I haven't had time to read the signpost. I just found this. I was expecting to read about the problem of the knowledge graph having inaccurate information, which is a frequent complaint on the Help Desk and the Teahouse. This information is not on Wikipedia. I'm not sure where they got it. The person who complained is advised to give feedback to Google. I have done that about one particular mistake many times and gotten no results. Maybe it works for some people.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:36, 17 September 2018 (UTC)Reply
It's alarming that Wikipedia's automated processes failed to catch and correct this glaringly obviousBut that's the thing: our automated processes aren't perfect. One minute we complain that ClueBot NG has too many false positives, the next we complain that it's not catching all the vandalism on Wikipedia. Every website in existence, everything that is written—whether it be by humans or by bots—is prone to error. We should never be viewing any source as perfect and infallible. And Wikipedia is no different in this regard. As for me, I've caught vandalism that have lingered on pages for months before. Vandalism is going to slip through, even with the best bots and the best patrollers active 24/7. Perhaps the public should be educated on how they can help fix this vandalism rather than gossiping and commenting unhelpfully about it. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 04:05, 30 June 2018 (UTC)Replylibelsmear.
"The companies which rely on the standards we develop, the libraries we maintain, and the knowledge we curate should invest back. And they should do so with significant, long-term commitments that are commensurate with our value."I can't imagine this being implemented without an implicit commitment from the Wikipedia community to provide content that is valuable to these companies, a burden that would still fall on the backs of unpaid editors. Donations are an appropriate way to reciprocate but we shouldn't be selling our content.
The article complains that if Google relies on Wikipedia, it should give something back. What do you call the millions of dollars in donation to the WMF? Of course, none of the money reaches the volunteers directly, but that's the entire model of Wikipedia: people are supposed to build the encyclopedia for free.
Wikipedia and Google have a deeply symbiotic (some would say incestuous) relationship. Around 2005, Wikipedia pages started ranking quite high in Google (and other engines') search results. This brought a big influx of people to the site and arguably made what Wikipedia is today. Even today, much of the activity (especially in the "news" and "popular culture" categories) is driven by Google and other search engine traffic. In return Google gets a passably accurate, not-too-spammy site for people to direct to.
I understand that people might feel ripped off by Google, but the state of affairs is inherent in the whole model of Wikipedia. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 08:33, 3 July 2018 (UTC)Reply