Wikimirror.com Are Thieves

I began to write an item that I was about to post to this newsgroup -- an
item that discussed that nasty thing called wikimirror.com. The item become
quite extensive so I ended up just pasting it onto my blog. I still think
that some of you in this group will find it informative, so here is a
snippet:

<snip>

Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?

</snip>

http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archiv...17/wikimirror/

Roy

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archiv...17/wikimirror/

An excerpt from a Wikimirror.com:

<quote>

Content Credit

Wikimirror financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this
page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from
Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License. Contact: info [AT] wikimirror [DOT] com

</quote>

Did you check if the statement is true before giving them this much bad
publicity? I have no idea if they do "financially support" WiKi or not,
but it is very well possible that they donate some part of the money they
earn from AdSense on this pages (at least for tax relief purposes), and
then you would really sound like an a**hole attacking people that support
the same cause that you do.

What is it, Roy, maximalism of youth?

--
Cheers,
Dmitri
See Site Sig Below
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__/ [www.1-script.com] on Monday 17 October 2005 15:05 \__

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archiv...17/wikimirror/

An excerpt from a Wikimirror.com:

quote

Content Credit

Wikimirror financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this
page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from
Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License. Contact: info [AT] wikimirror [DOT] com

/quote

Did you check if the statement is true before giving them this much bad
publicity? I have no idea if they do "financially support" WiKi or not,
but it is very well possible that they donate some part of the money they
earn from AdSense on this pages (at least for tax relief purposes), and
then you would really sound like an a**hole attacking people that support
the same cause that you do.

What is it, Roy, maximalism of youth?

In guess you may have a point, but are Wikipedians aware of that? I sure
wasn't and I contributed a little.

I can think of a variety of free and Open projects that opted for ways of
making money 'under the table' or in indirect ways that are questionable. I
don't know what exactly is happening -- business-wise that is -- with
mozilla.com. DMOZ is one candidate for toppling, but I am not sure any
proof can be recovered.

It is fine to make money from OSS as far as support goes. It is wrong,
however, to /sell/ away certain values and, as in this case, take a
collaboratory content Encyclopedia and convert it into static pages, which
could wind up making profits... off people's contributions -- people who
will receive nothing in return. You should have heard the outcry when
similar things happened in the past like Open Source projects sold to large
corporation that take advantage of advertisements space. Skype or ICQ are
not a good example, but Flickr or Geocities might be. If you need more
convincing, let me know.

I added your disclaimer as a clarification, which I think is well-deserved a
mention.

Roy

--
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Roy Schestowitz wrote:

It is fine to make money from OSS as far as support goes. It is wrong,
however, to /sell/ away certain values and, as in this case, take a
collaboratory content Encyclopedia and convert it into static pages,
which could wind up making profits... off people's contributions -- people
who will receive nothing in return.

Well, that is the part of their contribution: they did not want anything
in return. If they did, they'd have done it the way you and me are doing.
They'd setup a website, fill it with their contributions that would have
otherwise go to WiKi and put their own ads on it.

In my pragmatic old mind it is better to use their contributions and send
some money back to WiKipedia than not to do anything at all. BTW, I have a
very strong feeling that it would be Google's job to give original WiKi
content higher SERPs than to that of mirror's. However, if it is not
happenning, the original intent of WiKi contributors is still being
fulfilled: their contribution DO get to people looking for that info!

I have to add a disclaimer of my own: I have never contributed anything to
WiKi nor used any part of their content on any of my sites. Also, I tend
to (partially?) agree with you: I would feel much easier if I submitted
something to them before I used their content in any way or form.

--
Cheers,
Dmitri
See Site Sig Below
-------------------------------------

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__/ [www.1-script.com] on Monday 17 October 2005 15:53 \__

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

It is fine to make money from OSS as far as support goes. It is wrong,
however, to /sell/ away certain values and, as in this case, take a
collaboratory content Encyclopedia and convert it into static pages,
which could wind up making profits... off people's contributions --
people who will receive nothing in return.


Well, that is the part of their contribution: they did not want anything
in return. If they did, they'd have done it the way you and me are doing.
They'd setup a website, fill it with their contributions that would have
otherwise go to WiKi and put their own ads on it.

I think you make a sound argument, but ask not what Wikipedia thinks, ask
what was in the minds of the huge number of contributers, some of whom were
'hit-and-run'ners.

In my pragmatic old mind it is better to use their contributions and send
some money back to WiKipedia than not to do anything at all. BTW, I have a
very strong feeling that it would be Google's job to give original WiKi
content higher SERPs than to that of mirror's. However, if it is not
happenning, the original intent of WiKi contributors is still being
fulfilled: their contribution DO get to people looking for that info!

Here is what made me raise a brow. Look again at the site's description,
which I explicitly cited in my blog:

"Wikimirror.com - Free encyclopedia search a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q
r s t u v w x y z _ · Google Web Encyclopedia."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is Google doing with WikiPedia what it did with DMOZ, which in turn funded
the Mozilla Foundation? I may remind you that the Google Directory is fed
by DMOZ as links are periodically migrated from the latter to the former.
DMOZ reviewers/moderators are doing so voluntarily, probably in the name of
Firefox, which is Open Source. In this current situation, I doubt I would
ever volunteer to edit DMOZ listings, i.e. spend my free time organising
directories for Google.

I have to add a disclaimer of my own: I have never contributed anything to
WiKi nor used any part of their content on any of my sites. Also, I tend
to (partially?) agree with you: I would feel much easier if I submitted
something to them before I used their content in any way or form.

Roy

--
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__/ [Stefan Ram] on Monday 17 October 2005 16:20 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> writes:
Firefox, which is Open Source. In this current situation, I doubt I would
ever volunteer to edit DMOZ listings, i.e. spend my free time organising
directories for Google.

DMOZ actually AFAIK is owned and controlled by Time Warner, so
you would be working in you free time for Time Warner.

"Netscape was acquired by AOL (...), and ODP was one of
the assets included in the acquisition. AOL later merged
with Time-Warner."

"ODP's paid staff having the final say regarding ODP's
policies and procedures."

"ODP's paid staff gave the paid employees of
professional content providers such as AOL
and Rolling Stone magazine high level editing
access at ODP."

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/DMoz

Amazing, isn't it? A mailbox stuffed with hundreds of submissions every
morning and a moderator that serves merely as a cogwheel for something that
falls under the disguise of communal, non-profit bodies.

Then again, I bet (am almost sure) we are missing plenty of other facts, as
well as the word from the other side. I have just tried to trace the bit in
scroogle.org that talks about it in depth, but it has almost certainly been
removed from both the site and the Google index (cache).

Roy

info_at_1-script_dot_com (AT) foo (DOT) com (www.1-script.com) wrote:

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archiv...17/wikimirror/

An excerpt from a Wikimirror.com:

quote

Content Credit

Wikimirror financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this
page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from
Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License. Contact: info [AT] wikimirror [DOT] com

/quote

If they mean with: we made a copy of the wikipedia page, and hence save
them some bandwidth, so we are financially supporting them... well... urhm.

--
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or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

this current situation, I doubt I would ever volunteer to edit DMOZ
listings, i.e. spend my free time organising directories for Google.

I am sure some editors are editors because they have one or more sites in
the category/categories they maintain. Does that ring a bell?

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

__/ [John Bokma] on Tuesday 18 October 2005 02:32 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

this current situation, I doubt I would ever volunteer to edit DMOZ
listings, i.e. spend my free time organising directories for Google.

I am sure some editors are editors because they have one or more sites in
the category/categories they maintain. Does that ring a bell?

It does ring a bell, as well as a loud "Ka-ching".

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Yes, I know, but does it run Linux?"
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__/ [John Bokma] on Tuesday 18 October 2005 02:30 \__

info_at_1-script_dot_com (AT) foo (DOT) com (www.1-script.com) wrote:

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archiv...17/wikimirror/

An excerpt from a Wikimirror.com:

quote

Content Credit

Wikimirror financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this
page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from
Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License. Contact: info [AT] wikimirror [DOT] com

/quote

If they mean with: we made a copy of the wikipedia page, and hence save
them some bandwidth, so we are financially supporting them... well...
urhm.

Someone ought to make contact in order to see which side should be taken. In
fact, since the contact E-mail is there, furious E-mails are possibly
anticipated. Despite the age of the site, I still see (Alexa/Netcraft) that
it gets little traffic and I only found it at the very bottom of the
SERP's, having gone to the very end of the search results. I think the
disclaimer above might just be a coverup. Who knows if they ever negotiated
with Wikipedia's creator.

Speaking of Wikipedia mirrors, igorasmus (full details in whois.net), who
occasionally visits this group, has got many Wikipedia mirrors in
Algebra.com. I once searched the term "Mercury" (probably followed by
another (key)word) and by serendipity found his domain in page 1! Algebra?
Mercury?... urrhhmmm..... Makes you think.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Yes, I know, but does it run Linux?"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
7:05am up 53 days 19:19, 5 users, load average: 0.42, 0.50, 0.59
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms