- The introduction of Wikimedia Enterprise will not affect Wikipedia’s free services.
- This new initiative could bring partnership opportunities for big internet companies and organizations.
- The service will be functional by the time 2021 is about to end.ss
Introduction:
The Wikimedia Foundation is developing a new premium service for companies that use Wikipedia data. The foundation declared this today and it plans to launch the service by the end of 2021. It is known as Wikimedia enterprise. The launch of the service will not affect the current Wikipedia services at work. Instead, it plans to offer new options for companies that have been using its content, a category that includes tech giants like Google and Facebook.
What do reports say?
According to reports Wikimedia is still working on finalizing how the Wikimedia Enterprise will function. In a broader sense, it is more like a premium version of Wikipedia’s API. It is the tool that lets anybody scrape and republish Wikipedia articles.
Enterprise customers can get the data delivered faster and are formatted to fulfill their needs. For instance, or get fresh options for sorting and publishing it. According to an explanation from Wikimedia Foundation’s senior director Lane Becker, the companies are already releasing payment to the employees to clean up the Wikipedia data. The enterprise will conduct that kind of clean-up at the source. Moreover, if they want the companies can still use the existing API tools without any charges.
So many internet services are powered partly by Wikipedia currently. Google’s knowledge boxes draw information from the free encyclopedia and the same thing is applicable to voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. Web platforms have been working hard to fight the wrong information. In such a scenario Wikipedia has become a go-to fact-checking resource. Some companies and organizations have offered donations in return for accessing Wikimedia free services. Amidst this other organizations have launched huge Wikipedia-powered initiatives without informing the foundation.
Wikimedia’s statement:
On Wikimedia’s frequently asked questions page, the giant insists that Enterprise is not “forcing Big Tech to pay” for Wikipedia. This could solve specific, well-known issues for such companies. One potential service would enable companies to display the heavily reliable community-vetted edits in the place of the fresh ones, that prevent false or vandalized articles from ending up on their platforms.
In an essay, the team of Wikimedia Enterprise acknowledges that it has been balancing the commercial realities with an initiative to provide free access to the knowledge. “This is about setting up the movement to thrive for decades to come, to weather any storm, and to genuinely stand a chance at achieving the mission first conceived 20 years ago,” the essay says. “We’re going to need more resources, more partners, and more allies if we are going to achieve the goals implicit in our vision statement.”
Starting later this year it could include paid partnerships with the internet’s huge companies and organizations.
