[Foundation-l] PediaPress

Sat Nov 13 19:59:30 UTC 2010

Hello Sarah,

I searched a little on meta and the oldest thing I found related to this 
is from the Foundation Report of January 2008 [1]. So I cannot tell you 
how the contract came into being. As you know, the Foundation moved in 
the spring of 2008 from Florida to San Francisco and rebuilt itself 
afterwards. Before the move the organisational maturity is still quite 
weak. I am sure that today such contract would be handled in other ways 
and the board would surely be informed.

The reason why I changed your example is exactly because I wanted to 
avoid the topic of paid edit. As you know, this topic is very 
controversial inside of the community. We just had a quite long thread 
about this running through this list. To include that topic into this 
discussion makes it only even more difficult. I recognize what MZMcBride 
pointed out, that my modification is not comparable with your original 
example and is also not comparable to the PediaPress case. I simply have 
no good example at the hand.

May I try with another example: One of our problem was always 
translation. Our movement is supposed to be a global movement, but in a 
lot of cases our working language is English. A lot of very important 
discussions here, on meta, in commons, are in English. Although we try 
very hard to work more multilingual, but in alot of cases if someone 
don't know English, he may not even able to know that a topic is just 
discussed somewhere, that may have inpact on his work on our projects. 
So, let's say the Virgin Ventures has a genious service that can help us 
to overcome this problem. It has a magic button translate this page or 
this thread, and if I hit it, Vergin Ventures can provide me, with 
automatically or manually performed services, after a reasonable time, a 
comprehensible translation of the discussions, so that everyone can take 
part on our discussion. I really don't see any reason why the Foundation 
should not handle out a contract with Vergin Ventures so that we take 
get this service and at the same time Vergin Ventures can get a share as 
a business model.

I know that also this example is not without flaw, as comparisons always 
are. What I want to say is, if a company can provide us a service that 
we really desperately need and we cannot get elsewhere, and it shares 
the same value as we are, I think it is a correct decision to take that 
service. I am sure this answer is maybe not satisfactory, but I hope it 
can explain a little what my personal opinion is.

Greetings
Ting

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_January_2008

On 13.11.2010 08:57, wrote SlimVirgin:
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 00:53, Ting Chen<wing.philopp at gmx.de>  wrote:
>> Hello Sarah,
>>
>> I would put it somehow differently. If Virgin Ventures has a tool with
>> which a newbie (or also an oldbie) can in a very intuitive way construct
>> a well formatted article from the scrap, so something like that magic
>> editor we had talked about for long time and never realized until now,
>> and it is open source, I would certainly consider a button in the
>> toolbox like "Use the wizard to start an article".
>>
>> On 12.11.2010 07:44, wrote SlimVirgin:
>>> If I were to set up Virgin Ventures to write high-quality,
>>> policy-compliant articles for companies and people that needed them --
>>> benefiting the subjects, the readers, and Wikipedia -- might I be
>>> given a button in the toolbox too? "Red link? Click here for the
>>> Virgin!"
> Hello Ting,
>
> The concern is this: the argument is that because the people behind
> [[PediaPress]] in Germany -- who I assume were Wikipedians -- put
> their time into creating the "create book" software, they should be
> allowed a return on their investment, unlike Wikipedia's writers who
> are expected to donate their skills for free. Therefore, the
> Foundation gave them access to some of cyberspace's most expensive
> real estate in the sidebar, and the company is allowed to keep 90
> percent of the profit by printing articles in book form.
>
> And I believe it's not actually PediaPress doing the printing. They
> have a contract with yet another company for that -- [[Lightning
> Source]] -- a print-on-demand subsidiary of Ingram Industries Inc.
> http://mickrooney.blogspot.com/2010/06/lsi-expandpartnership-with-pediapress.html
>
> PediaPress is owned by Brainbot Technologies, which says on its
> website that it aims to exploit Wikipedia content commercially, and it
> was to this end that PediaPress was set up.
> http://brainbot.com/services/wikis/
>
> Google translate -- http://translate.google.com/#de|en|
>
> It raises lots of questions, but two big ones:
>
> 1. How was PediaPress/Brainbot chosen to do this, out of all the
> companies in the world that would have paid the Foundation for access
> to a "create book" function in the sidebar?
>
> and
>
> 2. It presupposes that technical know-how can be monetized, but
> editorial input on Wikipedia -- the material Brainbot/PediaPress wants
> to sell -- should be done without payment. Wikipedians who have been
> paid for writing articles (including policy-compliant ones) have been
> blocked or ostracized. They've not been offered sidebar access by the
> Foundation.
>
> Can the Foundation please explain how Brainbot/Pediapress was chosen?
>
> Also, can it reassure us that in future all Wikipedians (or everyone
> in general) will have the chance to compete for openings like this,
> whether using technical or editorial skills?
>
> Sarah
>
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-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/