Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Leila Zia]

Hi Victoria,

I hope you're doing well. Please see below.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 12:19 PM Victoria Coleman
 wrote:
>
> The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed support. The 
> Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team which is over 
> stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue starts flowing in 
> from the paid API.

You have worked in WMF and you are more deeply familiar with the
internal workings of WMF, however, for the sake of others who read
your comments above, I'd like to share some thoughts:

* I have concerns about specific teams in WMF being volunteered on a
public list for a project or work. As you know, adding a project to a
team's set of responsibilities is not just about making a financial
investment. Teams usually have plans for what they want to do over the
coming 1-2 years and expanding the scope of their work or the
diversity of what they need to manage can have major implications for
the teams.

Instead, I encourage us to ask the question "what does it take to be
able to do x in our own infrastructure?" when we know this is the kind
of experiment that has worked.

* As has been shared before, the project is at the "experiment" level.
When we don't know if an idea even works or not, we want to be mindful
of our time investments. I personally want to be able to trust the
team who is responsible for the project in assessing where the best
place to invest their time is as they have better visibility into the
work and the resources that are available to them.

* You said "The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the
team [...]". I want to be very explicit: the problem of where to
invest the WMF resources is a very very complex problem. There are
many important projects and ideas in WMF, all potentially with big
impact, and there are, as you had more visibility into during your
tenure, critical efforts that can benefit from much more investments.
The c-team has a hard job each time they make resourcing decisions:
they can't think about one project or one team only. They need to take
into account the portfolio of projects and needs the WMF has and
figure out where to invest. You and I may or may not agree with their
decisions, however, I'd caution us from assuming that this is the kind
of problem that we can easily solve once we're in their shoes.

Best,
Leila

--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation

> Victoria
>
> > On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta  wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
> >> Which cloud provider would you recommend?
> >
> > Wikimedia Cloud Services, which incidentally, has the fastest network
> > connection to Wikimedia sites by virtue of it being hosted *inside* the
> > cluster.
> >
> > -- Legoktm
> >
> > ___
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> > 
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Joseph Seddon]

And just as an additional note. Using AWS was mainly because it was what
the team was most familiar with and enabled us to prototype faster. We know
there are going to be a lot of requirements from a lot of different users
from with the WMF, the broader technical community, researchers along with
mission aligned reusers and we are beginning to gather those now and that
will help work out what needs to be done in the long term.

One of the advantages we will have is that if it does wholly or in part at
some point get brought onto Wikimedia Cloud Services, we will know exactly
what the requirements will be.

Regards
Seddon

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:26 PM Joseph Seddon  wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> Given that this project is a direct result of the recommendations from the
> strategy process the biggest questions are I feel mainly about how we go
> about this. There are really bad ways this project could be approached and
> then there are ways which are aligned with our movement and we are most
> definitely approaching this project via the latter.
>
> Regarding the hosting on AWS, when the project started it wasn't clear to
> what extent we would be able to utilise Wikimedia Cloud Services in short
> and long term for this specific project and that remains true for a number
> of reasons. This has brought a benefit as it means we have been highly
> conservative in our development approach. In the HTML dump work ongoing, we
> are utilising purely public endpoints and we have purposefully
> containerized the entire application in docker to allow flexibility of
> infrastructure as well as remove any dependencies to AWS. This was
> identified as a requirement pretty early on so things have been designed in
> a way to avoid obvious pitfalls like becoming dependent on RDS or S3 and
> aim to make the tools we build platform agnostic and fully open source.
>
> We will be beginning a regular release of the code base soon that will
> hopefully be aligned with the end of sprints. Given that there is nothing
> preventing this from also existing on Wikimedia Cloud Services or any other
> cloud infrastructure. In the long term our goal is to try and make anything
> we build usable by anyone.
>
> Regards
> Seddon
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:03 PM Victoria Coleman <
> vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rupert,
>>
>> My comment below referred to the point Kunal made about hosting should
>> the movement decide (and it is a movement decision in my view) to go
>> forward with a paid API. There is a healthy debate as you point out about
>> the wisdom or otherwise of doing so. But should a decision be made to go
>> forward, I believe that the hosting can be done on WMF clusters run by the
>> Cloud Services team to avoid putting our content on 3rd party commercial
>> services. While I was on staff, and I don’t think this has changed since my
>> departure, the preference was to maintain control of content - including
>> accessing it  - internally to protect movement privacy. If I had a penny
>> for every time I got an offer of “free” hosting from AWS and others, my
>> penny jar would be overflowing!
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Victoria
>>
>> > On Jul 22, 2020, at 12:50 AM, rupert THURNER 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > victoria, discussions to monetize the wikipedia content in one or the
>> other
>> > way are as old as wikipedia. some people say "why should i continue
>> editing
>> > and supporting wikipedia in my free time, or donate money, attracted by
>> the
>> > vision to make it available to all, without condition, when WMF starts
>> > selling parts of it?" while the others feel that wikipedia relying on
>> > donations only keeps them at a shoestring budget, which meanwhile grew
>> to
>> > 100 million USD a year. up to now the discussion always ended with a
>> > similar result: wikipedia would loose more than it would gain, and the
>> > initiative stopped. why this time it would be different? even more so as
>> > this API idea was already there when sue gardner joined 10 or more years
>> > ago. but maybe it becomes a good idea over time if it is brought up
>> often
>> > enough and the environment changes. in 20 years or so, when the
>> wikipedia
>> > content is auto-generated, auto-translated and WMF has no employees any
>> > more and no need of voluntary work this for sure would work.
>> >
>> > rupert
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 9:19 PM Victoria Coleman <
>> > vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> +1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed
>> >> support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team
>> >> which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as
>> revenue
>> >> starts flowing in from the paid API.
>> >>
>> >> Victoria
>> >>
>> >>> On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta 
>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
>>  Which cloud provider would you recommend?
>> >>>
>> >>> Wikimedia Cloud Services, which

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Joseph Seddon]

Hey all,

Given that this project is a direct result of the recommendations from the
strategy process the biggest questions are I feel mainly about how we go
about this. There are really bad ways this project could be approached and
then there are ways which are aligned with our movement and we are most
definitely approaching this project via the latter.

Regarding the hosting on AWS, when the project started it wasn't clear to
what extent we would be able to utilise Wikimedia Cloud Services in short
and long term for this specific project and that remains true for a number
of reasons. This has brought a benefit as it means we have been highly
conservative in our development approach. In the HTML dump work ongoing, we
are utilising purely public endpoints and we have purposefully
containerized the entire application in docker to allow flexibility of
infrastructure as well as remove any dependencies to AWS. This was
identified as a requirement pretty early on so things have been designed in
a way to avoid obvious pitfalls like becoming dependent on RDS or S3 and
aim to make the tools we build platform agnostic and fully open source.

We will be beginning a regular release of the code base soon that will
hopefully be aligned with the end of sprints. Given that there is nothing
preventing this from also existing on Wikimedia Cloud Services or any other
cloud infrastructure. In the long term our goal is to try and make anything
we build usable by anyone.

Regards
Seddon

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:03 PM Victoria Coleman <
vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Rupert,
>
> My comment below referred to the point Kunal made about hosting should the
> movement decide (and it is a movement decision in my view) to go forward
> with a paid API. There is a healthy debate as you point out about the
> wisdom or otherwise of doing so. But should a decision be made to go
> forward, I believe that the hosting can be done on WMF clusters run by the
> Cloud Services team to avoid putting our content on 3rd party commercial
> services. While I was on staff, and I don’t think this has changed since my
> departure, the preference was to maintain control of content - including
> accessing it  - internally to protect movement privacy. If I had a penny
> for every time I got an offer of “free” hosting from AWS and others, my
> penny jar would be overflowing!
>
> All the best,
>
> Victoria
>
> > On Jul 22, 2020, at 12:50 AM, rupert THURNER 
> wrote:
> >
> > victoria, discussions to monetize the wikipedia content in one or the
> other
> > way are as old as wikipedia. some people say "why should i continue
> editing
> > and supporting wikipedia in my free time, or donate money, attracted by
> the
> > vision to make it available to all, without condition, when WMF starts
> > selling parts of it?" while the others feel that wikipedia relying on
> > donations only keeps them at a shoestring budget, which meanwhile grew to
> > 100 million USD a year. up to now the discussion always ended with a
> > similar result: wikipedia would loose more than it would gain, and the
> > initiative stopped. why this time it would be different? even more so as
> > this API idea was already there when sue gardner joined 10 or more years
> > ago. but maybe it becomes a good idea over time if it is brought up often
> > enough and the environment changes. in 20 years or so, when the wikipedia
> > content is auto-generated, auto-translated and WMF has no employees any
> > more and no need of voluntary work this for sure would work.
> >
> > rupert
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 9:19 PM Victoria Coleman <
> > vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> +1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed
> >> support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team
> >> which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue
> >> starts flowing in from the paid API.
> >>
> >> Victoria
> >>
> >>> On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta 
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
>  Which cloud provider would you recommend?
> >>>
> >>> Wikimedia Cloud Services, which incidentally, has the fastest network
> >>> connection to Wikimedia sites by virtue of it being hosted *inside* the
> >>> cluster.
> >>>
> >>> -- Legoktm
> >>>
> >>> ___
> >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> >>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >> 
> >>
> >>
> >> ___
> >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> >> New 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Victoria Coleman]

Rupert,

My comment below referred to the point Kunal made about hosting should the 
movement decide (and it is a movement decision in my view) to go forward with a 
paid API. There is a healthy debate as you point out about the wisdom or 
otherwise of doing so. But should a decision be made to go forward, I believe 
that the hosting can be done on WMF clusters run by the Cloud Services team to 
avoid putting our content on 3rd party commercial services. While I was on 
staff, and I don’t think this has changed since my departure, the preference 
was to maintain control of content - including accessing it  - internally to 
protect movement privacy. If I had a penny for every time I got an offer of 
“free” hosting from AWS and others, my penny jar would be overflowing!

All the best,

Victoria

> On Jul 22, 2020, at 12:50 AM, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> 
> victoria, discussions to monetize the wikipedia content in one or the other
> way are as old as wikipedia. some people say "why should i continue editing
> and supporting wikipedia in my free time, or donate money, attracted by the
> vision to make it available to all, without condition, when WMF starts
> selling parts of it?" while the others feel that wikipedia relying on
> donations only keeps them at a shoestring budget, which meanwhile grew to
> 100 million USD a year. up to now the discussion always ended with a
> similar result: wikipedia would loose more than it would gain, and the
> initiative stopped. why this time it would be different? even more so as
> this API idea was already there when sue gardner joined 10 or more years
> ago. but maybe it becomes a good idea over time if it is brought up often
> enough and the environment changes. in 20 years or so, when the wikipedia
> content is auto-generated, auto-translated and WMF has no employees any
> more and no need of voluntary work this for sure would work.
> 
> rupert
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 9:19 PM Victoria Coleman <
> vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> +1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed
>> support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team
>> which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue
>> starts flowing in from the paid API.
>> 
>> Victoria
>> 
>>> On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
 Which cloud provider would you recommend?
>>> 
>>> Wikimedia Cloud Services, which incidentally, has the fastest network
>>> connection to Wikimedia sites by virtue of it being hosted *inside* the
>>> cluster.
>>> 
>>> -- Legoktm
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing Txikipedia APP

[Rajeeb Dutta]

Hi Galder,

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for your kind mail and for the update. Looking 
to see the app available to all countries soon.

Best Regards,
Rajeeb.
(U: Marajozkee)
(Sent from my iPhone pardon the brevity) 

> On 23-Jul-2020, at 7:08 PM, Camelia Boban  wrote:
> 
> Great, congrats Galder and who worked on it.
> Unfortunately the app is not available in all the countries.
> 
> Camelia
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:27 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
>> galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> Today we are glad to announce the launching of the Txikipedia APP for
>> Android and iOS. This tool will allow children to read content created for
>> them at Txikipedia, the Basque language encyclopedia for children, and will
>> make easier to discover content.
>> 
>> You can download it at Play Store (
>> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ewke.txikipedia&gl=ES)
>> and at App Store.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Galder
>> 
>> 
>> [
>> https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif
>> ]<
>> https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
>> Virus-free. www.avast.com<
>> https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail
>>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing Txikipedia APP

[Camelia Boban]

Great, congrats Galder and who worked on it.
Unfortunately the app is not available in all the countries.

Camelia


On Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:27 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
> Today we are glad to announce the launching of the Txikipedia APP for
> Android and iOS. This tool will allow children to read content created for
> them at Txikipedia, the Basque language encyclopedia for children, and will
> make easier to discover content.
>
> You can download it at Play Store (
> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ewke.txikipedia&gl=ES)
> and at App Store.
>
> Thanks
>
> Galder
>
>
> [
> https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif
> ]<
> https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
> Virus-free. www.avast.com<
> https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail
> >
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