Wikimedia, would this article have even been written? Did the article bitch about Google not contributing enough to Wikimedia? Did the article consider the net worth of Sergei Brin? Did the article use the word ILK to refer to Google?

This is what Amazon gets for doing a good deed. Next time they may contribute $0. Seems very biased to me.

It's like pussy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why buy the cow when the milk is free?

the non-trivial cost of straddling economic realms

[epine]

Yours is the kind of narrow argument that makes me groan inside.

Given the enormous asset base (5.7 million articles in English alone, plus all of the discussion and history behind that process), and the public visibility and reach, it's pretty easy to slap a valuation on Wikipedia well north of $5B, were it commercialized in any way similar to its closest comparables.

When you're playing on such a big stage, even if you aren't commercialized to the full potential of your underlying asset, you are actually on the radar of other enterprises worth hundreds of billions of dollars. You don't necessarily need to throw your weight around (you don't have a revenue model to protect), but you also don't want to be discouraged from operating in your natural domain because you can't even afford the coffee, on the way to the limo, on the way to the fancy conference hall.

As a ratio to a putative (but defensible) capital asset base, the management cost of Wikipedia is on the order of 1.5% annually.

Oh, profligate waste! thy name is the WikiMedia Foundation.

As a net value to society, I would say the $5B valuation greatly underestimates the present state of affairs: permanently free leads to the virtuous circle of ubiquity, where the asset is repurposed in so many ways that barely anyone knows about, because each additional marginal use is too cheap to meter (the Foundation sees only the marginal bandwidth costs).

Perhaps its a paradox too great for your axe-contracted mind to absorb, but even a socialist utopia of altruistic knowledge workers requires an interface with the capitalist world where you don't get pushed around in every possible way. The price of that interface is not tied to internal models of the cost of production, it's tied to the external model of how you sit eye-to-eye at those tables with the power brokers like Google and Amazon.

Forbes Power Women 2012: #70 Sue Gardner

Wikipedia pre- and post-Sue Gardner are two completely different organizations.

When she arrived at Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million dollars annually. In 2011, Wikimedia's number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million.

Gardner is focused on expanding Wikipedia's scope for readers and contributors, especially in the global South. In 2012, she partnered with Orange and Telenor, two European telecommunications companies, in a move that will provide Wikipedia free of data charges to millions of users across Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Also in 2012, Gardner led the full-day Wikipedia blackout in protest against SOPA, one of the only major websites to do so.

Gardner's roots are in journalism, graduating from Ryerson University with a journalism degree and acting as head of Canada's national public broadcaster, CBC.CA, prior to joining the Wikimedia Foundation.

There are many corporations which pay $70 million to a single executive to drive those kinds of agendas forward in the world, and they justify this by looking at their bottom line, a line which Wikipedia does not have. But if you imagine a bottom line based on their assets and clout, you'd not be hopelessly out of the ballpark of multi-million dollar executive compensation packages.

News site to investigate Big Tech, aided by Craigslist founder — 23 September 2018

Now, with a $20 million gift from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, she and her partner at ProPublica, data journalist Jeff Larson, are starting the Markup, a news site dedicated to investigating technology and its effect on society. Sue Gardner, former head of the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, will be the Markup's executive dir

Re:the non-trivial cost of straddling economic rea

[epine]

s/but don't own me a freaking dime/but you don't owe me a freaking dime/

I've witnessed this failure mode many times, in myself and others. It takes roughly 95% of your brain to suppress the f-word.

Meanwhile, the other 5% of my brain was preparing to engage the cherished screed-culmination "submit" button.

No

[cascadingstylesheet]

No.

Thanks for asking though ...

Sheesh, I hate Indian givers. "We're so great; we're making information freely available to the world! Oh, but not to you, big meany who makes more money than I do."

OH MY GOD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

OH MY GOD!!! We created a universal encyclopedia that's free for all, and people are acting as if it's a universal encyclopedia that's free for all!!!

Meanwhile time and time again Wikimedia tries to take the credit for the work done by their army of unpaid volunteers and say "hey, you owe WIKIMEDIA for all this stuff".

More Socialist-think?

[King_TJ]

Wikipedia is, indeed, a handy resource. But it's also one that sometimes seems like it wants to have things both ways; free for everyone's unlimited use AND a service that's owed some kind of regular donation if you utilize it.

Considering the content (which is the only reason the site has ANY value) is contributed by users volunteering to write it? I don't think they have much of a leg to stand on if they're upset Amazon uses it without compensating them.

In fact, the decision made to make Wikipedia a free to use resource has some negative implications for them. (EG. It's not usually considered a source one can site when writing any kind of term paper for schools.) Commercial encyclopedias are acceptable as such sources, by contrast, because the content is vetted by publishers who are responsible for maintaining their accuracy. Either you're a publisher, or you're just a content platform hosting service. Wikipedia chooses to be the later.

Yes and no

[HeckRuler]

Morally? Yes. They should. It'd be a real nice thing to do. But... even then, the REASON I put stuff up on wikipedia is so that EVERYONE can go use it. If Amazon is using it... that still counts. This is one of it's intended use-cases.

Legally? No, I don't think so.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[Anonymous Coward]

A code of conduct can effectively be the same as a licence by barring people that do not conform to it.

Don't be willfully stupid.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[Cederic]

We already talked about this with the Linux Kernel Code of Conduct change.

Except that a key element in the Linux Kernel discussion was that the licence was the very thing preventing people from withdrawing their contributions.

Similarly Wikipedia contributions are inherently copyright to the contributor, who licences their work under GFDL and CC-BY SA.

No, Wikipedia can not change those licences. They can choose to cease sharing that content, but they can't legally just stick their own shiny new licence on it.

Just because you don't like it does not mean you have any control or rights over your past contributions.

Except.. yes, yes he does. He retains copyright and all the commercial and artistic legal rights that grants.

SLASH it!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a bloated organization in desperate need of cost-cutting.

Have you read some of the corporate-speak bullshit on that annual plan? It would be great for a game of Buzzword Bingo! But for running a non-profit? Not so much.

YES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

They owe Wikipedia a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for what Wikipedia paid its volunteers.

does wikipedia?

[superwiz]

If wikipedia doesn't owe its free volunteers for taking advantage of them, why does Amazon owe wikipedia for taking advantage of them?

... and where is the conflict?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia makes an effort to share knowledge and to provide a free access to it.

Alexa/amazon provide a channel to reach that information for an even wider auditory. Lucrative or not, the mission of spreading knowledge prevails.

This is what "freely available" means

[ReadParse]

When we release something to the community, for free, that includes commercial use. If we don't want it to, there are licenses that can make it free for personal use, but not for commercial.

The Wikimedia Foundation made a decision to make their content free for everybody, and to not restrict the usage. Same as GNU, Linux and others. Even if you are making money. Even if we don't like what you do with it. We give it away because that's what we decided to do. And nothing is owed.

It doesn't mean companies (or people) that realize financial benefit can't make a contribution to the cause. Some do. But that's completely at their discretion.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, it seems that this case can be handled just fine with the available license.

CC-BY SA means that attribution is required when reusing the content. Amazon is not giving attribution, so they are not covered by that license.

That is, Amazon may be infringing the copyright of those volunteers.

they are volunteers

[Anonymous Coward]

voluntarily contributing to a freely available project... sure giving them money is nice, but it's not like they expect compensation. and even if you did pay them, the actual volunteers don't get any, it goes to the project itself... stupid question

Easy fix for that too

[goombah99]

just fork it. THen close down the original. The fork gets the new license. Since the original was licesnsed for any purpose, it can be forked since that's a purpose.

Re:Easy fix for that too

[Anonymous Coward]

And then someone else keeps the original going (which you can't prevent).

Why would you want to restrict the free flow of information?

"even Amazon's Seattle-based sibling Microsoft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Even?

You're the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And the truth comes out. You're a guilty dog barking and THAT is why you decided to post your dismissive bullshit OP.

Kjella's explanation left out one of the important criteria about that whole "free" thing. It's in the name. The "thing" was produced and release free of charge. All these arguments arise when people like you use the free things to charge people money. If you also gave your product away, no one of significance would be bitching.

What we hate is the hypocrisy. Always screaming "we" want free shit while "you" are actually getting the free shit. Y'alls day will come...

OK, let me get this straight...

[McFortner]

They are complaining about Amazon using something that they are giving away for free? Hell, the Wikipedia Foundation doesn't even PAY the people who post and keep articles on Wikipedia. So are they gonna stop living off the free work that those volunteers do and start paying them per article and change?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Re:Yes. Same as GPL license

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. A code of conduct carries no legal authority or force of law.